Dr Andrew Greenland: 0:19

Thank you even bigger, shaping the next generation of practitioners through her pioneering training company, eft+. In this episode, we'll explore why therapist education needs a major shift, how Emma is blending ethical, sustainable practices into her program, and why work-life balance is foundational, not optional, part of clinical success. So if you're a therapist, trainer or health leader trying to build a career that lasts, this is one you do want to miss, emma, thank you so much for joining me this afternoon. Where are calling from? Just so our listeners are aware of where we are in the?

Emma Johnson: 0:48

world in South London.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 0:51

I'm just inside the M25 on the North Downs wonderful, and so, for those that don't know you, can you share a little bit about your journey and what led you to launch EFT Plus?

Emma Johnson: 1:03

Okay, I got involved in therapy. Gosh, I think I was about 11 when I started reading books loosely around the human condition. I was trying to understand myself and still am. It's a lifelong journey. And still am it's a lifelong journey. And I read a book that was called man Watching by Desmond Morris, who I think is kind of a social anthropologist, ethnologist, and it kind of grew from there and as I went through my teenage years my struggles got louder and bigger and I got even more interested in understanding myself to try and make myself feel better. So I went through quite a few therapies myself. I've been in therapy for 40 years, andrew, so I've tried lots of different paradigms.

Emma Johnson: 2:08

And there came a point in my life where I changed, wanted to change career. I'd been messing around in my early 20s from everything from proofreading to lorry driving and I really needed to find something meaningful and I kind of fell into an evening class. I did a psychology A-level and, unlike my previous academic career, I really clicked with it and for the first time thought I'm an academic. Wow, who would have thought that it was just the right subject for me. And I went on and did other training. I did a degree in psychology and counseling psychology. Then I went on to do postgraduate trainings in psychotherapy. I did my hours, like all psychotherapists do, and I worked in so many different charity sectors. I worked with HIV and AIDS. I worked with rape and sexual abuse, survivor support. I worked with mental health and I worked in youth counselling and then eventually got a job working in a secure psychiatric unit and I worked there for 15 years and I became more institutionalized than many of my clients. But I loved, I loved the work. It was really meaningful. I didn't feel like work and I'll touch on that. When we talk about work-life balance because ever since I found the right path for me it's not been work I always say, quoting Martha Beck who was Oprah Winfrey's life coach, I rest and I play, that's it. So I absolutely immersed myself in the whole world of psychology and counseling.

Emma Johnson: 4:08

And then I went off, had a family and while I was bringing up young kids I thought I should upskill a bit, learn a few new tricks, as it were. I kind of became a bit of a course junkie. I learned hypnotherapy, I learned NLP. My initial training was in humanistic existential therapy. I did a bit of psychodynamic work. I did a bit of transpersonal therapy. So I kept quite an integrative training.

Emma Johnson: 4:36

But when I was raising my kids I bolted on some of the more complementary some would say alternative, others not so kindly woo-woo approaches. So hypnotherapy, nlp and EFT, emotional freedom technique and it's like the bottom dropped out of my world, in in in the best way, and I dropped into a much deeper place. It was like an epiphany it was. It was like the missing link in all my previous therapeutic encounters. It brought the body to, to the mind and the emotions and it brought the whole thing and the spirit, if you like. It brought the whole package together in a really holistic way.

Emma Johnson: 5:23

And so when I went back into kind of full-time work after my kids were old enough, I went into private practice and I really integrated EFT with the other approaches that I had learned. And so I've been in private practice now for gosh well, I've been practicing for 30 years, but in private practice for about 15. So that's kind of where I am. I have got to the stage in my life where I've done a lot of client work. I don't need any more clients. I'm so grateful for that. And now I want to teach the next generation of therapists and I want to teach them this integrative approach that I found using EFT.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 6:13

Amazing. Just very briefly, because there's probably a lot of people listening that don't know much about EFT, can you encapsulate the essence of what it is? I appreciate it's probably something which is quite complicated, but just so that those that are listening just get some sense of what it is and how it might differ from conventional approaches in psychotherapy many different therapies that I'd already learned, from person-centered therapy to cognitive behavioral therapy, to exposure therapy, to EMDR.

Emma Johnson: 6:51

It kind of incorporates a lot of other psychotherapies and psychodynamic approaches too, but actually what makes it different is that it really involves the body. It actually involves using gentle pressure on acupuncture points. We call them acupressure points because we're not in the business of puncturing anything, thankfully. So actually people may know it as tapping. It's often referred to as tapping because you are, instead of puncturing the acupressure points, you are tapping on them. So it's based in Chinese medicine.

Emma Johnson: 7:31

It had a big revival in the West. It was brought over into the West and westernized in this approach called thought field therapy, which was the brainchild of an American psychologist called Dr Roger Callahan. He was working with psychotherapy traditionally and he started to integrate kinesiology and acupuncture principles into his psychotherapeutic work. So it came from thought field therapy and then it was taken up by an engineer actually called Gary Craig, who learned thought field therapy from Roger Callaghan and with his engineer's brain he thought I could really simplify this of points to tap on for different problems one for weight loss, one for anxiety, one for tinnitus, you know, one for trauma Instead of having loads of algorithms of tapping points. Gary Craig simplified it into a kind of one size fits all approach. So you tap the same points for every problem, but you focus on different problems while you're tapping on the points.

Emma Johnson: 8:55

It's known as a cognitive somatic approach, in that it brings cognitive, emotive therapy together with what they call mechanosensory stimulation. Mechanosensory stimulation so you are creating electromagnetic energy, um stimulating electromagnetic energy when you tap on the points, and that works amazingly with psychotherapy. It expedites um the the process. It makes it slicker, faster, but at the same time more gentle, because it relaxes the defenses and the resistances that so many of us experience as clients and therapists in therapy. And so things happen smoother and quicker and more gently.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 9:43

Amazing. You alluded to training, and there are a lot of therapist training programs out there. What makes EFT Plus different and maybe even necessary for the field right now?

Emma Johnson: 9:55

Okay, okay. Eft is great when it's married with conventional talking treatment, the way it has been taught and I'm conscious not to diss anyone here, because everyone's doing a great job, but the way traditionally EFT has been taught is it's been taught just as a tool. So come along, learn this tool, then go and go and use it. But actually, from my own experience of what it's done for me personally and what it's done for me professionally, this is so much more than a tool. This is more than doing. This is about being it. It actually opens the door to a way of being in the world and it's transformed my personal life and my professional life. The practitioner is actually a key part of the process Well, they always are, but their selves and the way they relate to their client is really part of the electromagnetic process that's going on. So it's very important that to own part of your job as co-regulation, which means you really need to work on yourself so that you can regulate yourself, your own nervous system, so that you can sit with your client in a different way, so you calm your own amygdala, so that you can be truly present with your client. And so the way I brought my own slant to the training is.

Emma Johnson: 11:44

My business is called EFT plus. It's because it's not just EFT, it's EFT plus how EFT is used to work on yourself. So I encourage all of my students at level one it's all about working on themselves using EFT to get yourself into a different space so you can then sit with your client in a different way and help them to co-regulate with them. So I get people to work on themselves, but I also teach them the counselling skills that I learned in my earlier career and I offer them the benefit of my experience of learnt in my earlier career and I offer them the benefit of my experience of working in all the different sectors within the NHS, charity work, voluntary sector and in private practice. But I teach them how to be, not just how to do therapy, and I felt that that was much needed within the EFT world and hence that's how EFT Plus was born and I think it's what makes us different.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 12:51

Interesting. So your model is basically not just about teaching the skills, but it's helping therapists to show up for the long haul with their clients.

Emma Johnson: 12:58

If I'm hearing you right? Yeah, and it's not even a long haul. It's not even a long haul, it's a wonderful, enlightening journey for both parties.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 13:09

I guess when I say long haul I mean for a therapist who wants to have a lifetime career giving them the skills that they can actually do this good work for a long period of time, over a number of years, make it sustainable Without burning out?

Emma Johnson: 13:22

Yeah, absolutely. I burned out when I worked traditionally. Really, no one burns out when they use EFT. I mean, ok, that's a broad, brash statement. I never say never, but it's so rare to find people who are EFT practitioners burn out because they are constant.

Emma Johnson: 13:42

When they're working with their clients, they are by the back door working on themselves. It's a well-known concept within EFT called borrowing benefits. When you are there with another client focusing completely on their stuff, you've got all your own stuff going on, but you've bracketed that off like a good therapist, right, you've put it to one side so you can be totally present, but it's there, right, and it's in the back of your mind. And when you are mirror tapping with your clients, you're by the back door working on your own stuff, right? I work with six clients a day, so that's six hours a day of me tapping on my stuff by the back door. I don't know many therapists that feel better at the end of the day than they did at the beginning, but I've got to tell you it's the truth, amazing amazing um, very interesting.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 14:36

So I think you mentioned your um earlier on that you're beating clients off with a stick in a better commerce. Love that. Um. Clearly you're building, you've been building something that resonates. What do you think helps your practice to thrive, to be at that level where you are literally able to turn patients away, and how are you using infusing that into your training approach when you're training new practitioners?

Emma Johnson: 14:58

the success of the technique. You know I can't really claim the credit actually if you, all you've got to do for this technique to really work is work on yourself, what we call get yourself out of the way so you're not in the way of the work with the client and then just use the process. Use the process while being totally present, using all of your therapeutic skills with the client. The added ingredient of the tapping to traditional talking treatment absolutely supercharges the process. People who hated cognitive behavioral therapy or other forms of therapy often find this a kind of a happy place to land therapeutically, because we're not into big pain and it doesn't have to be painful. Change can happen quite quickly and it doesn't have to really hurt. And I think that's the bit. That's what makes this technique, where you marry the two together, traditional therapy and tapping. When you bring them together, you get there quicker, you get there more, you get there more smoothly. You get through the resistances, the natural defenses which we all applaud and work with, not against. But when you use EFT around that stuff, it dissolves a lot more easily and gently resolve stuff. Surprisingly pain, not painlessly, but you can reduce the pain of the work considerably. That keeps people in the game. That keeps them staying with you and they probably need fewer sessions when you use EFT alongside traditional therapy than traditional talking treatment alone, because of the, the somatic element, the electromagnetic element. So the clients, they feel it works and they feel it works in the first session. Quickly. They can feel it work, um, and it it really keeps people on board. They stick with it. You teach them EFT as a self-help tool as well as using it with them in the session. So it empowers them between sessions. So they're working on themselves between sessions and with you and they get results.

Emma Johnson: 17:25

And then they go and tell their mates I work with this really weird woman. I don't know what she did. She made me talk about stuff. We just chatted and we tapped on our faces and our bodies and I felt so much better. And then they go give me a number and that's what's happened. It's literally. I hardly had to market this. This was just word of mouth. So I started with a small group of people. Actually it was a hairdresser. I started with a hairdresser'm probably now on my 10th generation of clients that came from her. So it's it's just kind of expanded and I know I use that brush tool, beating them up with a stick? I promise you I haven't beaten anyone and never will.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 18:24

I believe you.

Emma Johnson: 18:25

I believe you, but but the less death, the least desperate you are, the more people want you, it seems.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 18:39

So, stepping back a bit, what do you think is changing in the mental health space from your perspective, when it comes to therapist development and support, obviously outside of your organisation? What do you see in the arena, in the therapy space arena, from your perspective?

Emma Johnson: 18:48

Therapist development and support.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 18:51

Because obviously you've developed your own training structure and program. I just wonder what you see in terms of the wider picture for training development support in this area. Perhaps what other people are not doing that you are um, what are they not doing?

Emma Johnson: 19:06

I don't really know what they're not doing. To be fair, andrew, I'm so engrossed in what we're doing that I kind of barely notice what people that don't um integrate EFT are doing. But, um, I mean, I think the whole social media thing has helped. I know therapists connect with each other. There are all sorts of groups online. Um, I'm getting a lot more cross fertilization. I have doctors come to train with me now. Nurses, psychologists, other traditional therapists train with me and newcomers train with me. But so I kind of do see other people coming in. I know that a lot of people are still burning out and that worries me. Um, it tells me that other people aren't finding the kind of the golden nugget that I found that actually helped me sustain myself as a therapist.

Emma Johnson: 20:05

I think, actually bringing the body together with the mind, descartes did us a big disfavor. Sorry, descartes, you did your best, mate, but you did us a big disfavor when you separated the mind and the body. I think what is happening generally is it's coming back again. We're becoming whole again. Even you, andrew I say even you that sounds a bit pejorative, but you know you're you're a functional medicine specialist. You know you probably notice the drive towards becoming whole again in therapy and we know that people are reaching beyond the, the previous old statutory structures like the nhs, which I'm not going to diss amazing service, but it has limits and people are now reaching beyond that and within that I see people bringing the mind, emotions and the body back together and the ones who are sustaining it and not burning out are the ones who account for the body their client's body, but also their own.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 21:11

So is that the sort of secret to work-life balance? Because when you touched on the term work-life balance there and I was just going to ask you what you thought was the reason why so many smart driven practitioners struggle with it, and is it just because there's lack of holism and fragmentation, or is there more to it than that?

Emma Johnson: 21:27

there's a lot more. I think it's such a complex picture when, when you asked me that question, it kind of exploded and I had a range of answers. Some of them are doing fine. By the way, I'm not always struggling. Some are doing fine, but some are for all kinds of reasons.

Emma Johnson: 21:43

What you just said about being driven drivenness itself can end in burnout. People who become a bit Taipei achiever ish with their therapy practice are more vulnerable to burning out. Um, I think some people burn out because they work in statutory sectors where they're underpaid, they have to work longer hours to just the tread water financially. Um, some people I think in in our field are quite exploited. But people let themselves be exploited, especially when they've got a calling, and I think a lot of people in this field come because they have a genuine calling.

Emma Johnson: 22:26

And some of them, I think, are what I would call helper types. They are life's helpers, they're life's carers and some of them are a bit using your word driven perfectionist about their helping, a bit driven about their helping, and that, while can be great for clients, it can have a real backlash against the helper practitioner. It can have a real backlash against the helper practitioner and I think for many helpers the motivation to help comes from something to do with self-worth. It's about I'm only worthy when I'm helping someone else. And I think they are the people most prone to burnout, because your own self-worth depends on the success of your helping others. And you know, as we know, helping others can be a bit of a wild card. Some people aren't ready. They aren't ready or they're on a slow burn, so you don't always get the kind of snappy results, always get the kind of snappy results that you might need to feel you are worthy as a helper. So I think people do, unfortunately, rely on helping as a sense of feeling worthy in the world.

Emma Johnson: 23:44

There can be a degree of self-sacrifice with that, sometimes even martyrdom. People want to be wanted, they want to be needed. Maybe they have an unmet need to mean something, to do something meaningful, to matter, to count, to feel special. But we all know that looking for self-worth out there doesn't work. You may get temporary satisfaction, a temporary hit, but ultimately you're throwing a hamburger into the abyss and you're likely to burn out.

Emma Johnson: 24:15

And I know because I've kind of been there, because traditional talking insight therapy can be a one-way street. It can often be all in the head, disembodied, and it's difficult. You're sitting with all that pain, you're feeling the pain, sometimes staying stuck in the pain with the client for a long time. And if you're in it for self-worth, well you know you're on a sticky wicket. It can be wearing and it can produce bored, depressed, burned out therapists. So I think that some therapists who are in it because they are natural helper types are very at risk of burning out, and lots of us are helper types, I'm certainly one.

Emma Johnson: 25:02

I think there's another group of us and again I might include myself in this that we get really attached, even addicted, to the deep space of connection that therapy entails and involves. And maybe those of us that didn't have particularly secure early attachments find that we suddenly are really connecting with people in the way we perhaps never have, and that can be a bit dangerous for our mental health and for our clients. Dangerous for our mental health and for our clients. But some approach it differently, andrew. Some approach it with an easy, light touch, and that's what I teach Approach this with an easy light touch and come from a different place.

Emma Johnson: 25:45

It's not work. If this is your passion, it's not work. Going back to Martha Beck, it's kind of play and some of us love what we do and when you love what you do it's kind of easy, it kind of just flows. It's an intriguing journey of human experience and for me it's such a meaningful passion and such a privilege to be let into another's world and I'd say the new paradigms that connect the mind and the body really kind of intersect with this and you can really kind of sit with people and vibe with people in a different way. That's not wearing, it's actually uplifting, that's not wearing, it's actually uplifting. And I think, um, I think it's uh, it doesn't have to be difficult. Therapy doesn't have to be difficult for the client or for the therapist. It can be a lot easier than we think really interesting.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 26:51

so is is really the secret here the fact that you're teaching eft to people and they're using that technique, that within within themselves, to give them that protection? Is this I mean, I don't use the word magic bullet because that sounds a little bit reductionist but if that's incorporated into the training to help these therapists, obviously to use it with clients, but to use it on themselves, to give them this protection from the whole burnout thing, is that fair?

Emma Johnson: 27:18

Yeah, yeah, because, for example, I'll talk about myself. I worked on my help attendances. I worked on all the reasons why I needed to help and all the pain at the root of that. You know the painful places that that came from. I tapped on that stuff. I still am. It's. You know we're all a work in progress.

Emma Johnson: 27:40

None of us are there yet, but I have done a lot of work on it and I continue to do a lot of work on it to kind of, I guess you're reducing the things that can get triggered. You know you're kind of reducing your own triggers. You're really maybe changing your point of attraction in that you're no longer desperate to get yourself worth from helping others. You're no longer desperate to connect with other people because you're connected with yourself. It really helps you to connect with yourself in a new way. It helps you to work through your own stuff in your own way so that you're clearer and cleaner, less likely to get triggered, less likely to project your own stuff onto your clients, and certainly all of that adds up to more success for the client and less likelihood of burnout for me and for my students. So, yeah, I get them to work on their stuff so that they can be with their client more cleanly, more clearly.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 28:51

Amazing. Are there any other specific habits or principles that you coach your trainees on that really help move the needle for long term fulfillment? Or is really EFT the sort of center of center of all of this?

Emma Johnson: 29:10

Well, eft. I would say EFT is a big part of it, but what EFT does, I think I just alluded to, is that it helps you really connect with yourself and it really is about you. Therapy is and isn't about you. Who you are is your main tool. It's not what you do, it's how you do it, it's who you are when you are with your clients. So you know really, what I am teaching people is how to be, how to be themselves, how to connect with themselves, certainly how to accept themselves. Self-acceptance is absolutely key here and really, if I could say what is my biggest message to all my clients and all my students, it will be accept yourself as you are.

Emma Johnson: 30:03

Carl Rogers quoted something one of his clients said which was the curious paradox is the moment I upset myself as I am, I can change. And wow, is that true? Have lived that? Have I seen my clients live that and do I see my students live it? Absolutely, accept yourself. Work with the impediments to self-acceptance. Gary Craig, who invented EFT, says that EFT is about tapping through the impediments to love with a capital L. I say it's tapping through the impediments to love with a capital L. I say it's tapping through the impediments to self-acceptance, to radical self-acceptance, where, no matter what's going on and how badly you've effed up, you're okay, you always were, you always will be. So yeah, you're okay. That's what I want to tell people. You're already okay, right as you are thank you.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 31:00

So what's your vision for eft plus over the next six to twelve months? Where do you want this, where do you want this to go?

Emma Johnson: 31:05

okay, I've been. I've been okay, I've been teaching eft for 15 years now. I taught for many other training establishments. I started EFT Plus about three years ago. It's a slow build, as anyone will know.

Emma Johnson: 31:20

Building a training school, especially someone, one with kind of something quite unique that is only just starting to gain traction and be validated within the clinical community, thanks, not least, to some brilliant research, randomized controlled trials, peer-reviewed studies that have come out.

Emma Johnson: 31:44

Eft is now the most researched psychotherapy and we don't know how any form of psychotherapy works really, but we're finding out how EFT works and that is starting to get us traction now within the NHS, who are themselves nice, are having EFT researched and they're already getting great results. So as EFT gains more traction, I really want to be part of the interface that brings it into the mainstream, because that is where it's heading. I really predict that within 20 years the NHS will be using it and using it routinely, and I want to be part of that. So my movement is to move from teaching newcomers I'm still teaching newcomers to therapy. I'll take people from scratch and teach them how to be therapists all the way through, but I also want to teach the psychologists, the doctors, the GPs, the physiotherapists, other trauma specialists to use other trauma approaches and just get EFT into the mainstream.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 33:02

Because I want the world to benefit the way I have benefited and seen so many others benefit. Amazing, amazing aim. So if you could change one thing about how the therapy profession approaches training, what would it be?

Emma Johnson: 33:11

Oh, drop into your body, lose your mind, come to your senses, that's what I would say. Drop out of your head. This is not an academic pursuit. I mean it can be, and hey look, I've done enough academic masturbation myself. I'm not averse to it and I'll vibe with you. If you want to talk theory, if you want to talk research, no problem. And philosophy, yeah, hell yeah. But it's so much more than that and you are so much more than you think, and that lands on so many levels. Drop into your body and find out what's there, when you join the dots between the mind, the emotions, the body and the spirit. If you go there and I think we all should- emma, thank you so much for this conversation.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 33:59

It's been a very rich discussion, very honest, very personal um your clarity and passion are really contagious and I've really enjoyed um talking with you this afternoon. So thank you so much for your time.

Emma Johnson: 34:09

Really appreciate it thank you so much, andrew, for letting me have this voice. I could talk endlessly about eft. If anyone wants to come and vibe with me, please do. Thank you, thank you.