What I found to be the most enigmatic part of the therapy is what EFT practitioners call the “9 gamut procedure” – a 10-second process in which nine actions are performed, including the eye movements and humming, while you tap continuously on one of the body’s energy points – the gamut point. The way I’ve had it explained to me is that our eye movements are linked to the way we remember things, which is why we look up when we’re being asked to retrieve a memory.

“Neuroscientists don’t know exactly why this association between traumatic memories and eye movements occurs,” explains health writer Dawson Church. “It may be linked to the ability of the brain to process a disturbing event.”

Certainly for me, the discovery of EFT was life-changing. Unlike EMDR, it’s not yet recommended by the NHS as one of three psychological therapies for PTSD (the other two are cognitive behavioural therapy and group therapy), but a study comparing EFT and EDMR recorded that both treatments produced significant therapeutic gains for sufferers of PTSD.

A slightly higher proportion of patients in the EDMR group showed improvements, but, conversely, the beauty of EFT is that you can learn how to tap and say the affirmations yourself. The process that once seemed like implausible magic to me is now an old friend in times of stress. While I’m not sure you ever fully and neatly recover from trauma – I still occasionally have panic attacks and anxiety – EFT offered the first step out of the darkness.

Emotional Freedom Technique: “After I was held at gunpoint, EFT helped my PTSD”