For those who don’t know, I have a YouTube channel. It focuses primarily on talks I’ve given or on videos that my students produce as assignments in my various courses. I’m very proud of the hard work my students have done, particularly in trying to get more evidence-based psychology onto YouTube in the form of training videos and case studies.

However, like much of YouTube, the comment section can often be a wretched hive of scum and villainy. A recent comment on a video describing Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) introduced me to a type of treatment I hadn’t ever heard of before: the Havening Technique (HT).

For those not familiar with it, TF-CBT is one of our most well studied and effective treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder in youth. It’s been shown to be very helpful in reducing all the core symptoms of PTSD, such as avoidance, over reactivity, affective, and other disruptions. It has decades worth of research supporting it and is based on sound psychological theory.

The commenter (‘the hulk”) on the video had this to say:

Trauma is a brain injury! CBT does not sooth or heal the injury as it is talking therapy and talking about an physical injury cannot mend it. Its like having a broken arm and talking about it to heal it! What you need is a technique called the “havening technique” which actually works by mending the brain! For depression anxieties and phobias “Havening” and “hypnosis” and NLP are far better because they actually work! And NOT CBT!

Leaving aside the fact that this “critique” is poorly written, it also includes a number of factual errors. To start, even saying “trauma is a brain injury” is very odd. While there is a large overlap between people who have a traumatic brain injury (TBI) and PTSD (especially in our military populations), most people with PTSD do not have an identifiable “brain injury.” While all of our behaviors and cognitions have their ultimate origins in the workings of the brain, this person very clearly thinks there is an identifiable physical injury to the brain in PTSD.

But what is this “Havening Technique”? It was a new one to me, despite my familiarity with non- and pseudoscientific treatments for trauma, so I decided to do a little digging into this therapy that “is a new and revolutionary way to heal emotional disturbances, empower an individual’s quest and optimize one’s performance.”

One of the easiest ways to start evaluating a new therapy is to begin with the developers. On the official website, we learn that Drs. Ronald and Steven Ruden are apparently the developers of this treatment. Although a bit confusingly written, their doctorates appear to be in organic chemistry, medicine, and dentistry. Right away, this raises some questions for me, given that they developed this treatment that is “designed to change the brain to de-traumatize the memory and remove its negative effects from both our psyche and body.”

I have a doctorate in clinical psychology and actually did my master’s thesis and dissertation on trauma. Does this then qualify me to develop new techniques in organic chemistry or dental procedures? I wouldn’t think so, any more than chemistry, dentistry, and even medical training prepares you to do trauma treatment.

It does, though, prepare you to try and dazzle the masses with neurobabble and psychobabble. While difficult to find, apparently Havening “enters the brain and generates special brain waves called Delta waves” and then “deals directly with the subconscious where negative emotions, such as chronic anger, fear, and guilt are stored.” And apparently it does all this through a practitioner or the person with the problems touching themselves. Just on the face, arms, and hands though, you sicko.

Delta waves are a real thing, and they do happen in the brain, particularly during the deepest stages of sleep. They aren’t generated by rubbing your hands together, though, and there’s no reason to think that you can somehow transfer them to another person or cause someone else to experience them by rubbing their face. Rubbing isn’t all you do in Havening, though; you also work on “distracting” yourself while rubbing your face after you think about your trauma.

Havening is essentially just a new spin on the idea that trauma can be effectively treated only via some type of “sensory” input. The developer admits as much when he groups Havening in with what he calls the “psychosensory therapies” of emotional freedom techniques (EFT), thought field therapy (TFT), and eye movement desensitization retraining (EMDR).

In EFT and TFT, you tap certain “energy points” on your body while repeating certain phrases or mantras about yourself. In Havening, you rub to induce “biological changes.” In case you missed it, I’ve already explained why EFT and TFT are pseudoscientific hogwash, as well as how EMDR is a “purple hat therapy.”

Even with all the pseudoscientific jargon and explanations for how Havening “works,” perhaps the most damning aspect of it is a lack of research showing that it actually works. Buried deep in the “Disclaimer” page is this admission:

Although Havening appears to have promising emotional, mental, and physical health benefits, Havening has yet to be fully researched by the Western academic, medical, and psychological communities. Therefore, Havening may be considered experimental and the extent of its effectiveness, as well as its risks and benefits, are not fully known.

I was able to track down a single study looking at Havening, but it employed a small sample, wasn’t double blinded, and had no control group. Further, it was published in a journal owned by a known predatory publishing company, iMedPub. As a result, the chance this underwent rigorous peer review, as would be typical for a treatment outcome study, is basically nil.

As an aside, neither hypnosis or NLP (neurolinguistic programming) are effective treatments for PTSD either. Hypnosis is, at best, a useful adjunctive treatment to assist in relaxation, while NLP is a longtime discredited pseudoscience.

So if you are troubled by a traumatic event, would it be worth it to try Havening? No, given the lack of plausibility behind the idea itself and the lack of data showing it works. It appears to be merely the next in a long line of trauma therapies that don’t actually do what they say they do. Rather than waste your time, find a mental health practitioner who is well trained in prolonged exposure therapy, cognitive processing therapy, or TF-CBT, all of which are gold standard, evidence-based cognitive-behavioral therapies for PTSD that can actually help.