A single study examined the effectiveness of Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) for reducing specific symptoms of Fibromyalgia (FM) (Brattberg, 2008). Brattberg (2008) studied “whether self-administered EFT lead to reduced pain perception, increased acceptance, coping ability, and health-related quality of life in individuals diagnosed with fibromyalgia” (p. 30). The participants of Brattberg’s study (2008) had been diagnosed with FM for no longer than 5 years and were on sick leave from work for three months. The treatment group used EFT once a day for eight weeks. Once a week the participants e-mailed their EFT distress rating sheets to the researcher who also helped with their issues online when needed. Participants who did not e-mail any sheets were called for distress rating levels.

However, the study held a small number of participants (62) and many left the study prematurely (40%). This created difficulties considering aspects of the study model could not be confirmed in all cases. Nevertheless, there were improvements among those who used energy tapping in order to reduce pain intensity and how much the pain interfered with activities of daily life. Although the dropout rate was high and the sample size was small (62), the study showed positive, preliminary results for the EFT group.