Method developed and refined since 2010, across 1,000+ clearance sessions. Training practitioners internationally.
This page exists because I make claims on this site that deserve scrutiny. If you’ve read that anxiety can clear in weeks rather than years and thought “where’s the evidence for that?”, this is the page. Here’s where the HTC evidence actually stands, not where I’d like it to stand.
HTC evidence: the short version
Head Trash Clearance has one small university study, sixteen years of practice results, and a research agenda. It does not have the evidence base of CBT or EMDR, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise.
What I can do is show you exactly what the HTC evidence includes, so you’re deciding from facts rather than from either my enthusiasm or your doubt.
The University of Nottingham study
In collaboration with the School of Psychology at the University of Nottingham, the Fearless Birthing Programme, an online programme that teaches the HTC method in the context of pregnancy and birth fear, was the subject of a preliminary study (Barnard & Leachman). It’s the first time the method has been tested in an academic setting.
Twenty pregnant women took part during their second trimester. Over three months they completed standard measures of anxiety and depression, and at different points were given access to the programme. Here’s what the study found:
What it didn’t show. Reductions in anxiety and depression over the study period were marginal and not statistically significant. The study did not demonstrate that the programme reduces perinatal anxiety.
Why that’s hard to interpret. The study was small, and 60% of the data had to be discarded because participants either didn’t engage with the programme or didn’t complete all the surveys. The authors note that this attrition rate is typical of internet-based pregnancy intervention research, and that several of the statistical tests were underpowered, meaning real effects, if present, would have been hard to detect. Those are reasons the result is inconclusive rather than reasons to ignore it. Both things are true at once.
What it did show. Participants rated the programme highly for enjoyment and usefulness, at levels comparable to the other pregnancy support they were using, such as antenatal classes, and said they intended to keep using it. Those satisfaction scores held steady across all three months.
Where the authors landed. In their words, the lack of significant findings “by no means implies that it is not effective”, and they recommend further research, specifically randomised controlled trial research into the Head Trash Clearance method as a general therapeutic tool.
So: one preliminary study, an inconclusive primary result, strong user satisfaction, and an explicit call from the researchers for a proper RCT. That’s the honest summary, and you’re welcome to read it less charitably than I do.
The practice evidence
Alongside that sits sixteen years of client work: documented case studies, client outcomes across anxiety, phobias, birth fear, OCD patterns and long-standing behavioural themes, and the day-to-day results practitioners and clients report. You can read the case studies here.
I want to be clear about what this evidence is and isn’t. Case studies and testimonials show you what has happened for real people. They don’t constitute controlled evidence, because there’s no comparison group and no blinding, and the people who write testimonials are the people it worked for. I find them persuasive because I watched them happen. This is all that they are: consistent, documented practice results, not trial data.
The research behind the principles
HTC didn’t appear from nowhere. It’s built on Reflective Repatterning and uses an acupressure hold drawn from the Tapas Acupressure Technique, and its premises connect to established research: that trauma is stored in the body and nervous system rather than just remembered (van der Kolk), that tapping and acupressure techniques can reduce distress (the energy psychology literature, including Church et al., 2012), and that emotional patterns can pass between generations (Yehuda & Lehrner, 2018).
This is research that supports the principles HTC is built on. It is not research on HTC itself. Plenty of methods borrow credibility by citing adjacent science, and I’d rather be clear about that.
Why the evidence base is small
Because building one takes universities, research teams and funding, and I’m one woman with a method rather than a research department. The Nottingham collaboration happened because I was able to benefit from a small business grant and I found a researcher was willing to study the work; more will happen the same way. And the one thing that would be worth less than a small independent evidence base is a large one I paid for myself.
If you’re a researcher, or connected to a department with an interest in brief interventions, anxiety, or perinatal mental health, I would genuinely welcome the conversation.
How to weigh the HTC evidence
If formal evidence is your threshold, the established modalities win today, and the comparison posts on this site say so in their own tables. That’s simply where the HTC evidence stands right now, and I’d rather you knew it than assumed otherwise. If documented practice results plus a method you can test are enough for you to investigate further, then investigate: the method is learnable and testable, and you don’t need to take anyone’s word for it, including mine.
Here’s what exists. Make up your own mind.
If you keep hitting the edge of what your training covers, book a fit conversation.
About the author
Alexia Leachman is the creator of the Head Trash Clearance Method and founder of Ladder of Growth, the measurement framework behind every case study on this site. She has spent 16 years insisting that emotional work should be measurable, and built the instrument when nothing existing would do the job. Author of four books, host of the Fear Free Childbirth podcast (2M+ downloads), and trainer of HTC practitioners internationally. She publishes the limits of her own data alongside the results.