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Sneaking Up on the Problem: Divide and Conquer

By Dr. Patricia Carrington

In this series we are looking at ways in which trauma can be reduced by EFT to very manageable proportions, or eliminated altogether, without, in any way, re-traumatizing a person. In the first article of this series I discussed Gary Craig's important recommendation that when there has been an extremely severe trauma such as a disaster or personal attack, that one “sneak up on the problem” by starting off with EFT statements that are purposely very general in nature so that the vivid details are not imagined at first. Only when the person has become more at ease with the issue can more and more specific, emotionally loaded words and phrases be introduced into the EFT statements.

This technique is of course related to the Tearless Trauma Technique which also strives to reduce possible retraumatization of a person during EFT.

Today I’m going to talk about another method which I’ve often used to help someone face a severely traumatizing experience gradually, step-by-step, when doing EFT. I find it extremely valuable. Here’s how it works:

First, I help the person to break up the memory of their traumatic experience into very small pieces. Each of these pieces may be time related in that the first one may occur before the trauma begins, or they can involve a relatively neutral detail of the traumatic scene itself. After the intensity of the first small, relatively neutral detail has been tapped down and the person’s distress about it is sufficiently lessened, we then move on to the next point in time, or to the next small detail of the scene, until it too has been reduced markedly in intensity. This way the person becomes gradually immunized to the more shocking aspects of the trauma and gathers enough strength to handle the more devastating moments of the experience.

In order to show you how this works out in practice, let me give you an example of a client of mine who lost her beloved sister in an accident in which a car swerved off the curb, mortally wounding her sister who died a few hours later, and then drove away –– it was a hit and run driver.

My client, “Diane”, had been so deeply affected by this tragedy that occurred two years previously, that during that entire time she had been, in effect, emotionally numb and strangely unable to cry for her adored her sister. The whole incident, and her entire life from that point on, seemed “unreal” to her because she had disassociated from the trauma so completely. After two years had passed she finally decided that she was ready to seek work with EFT to clear the issue. She then requested my help, knowing I had helped other members of her family to deal with this same tragedy.

We started by tapping on the general issue of "Even though this terrible thing happened", Gary’s recommended way of “sneaking up on the problem”, then I asked her to recall exactly where she had been when she received the initial phone call telling her that her sister had been in an accident. She said she had been in a coffee shop with a friend, but before she had a chance to tell me about the phone call I stopped her and asked her to describe instead what the coffee shop had looked like on that day. She quickly said, "I don't want to think about it."

I then told her not to think about the incident at all but to concentrate on a relatively neutral detail of the coffee shop. She was to imagine what the tabletop looked like in front of her, how her cup of coffee looked sitting on it, and see in her mind the sandwich on its plate.

She tapped on, “Even though this terrible thing happened that day, I remember having coffee and a sandwich before the call.” I had asked her to do this because I wanted her to be aware that there was a "before”, a time that had been relatively neutral and normal before she had heard the terrible news. When she had tapped down her intensity around being in the coffee shop, and could calmly visualize sitting at the table with her friend, we then went on to the next detail.

I asked her to imagine the sound of the cell phone ringing in her handbag. It frightened her to think about it but she tapped on, “Even though I heard it ring, I choose to remember that I handled that day well."

When she had reduced her intensity around the sound of the phone I then asked her to remember her brother’s voice at the other end saying to her “Diane, something bad has happened."

It took several rounds of tapping to bring her reaction to his words down to manageable proportions, but she was able to do so by tapping on, “Even though he said something bad had happened, I deeply and completely accept myself."

We then went on to tap on detail after detail; driving her car out of the parking lot and heading toward the hospital, being stopped at the tunnel by an officer who told her she had gone through a light; having him listen to her plea that her sister was in great danger and letting her to continue; arriving at the hospital and her shock when she saw the faces of the nurses when she told them the name of her sister –– she could see the doom in their eyes.

This first session of EFT ended with Diane remembering going up to the hospital room where her family members were assembled. She couldn't handle any more memories at this point so we scheduled another session two days later, to give her a chance to assimilate what she had already faced.

After four sessions, during which she unearthed memory after memory surrounding the incident and her relationship with her sister, Diane had moved to a point where she could now experience her outrage at what had happened to her sister, her feeling of desertion when her sister had suddenly disappeared from her life, and all the other deep emotions she had been hiding from herself for two years. At that point, an emotional healing occurred. She felt she was “herself” again after these strange years, now she was able to mourn her sister in a normal, appropriate manner, and the tears she shed at last were healing.

Diane had come through this terrible memory and reached an acceptance of what happened because she had been able to use EFT in a step by step fashion that allowed her to neutralize the impact of each detail of her memory before moving on to the next. I am certain that there would have been no possibility of her having been able to face such powerful feelings had we not crept up on this whole problem, gradually, in a step by step fashion.

This is an extremely important way of dealing with trauma. I call it the Divide and Conquer technique. In my mind, it should be part of the repertoire of anyone who might ever face a trauma, their own or that of another person.

EFT Master, Dr. Patricia Carrington