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Multiple Phobias Treated with EFT – 10-Year Follow-Up Page 3

I didn’t waste much time assuring her it was “normal” for a 32 year old woman not to be crying at leaving for a week’s plane trip without her mother.  We just started tapping for her fear of “not having fear” and her fear of “not crying,” and brought them both down over the telephone.  Louise now felt fine and was ready to leave for Australia, which she did.

A week and a half passed before she phoned me on her return to the states and breathlessly told me what had happened.  If I had created an obstacle course to test the strength of the tapping effects I could never have dreamed up such an effective one.  Here is Louise’s trip as she recounted it to me.

When the plane had left the airport for Chicago, she had experienced surprisingly little fear, maybe once or twice she had to tap a bit but that was all.  When she got to Chicago and they were laid over for an hour between planes – a strange city and she was alone – she still experienced no problems.

It was only after the plane had set out for its nonstop trip to Los Angeles that nature’s “tests” began.  When they were about an hour out of O’Hare airport, the pilot announced over the loud speaker that passengers must fasten their seat belts and remain in their seats because one of the plane’s engines had “caught on fire”.  He said they would turn back to O’Hare airport and “try to land”, however they might have to make an emergency landing in a field before that time and they “shouldn’t be worried” if this happened (!).

According to Louise, at this announcement “people began screaming and praying in the aisles and some were throwing up.”  But, she told me nonchalantly, she was one of the few who didn’t panic.  However she did feel pretty uncomfortable when they reached O’Hare airport and she looked down and saw the fire brigade and the ambulances lined up waiting to rescue them.  “I didn’t feel good about that at all,” she said, “but I didn’t panic.”

That wasn’t quite the end of her trials though.  After a few hours wait in O’Hare, the passengers were put onto another plane headed for Los Angeles.  But instead of going there nonstop they were informed that the plane would land temporarily in Salt Lake City with no reason given for this.  When it landed, Louise watched an emergency medical crew board the plane, go back about ten seats behind her, and remove the body of a man who had died of a heart attack while in flight – it was thought that he had been traumatized by the earlier fire incident.  Louise told me that she felt very sorry for the man when she realized what had happened, but still she “didn’t panic”.

There was a little more to go though.  Eventually they landed in LA to discover that they had missed their connection to Australia because the overseas plane had not been able to wait through the many hours of delay. The airline accordingly announced that they would put the passengers up at a motel at their expense so that they could board another plane in the morning.  They would have to spend the night in LA.

Louise had always had a fear of being in a strange city.  Now she was in a strange city under what can only be described as rather strange circumstances.  She handled this without difficulty.  She had been sitting next to a nice woman on the plane and the two of them decided to go out to dinner together in Los Angeles.  Louise forgot to be afraid to of a “strange city” and the layover went fine.

Their new plane left the next morning for Australia, and Louise described her flight over the Pacific as “a breeze” because nothing much happened, there was just a quiet ocean to look at.

She then spent a wonderful week with Ted in Australia and had a pleasant easy trip home. When she phoned me to tell me about it she was happy about the trip but was (surprise, surprise!) once again having unpleasant disagreements with her mother.  Clearly there was a lot more therapeutic work to do be done.  All of Rome was not built in a day, as they say.

However, from that time on flying was not a problem for Louise, nor was driving on highways or staying in offices after hours.  Her company promotion the following year called for her traveling on the company’s behalf all over the world, and Louise took it in her stride.  Now, ten years later, Louise, now married with two children and in a high executive position in her company, has traveled extensively on planes ever since this treatment and hasn’t given this a second thought.  It is as if she had never had such an incapacitating fear in the first place.

One of the most interesting aspects of Louise’s experience is that there appears to have been a permanent obliteration of her phobia – ten years is more than the 7 year “cure interval” decreed by medicine.  During this time, Louise’s former negative memories of planes have been replaced by a host of positive memories.  She has experienced so many successful, easy, comfortable trips on planes following the tapping treatment that her former reaction is now but a dim memory.  There is nothing like an accumulation of good memories to wipe out negative ones – in this case, apparently permanently.

EFT Master, Dr. Patricia Carrington

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