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EFT for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Gary Craig's Introduction:
Many EFT'ers weave the term "forgiveness" into the EFT
Set-Up phrase. I've done it myself, even with entire audiences. This is
especially useful in cases of abuse because, without it, the angers and
resentments held by abuse victims will likely continue to seethe under the
surface for many years--possibly even for a lifetime.
However, forgiveness comes in many shades and, for some,
forgiveness is "impossible"--at least for the time being. Some
clients dig in their heels at the mere mention of "forgiving that
bastard" and will go no further if forgiveness is the goal. What to do?
Dr. Patricia Carrington
provides a quality solution in this article regarding the sexual molestation
of her client "Marla". As the story unfolds, Pat is motivated to
substitute the term "understand" for "forgive". As you
will see, this made a major difference for Marla. Pat summarizes this substitution
as follows:
"To first direct ones self to UNDERSTAND what happened can
pave the way for a more genuine and subjectively convincing kind of
FORGIVENESS."
Gary
__________________________________________
From
EFT Master, Patricia Carrington
Some
things happen unexpectedly with EFT, which leads to innovations and new ways
to employ this remarkable tool. These surprise discoveries extend the use of
EFT, making us even more able to help ourselves and others.
My client
"Marla" entered my office with much self-recrimination because she
had failed to report an incident wherein the actions of a neighbor could have
affected one of their children.
Although
no harm had come from this incident, Marla was still upset by her inability
to report the incident and proceeded to report a memory which she connected
to her present behavior. When she was nine years old she had been sexually
molested by a close relative and two of his friends –– something
that was extremely upsetting to her but which she hadn’t dared mention
to anyone at that time. She felt that this close-mouthed behavior had
probably influenced her in many aspects of her life after that and might well
be one of the reasons for her recent inability to speak about their
neighbor’s somewhat odd behavior.
In using
EFT for this issue, we first addressed her childhood memory of the
molestation which, incidentally, she had never mentioned in all of her time
in therapy with me except only briefly in passing. Marla is very reluctant to
talk about certain things and I have respected this need of hers since she
has made great progress on many other problems for which she had consulted
me.
So, we
began to work on this.
Marla
started out with a prolonged silence and it soon became apparent that
revealing the details of the molestation was extremely difficult for her.
Accordingly, I suggested she back track and first address her reluctance to
TALK about this issue, rather than tackle the issue directly.
The set-up
phrase she decided upon was:
“Even
though I’m afraid to talk about what really happened then, I choose to
feel confident and dignified when I talk about it.”
I had
suggested she use the word “dignified” because dignity is a
component missing from the emotional response of most sexually abused persons––
it is usually conspicuous by its absence. Shame, guilt, and a sense of
wanting to hide from the world predominate in such people. Interestingly,
Marla spontaneously made the comment that my suggestion to include the word
“dignified” in her set up phrase, “felt right”.
Initially
her 0-10 intensity was a full 10 when she thought about describing the
traumatizing incident to me. After applying one round of the EFT Choices Trio
to this issue (see Chapter 3 of my Choices Manual for full instructions for
this variation of the EFT protocol) she had come down to a “6” in
her 0-10 intensity rating but now felt suddenly overwhelmed by fatigue. She
tapped for the fatigue and following that, tapped again for her fear of
talking about the incident and did eventually come down to a “5”.
She was making some progress but somehow was not doing too well on this yet.
Something was blocking it. Something else seemed needed.
I asked
Marla how she FELT (what was the feeling she had) about the fact that she had
never reported the molestation to her parents, and her immediate answer was
“Oh! I feel Stupid!”
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