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Increasing Self-Acceptance through EFT

By Dr. Patricia Carrington

Gary Craig's Introduction:

Dr. Patricia Carrington advises us on some useful advantages of adding "without judgment" to the EFT Setup phrase. Where merited, this can add useful emphasis.

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As we all know, self esteem is a major issue in many problems. It is often so central that the default self acceptance phrase used in EFT (“I deeply and completely accept myself”) or its equivalents, do great service in helping people overcome this core issue. Since I advocate using a “Choices” affirmation in place of this phrase for many issues (See the Choices Manual). I want to make it clear that I almost invariably use the standard self acceptance phrase where issues of self esteem, self blame, guilt etc. are clearly at stake. Because of the value of this phrase and of the concept behind it, I would like to offer a few suggestions on ways that we can, when that is necessary, perhaps make it even more valuable.

There are certain drawbacks to the self acceptance phrase as it stands. If it doesn’t seem to “fit” the issue at hand for example, some people new to the method may be reluctant to try it or feel foolish when doing so and therefore derive less benefit from EFT. Also, a number of experienced EFT’ers have reported that some of the effect goes out of the phrase for them when they’ve used it many hundreds of times over the weeks, months or years — it can become automatic and so unattended to. While the influence of the specific acupoints that are being tapped remains as strong as ever, the effect of the acceptance phrase itself wears thin for some people. I have discovered that one of the reasons why the default self acceptance phrase may go flat, if it does – and remember that it may retain its vitality for many people – is that a number of users simply don’t have a clear concept of what is meant by “self acceptance”.

What we are seeking to achieve by using the default self acceptance phrase is a kind of unconditional self-acceptance by the person, a way of helping them view their own problems without judging themselves at all. This is an attitude which is extremely rare in our society and because of this I have recently begun adding the following two-word phrase to the end of the default self acceptance phrase, and have found that it is very meaningful to many people, particularly to experienced EFT’ers who may be tired out by the repetition of the same words over and over in their practice of EFT. The short phrase that I add is “without judgment”, and the setup phrase now goes, “I deeply and completely accept myself, without judgment.”

To imagine accepting oneself without judgment is a novel idea for many people, so this sentence seems to have an immediate and profound effect on many of them — it drives home the idea of unconditionally. I have found it particularly useful when severe self-blame or self-put-downs are present--or when a person dislikes their self intensely--or figuratively kicking themselves around the block for something they have done or think they have done. The phrase “without judgment”, added on at the end, can be extremely beneficial in such cases. I would urge you to try it if EFT is either going very slowly or where there is a lifetime of self-dislike and contempt to deal with.

Other times, of course, these additional words are simply not necessary and the self acceptance phrase is excellent in its original form. One is advised to leave well enough alone and simply move swiftly through EFT if the default self acceptance phrase is taking hold without these additional words. In other words, if it’s working, leave things as they are!

Another way of increasing the effectiveness of the default self acceptance phrase, which I sometimes use, is to use it in a protocol similar to my Choices Trio one (see Chapter 3 of the Choice Manual). Clearly the name ‘Choices Trio’ is not appropriate in this case for there are no Choices involved, so when using this format with the self acceptance phrase I refer to it simply as the ‘Trio’. Here’s how it works.

The person does one round of EFT using the negative reminder phrase only (the words that follow “even though” in the set-up phrase), or they do two rounds of this negative phrase in succession if the emotion is very strong, to take the edge off the distress (the standard EFT procedure). Then they do ONE COMPLETE ROUND using the self acceptance phrase only (“I deeply and completely accept myself"), repeating it at each acupoint. Doing this seems to install the positive suggestion with regard to their own self-regard in a very solid way for many people. After that, they do one more round in which they ALTERNATE the negative and positive phrases as they go through the acupoints (see description of the Alternate Phrase technique in Chapter 3 of Choices Manual).

Here is an example of how this works out in practice.

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