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Other Ways to Use EFT
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► The Power of Backing Up in EFT
The Power of Backing Up in EFT
By Dr. Patricia Carrington
Gary Craig's Introduction:
This insightful message by EFT Master Dr. Patricia Carrington
could just as easily be titled "Turning a Marginal EFT Session into a
Great One!" If you listen closely to the client they will often
lead you to an important core issue that, once EFT has been applied, results
in a new level of emotional freedom.
Examples might be when the client casually says things like,
"I don't like to be touched" OR "It's hard to swallow when I'm
around Jane" OR "I feel queasy in movie theatres." These
statements may seem to have nothing to do with the subject of your current session
but they often represent the missing instrument that will turn that session
into a creative symphony.
Other examples have to do with blocks that seem to be in the way
of clearing an issue. Often if we pause on our current approach and
"back up" to address the block we will often find ourselves in the
middle of one or more important core issues. Pat refers to the
procedure for discovering these gems as "backing up" and points to
it in her message with the following words....
"The moral of all this is that what we may consider at the
time to be merely a negative block or resistance to EFT, to be taken out of
the way as quickly as possible, may actually contain a hidden treasure
–– and the way to find this treasure is to back up and make the
block ITSELF the focus of the tapping."
__________________________________________
Today, I
want to talk about a strategy I find particularly valuable when conducting
EFT sessions with clients, and also when using EFT simply for myself. I
call it, for want of a better name, "backing up in EFT", but there
may be other designations that would be even more fitting (I'm open to
suggestions!)
This is a
maneuver in which we address a difficulty or so-called "resistance"
in EFT by treating it as a valuable clue, which is likely to lead us to the
next important aspect that needs to be addressed. You've seen Gary
Craig do this hundreds of times (it may well be thousands of times) on his
tapes or in person, and many of you have picked up this technique from
watching him and use it when working with your clients. I notice
however that this extremely valuable maneuver is not as widely used by
EFT-oriented therapists as it really should be. This is one reason I
want to call it to your attention here.
Another
reason is the fact that it's so easy to forget to back up and address an
underlying issue concealed within a block or resistance, when doing EFT with
one's self. I find that I have to remind myself to do so in a very
systematic way. However, when I do, it always pays off
beautifully.
Actually,
the backing up process is not only useful for clearing away obstacles and
making EFT flow more easily, but it can be a gold mine of information.
A core issue hidden under a reluctance to proceed with an EFT session, or
beneath a fear of talking about a certain subject, or within discouragement
about EFT, or hidden behind a failure to do EFT
"homework" etc., can be a signal to us that an area important
to the person, frequently one which conceals a core issue, is begging to be
addressed.
Let me
give you some examples so that you will see what I mean.
"Laura",
my client, recently indicated near the end of an EFT session that while she
was willing to work further on a specific issue, she responded to proceeding
as though it was a very tiring and oppressive thing to undertake. She
felt weary just contemplating "all the work that will need to be done on
this" even though she had made some outstanding progress with this issue
during this session.
I
suggested, "Let's back up and address your feelings of 'heaviness and
darkness' (her own words) about applying EFT to this issue."
The set-up
phrase which she formulated, with some help from me, was, "Even
though handling this issue feels dark and heavy, I choose to have this
reaction lead me to a new freedom."
Although
this was clearly a paradoxical statement (I had suggested the last part of
the statement, her "Choice", in order to provide a direct contrast
to her negative statement) it was sufficiently provocative (and thereby
served to shake up her way of looking at this) so that as she tapped on it, a
feeling of lightness and hope began to emerge in her. The statement
served to reframe the situation for her, and she began to feel more and more
at ease with the formerly "oppressive" task before her.
After
several rounds of tapping, the darkness and heaviness had receded
considerably. Then, she remembered her father's tendency to approach most
tasks rather grimly, even those which were for his own welfare and even those
which he really wanted to pursue. She had a distinct memory of her
father, an extremely staid and "morally correct" man from New England, telling her that she should always devote herself "unstintingly" to
any task she undertook.
As she
reported this, she commented that maybe he had been expressing only his
Puritan heritage and wasn't trying to harness her with a terribly onerous
task, but that to her as a little girl, his remarks came across as meaning,
"If you want to a get something done, whether it's homework or a
household task or changing your habits or whatever, you must expect long hard
arduous work."
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