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Other Ways to Use EFT
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Power of Backing Up in EFT ► Page 2
The Power of Backing Up in EFT Page 2
So
despite the fact that, today, she agrees that personal growth can often be
accompanied by joy and satisfaction and creativity, Laura has never viewed it
as such. Now however, after we had backed up and used the resistance
she had felt as the target of her tapping, an extremely productive EFT session
emerged. Laura worked on this issue using the new EFT phrase:
"Even
though Dad said change always involves hard work, I choose to see change as
an adventure which I can pursue any way I want."
The
inclusion of the phrase "any way I want" in this wording was
a key for Laura. It encouraged her to endorse her own way of going
about personal change instead of adopting the rather grim approach dictated
by the concepts of her father.
After
a round or two of tapping on this new phrase, she said, "You know, it
may have worked for Dad to approach things this way — I guess that was
pretty much his character — but it's not mine!" At that
point she was able to endorse her own EFT Choice even more fully. She
left the session taking with her a Choices Card to use for homework, on which
I had written out this set-up phrase for her (for description of the use of
Choices cards in EFT, see Chapter 5 of my
Choices
Manual).
Working
with this statement at home proved to have a powerful effect on Laura.
Subsequently, not only her EFT sessions, but her life in general took a new
turn because of it. It has set her free to move ahead on many fronts.
Another
way, in which this backing up procedure can be extremely valuable in
uncovering hidden aspects of an issue, is when a person finds themselves at a
standstill with respect to knowing WHY they are experiencing a particular
reaction. This is often the case with feelings of “being
undeserving”. Most people simply don't know why they feel that
they don't deserve something — they just feel strongly that they
DON'T. So no matter how much a person taps, if they feel they don't
deserve the good that might come from changing their behavior, they will
usually block that change (although of course not consciously).
Recently
one of my clients, "Emily", asked to tap on the fact that she felt
she didn't deserve to have a "wonderful artistic business which supports
me and my family and gives me all the freedom that I want"
–– an ideal of hers which seemed just too good to be attainable.
When
we started work on this issue, the EFT set-up phrase that Emily used was:
"Even
though I feel I don't deserve this wonderful artistic business, I choose to
honor my right to be happy."
After
two rounds of tapping on this, her sense of being “undeserving”
had come down from an initial rating of "8" (on a zero to 10 point
scale of being “undeserving”) to a "2", but she still
looked distinctly unhappy when she thought about the artistic business she so
longed for. This alerted me to the fact that there might be a hidden
aspect to all of this which we needed to address FIRST in order to make real
progress. So, I suggested that we back up and seek to discover the
origin of her feelings of being undeserving.
In
answer to my question about this she could think of absolutely no reason why
she should feel that she didn't deserve happiness. I have noticed that people
often have difficulty with deservedness issues because this emotion
frequently originates very early in life. A young child may infer that
they are "undeserving" because of something that happened to them,
or some remark addressed at them, etc., and it is often hard to connect the
event that created it (many times these are repeated events) with the feeling
of being undeserving itself.
When
we backed up, Emily's EFT homework (we were now at the end of the session)
was to tap at home on,
"Even
though I don't know WHY I feel I don't deserve this, I choose to allow myself
to know why."
Her
instructions were to tap on this issue using her Choices card, and during the
rest of the day to just notice (but never forcefully seek) any thoughts that
might pop into her mind concerning this issue. Perhaps, I suggested, some
answers might even begin to come to her in dreams, or in daydreams, or in
fleeting thoughts.
At
the next session, she reported that an interesting thought had come to her,
quite unbidden, while riding on her stationery bike. She remembered how
her little sister had had a very hard time with school work, while she
herself just whizzed through her work, usually coming out at the top of her
class. Watching her sister struggle, and knowing how extraordinarily easy it
was for her to do well in school, had made her feel very uneasy, even guilty.
"I
hardly had to lift a finger to do well in school." she said. Then
came the insight –– she now remembered how often she felt that
she didn't deserve the good grades and praise from the teachers that she was
getting because she hadn't worked hard to get it. It almost seemed fake;
while her little sister was working terribly hard and got much poorer grades!
This
was a revelation for Emily, and opened up a whole new avenue for her
therapy. And, this occurred because a roadblock to therapy was
addressed and utilized when it first occurred; we had simply backed up and
addressed the issue of her being unable to accept the good things that EFT
might bring her.
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. The way to find this
treasure is to back up and make the block ITSELF the focus of the tapping.
If
we do that — as the old Wild West prospector's saying goes —
"There's gold in them thar hills!"
EFT
Master, Dr. Patricia Carrington
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