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Special EFT Concerns
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Special EFT Concerns ► Is it
possible to do too much EFT in a day?
Is it possible to do too much EFT in a day?
This
question is an unusually challenging one and I will try to summarize the
quite lengthy e-mail inquiry so you can know all that is involved.
This
reader's inquiry addresses not only the question you see in the title above
–– whether one can actually overdo EFT –– but
is an example of how easily more fundamental considerations can be covered up
by more surface ones. As you will see, the woman who wrote this
presents us with a more serious and deep seated question which emerges as she
tells her story.
She
describes herself as suffering from DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder), a
condition formerly known as "split personality" in which various sub-personalities
or "alters" are split off or "dissociated" from the main
personality. It is a seriously disabling condition in which often one
sub-personality does not know what the others are doing.
Our reader
describes herself as being fragmented in many directions, having many alters
or sub- personalities. She has been working diligently with a therapist
to help bring together these many fragmented parts of herself, although at
times this has seemed to her to be an almost hopeless endeavor.
Like so
many people who suffer from DID, she was severely abused in childhood.
She is a ritual abuse survivor who is hoping that EFT, which she has been
using on her own for some time now, will help her deal with her painful
memories. Fortunately it has been doing that to some extent, but she
finds that even the use of EFT (although it seems to help clear certain feelings)
AFTERWARDS results in painful emotions, disturbing memories of the ritual
abuse and often uncontrollable crying. She relates that she has tried
the Tearless Trauma Technique but that it hasn't worked for her. However, she
describes her crying reaction as "just part of the grieving, it just has
to be done is how I see it."
It appears
that agonizing tears and grieving is, in fact, a continuing part of her
life. She reports being re-traumatized by "poor therapy" in
the past, where she was told to get all her painful memories out and that the
more she remembered them the faster she would heal, but in fact the opposite
happened. Over the course of the 13 years in which she was in this form
of therapy and constantly recalled the agony of her childhood, the main
result was that she developed severe phobias and panic attacks because of the
terrifying memories that were NOW shared with the whole system and no longer
locked away in little compartments of her personality.
She writes
that since she started doing trauma work she has been told that "it is a
painful journey and that you have to get through the pain to get the healing,
and you have to do this over and over again". She also says that
everyone she knows who suffers from DID (she belongs to a DID support group)
has had this "really drummed into their heads" and are suffering
through a lot of pain now, whether in or out of therapy.
Obviously
this woman's question has many aspects to it. Here is my response:
Answer: Let me say first
that actually, you pose two different questions. One is a simple
question about the frequency with which it is safe to use EFT (in general),
but the other, I think probably the most important question, is about how you
can best use EFT to heal your traumas while at the same time reducing the
continuing emotional pain that you experience.
Let me
answer the first question first. I don't ordinarily give much thought to
whether a person can overdo EFT because we are usually trying to get people
to remember to use EFT at all. But the fact is that any beneficial
activity can be overdone, and if it is, any intervention can have somewhat
negative effects.
Take
exercise for example. It can be an extremely useful and health
promoting practice in our lives, but it can also be overdone, as any sports
doctor will tell you as they treat injuries to knees, feet and other parts of
the body resulting from, say, such a generally beneficial practice such as
jogging. The right amount –– is good. Too much
–– not good.
In the
same way, nutritional supplements can be important aids to health if used
appropriately, but if you take too many of them, or too much of any single
one, you may create exactly the opposite result to the one you intend.
Another
example. I have had many years experience teaching modern forms of meditation
in clinical settings and I find that occasionally someone will overdo
meditation to their detriment. Such a person will decide that if 20
minutes twice a day feels so good or is so beneficial, then 3 or 4 hours of
meditation a day will be that much better!
This is
not the case. Too much meditation in a person who has any instability in
their personality can actually cause buried memories and
"unconscious" material to rise to the surface too fast and can even
cause episodes of mental illness in a person so disposed. The ancient
proverb "Moderation in all things" is therefore wise to remember
with meditation, and would seem to be useful to follow with regard to EFT as
well, although my observation is that people have much more tolerance for
large doses of EFT them they do for meditation because EFT is not nearly as
inward-turning and contemplative an activity.
Now to the
part of your question that refers to the pain of the memories and the crying
which you frequently experience following EFT. Although I haven't
worked with you and so there is much I do not know about you, I would suggest
that what needs to be done here may be to first re-evaluate the way you use
EFT, rather than make any cut and dried decision about how OFTEN you should
use.
I would
suggest that you be on guard against unwittingly using EFT as a means of
inflicting still more pain on yourself. Let me explain…
If you see
EFT as inevitably producing pain, you may, without realizing it, actually be
endorsing the concept which you so dislike, the philosophy of "no pain,
no gain" in psychotherapy. By seeing EFT as inevitably leading to
tears and distress, you may therefore be promoting its use in a less than
constructive manner.
I
therefore think the most valuable thing you could do at this point might be
to address this "no pain, no gain" concept with regard to
EFT. If you have learned (or are considering learning) the Choices
Method, some EFT Choices might be extremely useful here. The Choices
Method takes EFT to a whole new level, and certain EFT Choices could be
created that could make the whole process of using EFT much smoother for you,
and more targeted to your individual needs.
For
example, you might consider using the following Choices Set-Up phrase to
address this issue: "Even though I think I have to go through all
this pain to get well, I choose to heal gently and painlessly."
Although
this statement may violate a (perhaps unconscious) belief of yours which is
that pain is needed to counteract pain -- I suggest that you TRY it. My
opinion on reading your letter is that you've cried enough about this and
that it's time for some kindness and gentleness to be introduced into the
picture –– kindness FROM yourself TO yourself.
Along
these lines, another useful EFT Choice might be: "Even though I think
I have to go through all this pain to get well, I choose to be gentle and
loving with myself as I heal."
If you
know the "Choices Trio" (it's described in my Choices Manual) I
think it would be very beneficial to use that here because the Trio greatly
increases the emphasis on the POSITIVE part of the EFT Set-Up, and I'm
getting remarkable results with it.
To sum up
my response to your question, I am suggesting that you work directly on the
EFT process itself first, and perhaps change how you're using it, and that
you do this by using EFT itself to make the change!
This could
lead to changes in your attitude which extend far beyond the EFT process.
We all know that survivors of abuse, who have never been treated gently by
others, are not apt to be gentle with themselves. Perhaps this can be a
starting point for a new era in your life, one filled with self understanding
and self-care and much more constructive self-love.
With all
my best wishes for your healing-to-come,
Patricia
Carrington, EFT Master
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