Wednesday, October 30, 2013
EFT and Magic Words
Often I’m asked by clients when I instruct them to tap for themselves at home about “what words do I use”?
I’m hoping to settle this question here and now for you readers. While all these tapping protocols and Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) Youtube videos out there on the internet are nice, as they give a wonderful visual of how EFT is done, I’m not convinced they do a completely healthy service to the EFT world. Now, I can’t complain too loudly, or I will look like a hypocrite here because I, too, have Youtube videos available on the web. However, my concern is that many times the video producing practitioners goes on and on with fancy words and different phrases on each tapping point. It looks complicated and involved to the novice tapper. EFT isn’t that complicated. It really isn’t, nor does it need to be fancy to get excellent results.
EFT works at the cellular level to eliminate negative emotions. Words aren’t the key here. Feeling the negative emotion is. That’s why it is called Emotional Freedom Techniques!
Few practitioners use the setup phrases anymore. And I agree with them, if the client is really feeling whatever emotion is causing their problem. If a SUDS (subjective units of distress, emotional pain scale) is over a 3 or 4 on a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 being no pain and 10 being terrible, there is no need to do a setup, as the client is already in the emotional moment. Just begin tapping the points. A setup is needed if the client has an issue but isn’t feeling the issue. That is when they possibly could be reversed and they need the setup phrases done at the karate chop point.
My point here is that EFT doesn’t need words to work. All that is needed is to tune into the emotion and really feel it. Magnify it. Intensify it. Just get into it, and then tap it away.
Words are useful for the practitioner to understand where a client stands in the process. Sometimes clarification is necessary. Words are useful for that. Other times, like I do, my intuition, which is really the Holy Spirit, kicks in & I will say something I extrapolated from what the client says. Often the client will acknowledge that my words are exactly what they are thinking or feeling. It gets them back into feeling whatever emotion there were feeling. I want to keep them in that emotional moment to get all the bodymind clearing I can get for them. Intensifying the emotions tends to get a more thorough clearing for the client.
It’s the vibration of the tapping that knocks the emotion loose, not the words. So, for all you novice tappers out there don’t get all hung up on the right words. Those words really don’t matter. Start tapping, tune into whatever it is you are feeling, intensify the feelings, if you can, and persevere until you completely clear out the problem. If you can make yourself cry about the problem, all the better, as crying is a sure fire sign you know exactly what you are feeling. Cry and tap. I’m pretty sure you will feel a whole lot better when you are done than you would if you simply sat down & had a good old fashioned cry without the tapping. Tapping extracts the emotion, neutralizing it, and it tends to do that on a permanent basis. Crying is only a temporary relief. Personally, I go for anything that improves my emotional lot long term.
So, happy crying and happy tapping! Your subconscious thanks you for the relief, as does all your clogged up cells, all 100 trillion of them!
For more information, go to www.eftforchristians.com
To schedule a free EFT coaching session, email me at eftforchristians@gmail.com
Always remember to take complete responsibility for your own health and well-being.
Monday, October 7, 2013
Guilt from an Abortion 30 Years Ago Gone with Christian EFT
Recently, I had an EFT session request from an out of state relative with whom I’ve had a few email/phone exchanges about the subject. Annette had downloaded the EFTUniverse.com mini-manual & tapping site sheet & she had done a bit of tapping on her own on a few personal issues, such as a headache & anxiety with good success. What she wanted to discuss was bigger than she figured she could handle on her own.
We made a noon appointment to do EFT over the phone. When she answered the phone, I made sure she had the tapping site sheet available, along with a class of water. I had texted her earlier in the morning to remind her to find the tapping paper. Once again, I made sure Annette understood that I would tell her where I wanted her to tap and how I needed her to repeat what I said. If she didn’t feel connected to my words to please change them in any manner she felt appropriate, as this was her session, not mine. I was simply guiding her.
A word of explanation to the tapping community here – I’m a Christian EFT coach which means that if I have a Christian client, I will pray with the client before we begin a session, asking the Holy Spirit’s guidance. I will also use Christian-based tapping phrases. I have used this in multiple cases and it works just as well, if not better, than the standard EFT phrases. My clients connect with these phrases better, as do I.
Annette indicated to me that she had a fairly high anxiety & stress level, pre-anticipatory grief over the soon to happen death of her father, who is quite ill. Her SUDS was a 7, on a scale of 0 - 10.
The set-up:
Even though I have all this stress because I know Dad is going to die soon, I know God loves me.
Even though my anxiety level is through the roof, I know Jesus loves me.
Even though I’m already worrying about how I’m going to handle all the hassles of the estate with my brothers and sisters after Dad passes, I know God loves me very much.
TH: I can’t stand all this stress about Dad.
EB: I’m nearly beside myself worrying about all the stuff I will have to handle.
SE: I know the other kids are going to give me all kinds of grief about the house.
BE: I can’t live here forever; the house is too big.
UL: I won’t have anywhere to go when Dad dies.
CH: I can’t imagine I will be able to handle all this.
CB: All this work that is going to fall on me when Dad dies, so I try to keep him alive as long as possible.
UA: DAD’S dying and I can deal with that, as he is old, it’s all the after stuff that is so hard to think about.
We did a couple rounds of tapping around these issues with Annette changing a few words here & there to match what she was feeling. At this point I stopped her & had her drink some water, deep breathe, and tell me where she was with her SUDS & what she was now thinking.
SUDS had come down to a 3 or 4, but a new aspect had arisen. “I talked to Jimmy about this, but I think I deserve all this hassle & I shouldn’t be complaining at all about it because I had that abortion in high school.” Annette went on and on for a good 15 minutes about this issue, so I let her talk, as I had time, but I told her to keep tapping while she “ranted”. By this time her SUDS went back up to a 6.
We tapped:
TH: I deserve all this hassle.
EB: It’s all my own fault that I have to deal with this.
SE: I know God has forgiven me, but I still feel guilty.
UE: When I don’t feel guilty, I feel guilty because I don’t feel guilty, and I think I should be feeling guilty.
UL: I worry about what other people are thinking. They think I should have more remorse than I’m showing.
CH: How can I face that child in heaven? I killed that baby.
CB: I deserve what I get taking care of Dad. I caused it all.
UA: This is my punishment for what I did. Someone has to make up for killing that baby.
We stopped after 2 rounds, reevaluated, drank some water, and tested. The SUDS was down to a 2.
Annette brought out another aspect that popped up. “I have no self control with food. I have all these weight issues which are punishment, too, for what I did”. Hesitantly, she went on about lack of interest in sexual matters and my body is “tired and not holding up well”. She was frustrated with herself, “doctors, insurance, and hospitals”. She discussed for a short time the Catholic Church teachings on sexuality now that the subject was opened up.
Her SUDS went back up to a 10. No setup done again. We went right back to tapping.
TH: I’m disgusted with myself.
EB: I have no self-control. I just keep stuffing food in my mouth.
SE: I’ve gained all this weight & I can’t keep up in life.
UE: I’ve lost all interest in sex and Jimmy just keeps going.
UL: I’m just so tired keeping up with Dad and the kids.
CH: I’m frustrated with myself that I can’t seem to be able to do this job.
CB: I’m tired of all the doctors, insurance and hospitals. They wear me out, too.
UA: I’m so very disgusted with myself, but I know God still loves me.
After 3 rounds with the above reminder phrases, we again stopped to check where she was. Some deep breaths, a drink of water, and a short break told me she was still at a 7.
Because this was a phone session and I was listening extremely intently to any changes in her voice, I knew she was starting to break down, as her voice was cracking. I knew she was near to tears. Asking how she was, Annette told me this all brought back an incident from when she was aged 12. I had at one of the previous breaks quickly explained to her that EFT was particularly effective, if one could link the present emotion to a childhood event. Annette had just come up with a childhood event.
I told her to keep tapping while she told me this story:
While playing around an old building with some friends, playing hide & seek, a man ran up to her and grabbed her across the chest on “my boobs”, then ran off. None of her friends witnessed it, but she told them about it when they returned. Her girlfriends asked why she hadn’t screamed. “I tried, but nothing came out”, was her answer. Of course, none of them believed her, so one of her friends asked, “Did you enjoy it?” Her answer was an emphatic “no”, but she had realized she had a bit of sexual arousal around the event, so in set the guilt & conflict over not being able to scream and the “nice” feelings. “I was a coward for not standing up for myself. I was too weak to scream. I was too weak to say no to the abortion. I was too scared to make a decision about anything. And now I can’t make any decisions about much of anything either,” all came streaming out without a break.
I quickly asked for a SUDS which I suspected was pretty high because the tears were really beginning to flow. Again, no set-up, as she was definitely in the moment & her SUDS was an 8 & she was in tune with her intense feelings. I asked if she had Kleenex. She did. I could hear her blowing her nose…a lot!
TH: I’m a coward.
EB: I don’t know how to stand up for myself.
SE: I was too weak to say no to the abortion.
UE: I’m too scared to make any decisions about anything.
UL: I tried to scream. Nothing came out.
CH: I’m such a coward.
CB: I’m weak.
UA: I don’t know how to stand up for myself.
Crying had slowed a bit, so I continued.
TH: I was alone when that man came.
EB: I told my girlfriends what had happened.
SE: They asked why I didn’t scream.
UE: I did scream, but nothing came out of my mouth
UL: He grabbed my boobs.
CH: I was so surprised and embarrassed.
CB: Did you enjoy it?
UA: Did you enjoy it?
Crying began again, so I continued. I knew I was hitting a really sore spot with Annette and I wanted to disarm it quickly and thoroughly.
TH: Did you enjoy it?
EB: I couldn’t scream.
SE: He grabbed my boobs.
UE: Did you enjoy it?
UL: No one believed me. He ran off.
CH: I feel guilty because it aroused me.
CB: I feel that guilt, but I know God has forgiven me.
UA: God forgave me, as I was only 12 and it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t ask for it.
Crying slowed again, but I did another round on the hand points on the last 4 phrases as above to make sure the issue was gone.
We reevaluated again, along with getting another glass of water for both of us, and taking some deep breaths. Annette said she felt much better and had a SUDS of 2.
Another aspect change showed up, as Annette’s voice softened and I knew she was thinking about something else now.
“That progression of growing up with so much immorality. All that feminity. I allowed guys to walk all over me. I was so promiscuous. I never told Jimmy too much of it because I feared it would damage our relationship. He didn’t want to know he said. I was taught right and wrong. I feel so guilty. I remember feeling like trash. I was always heavy and bigger than my older sisters, but everyone told me I wasn’t heavy, I was just big boned. I was told I looked like Dad, and Dad always had weight issues until recently, so I figured I would be fat, too”. “What am I going to say to that baby when we meet in heaven?” I assured her that the baby is in heaven and I suspect the baby will run to her, wrapping her arms around Annette, saying, “Hi, Mom!”. I asked Annette if she had confessed her sin to Jesus. “A hundred times, but I still feel so guilty”, she answered. I had her tapping while she talked.
Usually, I would ask a client where they physically felt all these issues, but Annette had no problems articulating what she was feeling, nor did she have any problems getting into the moment of the issues. She was such an easy client to work with even though this was all being done over the phone! She was once again beginning to cry. I asked her to give me 2 different SUD levels – one on the “immorality” and another on the weight issue. Both were 10s.
I decided to do one at a time, rather than confuse the issues. This would enable me to know where the SUDS level was on 2 different issues, and make sure I disarmed both of them adequately.
We began again without a setup, as she was sniffling quite a bit, with me tapping using her own words:
TH: All that growing up.
EB: So much immorality.
SE: I allowed guys to walk all over me.
UE: I never told Jimmy much of this.
UL: I felt like trash.
CH: I’m ashamed of myself.
CB: I went to all those clubs and drank like a fish night after night.
UA: All this guilt over that behavior.
Next round continued as I could hear the crying subsiding, but not completely:
TH: All this immorality.
EB: I didn’t feel too feminine, so I let the men walk all over me.
SE: Those men used me & I let them.
UE: I knew right from wrong. I was taught better than this.
UL: I feel so guilty.
CH: If I tell Jimmy, it might damage my marriage.
CB: I felt like trash.
UA: I still feel like trash.
Again, the crying was nearly finished, so I went one more round:
TH: I feel like trash & I killed that baby, but I know God loves me.
EB: I feel so ashamed, but I know Jesus died on the Cross for me & this shame.
SE: I feel so guilty because I killed my baby, but I know Jesus loves me very much.
UE: I let men use me because I wouldn’t stand up for myself, like I didn’t stand up for myself when I was 12.
UL: I think I can let myself forgive me because God loves me & forgives me.
CH: I think I can forgive myself because Jesus forgives me.
CB: I do forgive myself.
UA: I do forgive myself because Jesus has forgiven me & has tossed those sins as far as the east is from the west.
Annette was down to a 2 on the sexual immorality guilt & shame and she wanted to leave just a little to remind her of how she had behaved in her younger years & to keep her from never taking for granted all the forgiveness God and other people have given her for these issues. That was her choice and I honored that, as I know that at times that the SUDS of 2 might well drop lower as the calm & peace of the EFT effects set in.
We next tackled the 10 SUDS issue of weight:
TH: I was bigger than my older sisters by the time I was 8.
EB: I’m not heavy, I’m big-boned everyone told me.
SE: I’m so ashamed of my size.
UE: I look like Dad & he always had weight issues.
UL: I figured I would always be fat like Dad since I looked like him.
CH: I was bigger than Sis and that made me feel fat.
CB: I think I can forgive myself for my weight.
UA: I know I can forgive myself for my weight.
We did a 2nd round on this with the second round emphasizing the forgiveness part a bit more and this weight issue dropped like a rock to a big fat 0! Pun intended!
Annette was elated on how wonderfully relieved she felt and wanted to leave the session right there. Her following comment emphasis revolved around the Christian aspect of forgiveness and “how much God does love me”, which she says, “I needed to hear, so thank you.” I gave her instructions to keep tapping daily, but not to neglect her prayers, confessing her sins daily, particularly making sure she went over her day with the kids mentally and tapping away any problems or issues, so they didn’t build up into some larger emotional issue. She is to call me to set up another appointment when she is ready, or email me if she gets stuck, allowing me to help her frame out the wording, etc.
It was a classic EFT session, Christian style. I checked on her via email the next day and Annette was thrilled because “I feel so calm today and I don’t know why!” I giggled and told her, it is the EFT. That’s the way it works!
8/12/13 Another text arrived from Annette thanking me again for taking time to tap with her. “I’ve never had this much peace in my life. Many of my fears and anxieties are gone. I’ve lived with those for years. God is so good. I’m grateful He sent me to you. I’m sorry Bill died, but what a benefit to me that he did. I reconnected with you.”
For more information, go to www.eftforchristians.com
To schedule a free 15 minute EFT consultation session, email me at eftforchristians@gmail.com
Always remember to take complete responsibility for your own health and well-being. Contact a medical professional, if necessary.
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
EFT Makes Me Laugh
EFT makes me laugh inside. The effectiveness on the little things in life is astounding. EFT just plainly makes life so much improved.
Monday, my husband announces to me, after I asked him several times what was bugging him (I always notice something is wrong with him long before he does for himself), that he is overwhelmed. I inquire about what. He tells me the details. I ask, “Have you tapped?” Sadly, as usual, the answer was, “no”.
We were eating lunch out when he decided to tell me how overwhelmed he was. I never care where we are or what we are doing, I tell him to just begin tapping – fingertips under the table, and let’s go.
I start him off with “overwhelmed”, and then I add “discombobulated & frustrated” to the tapping mix, after he explained his feelings. At that point, I just leave him alone, as he knows quite well how to handle it; he’s just not to the point where he recognizes the problem. I guess we make a good team. I notice the problem & he taps for himself, fixing his own issues.
Now, the part that makes me laugh is this: It took him all of 90 seconds to discharge the frustration, “discombobulation”, & overwhelm completely. Here, he has been fighting the feelings for 5 or 6 hours, doing some disorganized stunts, getting nothing accomplished, by his own admission, and 90 seconds of tapping eliminated the entire issue. “I can’t believe how calm I am,” were his words as he stopped tapping. His SUDS dropped from an 8 to 0 in 90 seconds flat!
I told him that he would go home and in less than an hour accomplish everything he hadn’t fixed in the previous 5 to 6 hours. He agreed. He knows well how the science works – put the blood back in the neo-cortex and suddenly thinking makes sense!
About 2 hours later, he phoned to inform me, all was accomplished in about the hour I said + he had an added bonus. For the past 3 weeks, he thought he had 2 huge weekend long events happening on the exact same weekend. He wanted to attend both events as much of as possible, and he was getting flak from other participants because they wanted him to give up the “other” event for theirs. That was part of his frustration. He said he didn’t care, but obviously he did, or he wouldn’t have felt the overwhelm. Anyway, one of the organizers informed him that the 2 events weren’t the same weekend at all, but on successive weekends. He was discombobulated for no good reason, but it wasn’t until he settled down with tapping, & made the appropriate phone call, that he realized he had his weekends all messed up.
Did EFT fix Brad’s calendar? Well, probably not, but it did clear him enough so he could ask the appropriate questions, completely clarifying all the issues around his overwhelm.
Always remember to take complete responsibility for your own health and well-being. Contact a medical professional, if necessary.
Friday, September 27, 2013
EFT & Relaxation & the Subconscious
Accessing the subconscious is an issue with most of us humans, since it runs 95% to 98% of our life; I would think we ought to know what in the world it is thinking. It contains all our early programming. Everything anyone has ever said to us is stored in our mind. I think it was Dr. Bruce Lipton who said our subconscious intakes something like 40 million bits of information per second, but our conscious minds only processes 40 bits of it. That’s a huge disparity. What in the world is the other 39,999,960 bits of information doing to us? That’s the ultimate question. What is it doing to us?
According to all the newest research, it is the underlying programming that actually runs your life. You think you do, but you really don’t. What gets stored from every teeny tiny comment or facial expression or other environmental input is what runs your life. Your subconscious processes it as quickly and efficiently as it can, storing it for later analysis (sleep and dreams), or putting it in an experience file to compare to any upcoming events you might encounter. It apparently loves to mix and match life’s stuff. Once you experience an emotion, the body is signaled to mix up a particular neurochemical mix to match the emotion, and the next time you experience something akin to the first event, the body mixes up another batch of that very specific neurochemical mix, giving you, once again, the exact same emotion you experienced with the first memory. Does that make sense? Your subconscious is a great big memory bank. It would rival the largest most powerful computer on earth. It remembers everything, even if consciously you do not, but it also chemically imprints all those emotions deeply, strengthening all those learned cognitive neural pathways. That is what controls your emotional responses to daily living.
So, how do we access all that information? Meditators for millennia have known how to do this. My problem with meditation is I don’t think I have time. Everything I have read makes meditation sound long and boring and tedious. Anything that drab won’t allow me to relax! I will only mull the laundry list of what I should be doing instead of meditating! Western culture doesn’t afford us that much self-reflective time in any one given day, and, even if it did, do I want to use my time for that purpose?
With all the new science coming out of research labs explaining to us how our mind is really in our body, causing much of our physical issues, I suspect time has come to pay attention to what the subconscious has packed away. So, how can we do this effectively and quickly and still have time for that baseball game?
My answer to that question is Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT). EFT breaks through all of the barriers, allowing us to answer the questions of what are we really thinking inside that subconscious. What is the bottom line of who we are and what we really believe about ourselves and our environment? Those are the beliefs that are impacting our health & life decisions today.
I would like to suggest another step in addition to tapping with EFT that might facilitate getting inside the subconscious more quickly. I’m going to take a chapter from ancient times here. How about 2 simple techniques that will take less than a minute to do?
First, drop your tongue onto the floor of your mouth, allowing it to relax there (thank you, Dawson Church). Teach yourself to do this as much as possible during the day, or, at the minimum, when you feel under stress, try to remember to relax that tongue! Do this immediately when you sit down to tap, too. To demonstrate why I suggest this, try something. Right now, with your tongue totally relaxed on the floor of your mouth, think about a distressing, angry thought and attempt to get mad about it. Are you succeeding? I bet not. For some physiological reason, if the tongue is relaxed, emotions don’t seem to be able to flair. Play with the technique a bit. Let me know via email (eftforchristians@gmail.com) if you get any further insights into the technique. I’m always interested in feedback.
Secondly, and this is one I’m borrowing from the ancients, start some deep breathing. Take 5 five second long in breaths, slowly, counting, and then pause for one second, exhaling slowly for another 5 seconds. Do this routine 5 or 6 times, or 10 or 12, if you so desire, but just make it a minimum of 5 rounds. This small amount of time invested in deep breathing will drop you into high alpha or low theta brave waves. You have descended out of the everyday hectic beta brain waves into the lower realms of meditation. It really does happen that quickly. I use this technique to relax me once I lay down at night to sleep. Get a head start of slowly dropping into the delta brain wave state, where REM sleep thrives.
I read somewhere, and I wish I had written it down from where exactly, so I could give proper credit, but the author suggested that by taking a couple of minutes at the beginning of the nightly bedtime relaxation period to deep breathe in some rhythmic, slow method, we could knock off the need for a couple hours of sleep. Now, I don’t advocate only getting 5 to 6 hours of sleep each night because you did 2 or 3 minutes of deep breathing, but I think the author was trying to illustrate that the deep breathing nearly immediately gets us out of our daily beta state into the lower brain states where relaxation dwells. The faster we get there, the quicker the REM and delta states arrive; thus the better we sleep & the more restful we sleep.
However, I want to take this relaxed state on step further, if I may. I also believe because I use it quite frequently that when we get ourselves relaxed by whatever method we choose, it allows the Holy Spirit to “talk” to us. Now, I don’t hear audible voices, but I do hear that “still, small voice” whispering. Sometimes, it’s not a “voice” at all, but suddenly clarification of something that happened during the day comes. Other times I get a brilliant idea, like the proverbial “light bulb” going on. I personally attribute it to the Holy Spirit. Others call it intuition or the universe or whatever they choose. My Christian worldview says the Holy Spirit is the Great Counselor, the One who reveals all.
I believe this is why EFT works so effectively. As it drops us down into lower, relaxed brain states, the Holy Spirit begins to speak, opening up our subconscious, allowing old hurtful memories and pain to come to consciousness for release from our “bodymind”. This is an amazing combination! The Almighty of the Universe indwelling us through the Holy Spirit, helping us process all our emotional concerns. He’s not an impersonal God, but a God who is hands-on, who loved us so much He sent His only Son to earth to expiate our sins, but He goes a step further by having sent His Holy Spirit, the Great Revealer, to keep us on track and on course in our lives for Him. It is much more difficult to do this on-track thing, if we are preoccupied with all of our past distressful memories, trapping us in our inner self-centered selves.
Use EFT regularly, losing those emotions about those distressful memories and watch how quickly your spiritual life opens up fully to God. It blows it right open! How do I know? I’m living proof of this exact thing. God, using EFT, has blasted open all things Christian to me. It is an amazing process. I hope you decide to try it.
For more information, go to: www.eftforchristians.com
To schedule a free EFT coaching session, email me at eftforchristians@gmail.com
Always remember to take complete responsibility for your own health and well-being. Contact a medical professional, if necessary.
Friday, September 13, 2013
EFT & Trauma
Trauma in our lives, and I’m talking about the big “T” traumas, like physical abuse, war memories, rape, sexual abuse, etc. are huge. Anyone carrying them around knows exactly what I am talking about. These issues shape every facet and minute of our lives. They override and overwhelm every thought process we have. They cloud our thinking about who we are in Christ.
Often the memories shape our personality. It’s the physiology God put into us that makes this all so. He didn’t mean it as destructive, but as a protective mechanism.
The problem with the subconscious, if it is really a “problem” is that its main function is survival. Anything it perceives as a life threat, it will bury, hide, disguise or do anything it needs to do to protect us. And I’m talking “us” here, because I have firsthand experience on this subject. Sadly, for me, I know it intimately, and the deep burial of the memories nearly killed me. God using EFT saved my life.
So, let me continue, explaining why traumas get buried so deeply into the subconscious, where no one or nothing, including the conscious mind, can access them. Traumas are overwhelming, trapping us in the freeze part of the limbic system’s “fight, flight or freeze” mechanism. During the trauma, the person feels helpless, hopeless, without any resources. If it happens to a child, it is even worse, because up to the age of about 7 (Remember, all you Catholics, and probably other denominations, how the Church used age 7 as the “age of reason” when the sacraments of Penance and Holy Communion were permitted?), children function purely in delta, theta, and alpha brain waves, sucking up information, with absolutely no processing ability whatsoever. They are building a lifetime of neural pathways. Repetition is what builds those. That is why 2 or 3 year olds repetitively ask the same question over and over and over again. They don’t do it to irritate the adults in their lives; they do it because that is precisely the way their brains work. Kids have no cognitive neural pathways when they are born. They are a clean slate. Every event, good or bad, that happens to them begins that neural learning, all cognitive, creating a lifetime of neural connections & memories. In order to make those learned neural bundle stick, kids must ask the same question time and again to make the bundle thick and heavy duty. Our thoughts will ascend a thickened neural pathway much quicker than a lesser used one.
It is the same process that is involved in habit changing. We always hear that it takes 3 weeks to change a habit. That’s about right based on the neurology involved. You decide you want to stop eating toast for breakfast and eat fruit instead. You’ve eaten toast your entire life, so what does your taste buds want when your feet hit the floor in the morning? Yes, toast, because it is a comfortable, known habit. You’ve done it forever, it seems. In order to change that habit, you need to become mindful that you want the toast habit changed, and keep it in your mind for a couple of days. The subconscious will want you to revert back to the old toast habit, and you might even slip up a day or so and have your toast half eaten by the time you remember you had chosen to switch to fruit. Don’t fret, get up the following morning & eat your fruit. After about 3 weeks of fruit eating, you will, in the future, probably reach for fruit without thinking. Why? Because you simply, by choice, changed that particular, mundane as it might seem, neural pathway to another idea. After about 3 weeks, the body, which never wastes a single component part in the brain, disassembles the toast pathway and puts those component parts elsewhere where repair is needed.
Young children are the same way. In order to remember that the color blue is the color blue, the concept must be repeated a 100 times, or what feels like to an adult a million times. We, as adults, tell kids to quit asking so many questions. Don’t bother telling them that – they will just continue to ask the same thing over and over. Kids have to – it’s the way God programmed them to learn and to build up the neural bundles they need to function in life.
But, back to traumas, the concept here is similar. At the time of the trauma, the event is fixed in our memories; much of the details in our subconscious, where we cannot access it, the things we tell ourselves around that memory are what begins the problems. We aren’t good enough, it was all our fault, men are scary, Mom doesn’t care, red cars crash, public speaking is uncomfortable, etc.
EFT goes in & dismantles all those encoded details that are getting into our way, causing us anxiety or fear, stalling us out in life. Once 2 or 3 or 4 aspects (details) around an event are disabled, the event becomes a non-issue, allowing us once again to move forward in life, to that abundant life that God has called us to live.
It’s all in the God created physiology. God made us this way, so why not use what He gave us to improve our relationship with Him & others.
Are you stalled, or are some emotions getting in your way of your abundant life in Christ? If so, email me. I believe EFT can help!
To schedule a free EFT coaching session, email me at eftforchristians@gmail.com
Always remember to take complete responsibility for your own health and well-being.
Always remember to take complete responsibility for your own health and well-being.
Friday, August 30, 2013
Why Should Christians Use Emotional Freedom Techniques
Why should Christians tap? Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) is the great equalizer. It levels out all of our emotions, leaving us on a straighter path, less up & downs during life’s issues.
Prayer and EFT, all covered under the umbrella of the Holy Spirit, are a wonderful combination. He's like the great Advisor. He reveals all, if we are open to allow Him to do so. He gives us guts to go proclaim God's Word to the world. We all know the story of how the Apostles couldn't shut up after Pentecost. But, He also gives us the guts to look inside ourselves, rooting out those things that are not of God. Those things which distract us, keeping us a prisoner inside ourselves, stuff that is not useful to Him for building the Kingdom, all the things that distract from the Great Commission.
As you all continue EFT tapping, I believe you will find God will clear out your mind's garbage, all those things which make us fearful, distressed and anxious, feel unworthy or unloved, and we all have them, everyone their own version, you will find yourself in a more prayerful, grateful mode. It is like being more in the presence of Jesus all the time. You will actually feel God! God hasn't changed, but you have! He has always been right beside you, but you & I were living with a toxic emotional cloud around us. We were buried in our own distress, and satan likes it when we are just that way. It keeps us from truly feeling. We walk around numb, doing what we need to do, but never stopping to feel life around us. I want to know God, but I also want to feel God. I want to feel Him all around me, in everything I do. I can’t feel God when my life is full of emotional hang ups. My anger, fear, disappointment, disgust, etc. gets in the way. I can’t think – it all distracts me. EFT is a fantastic, gentle way to move those feelings and events aside, out of our way in our walk with our Savior. We are told we sadden Him with our sins. Take the time while tapping to confess those sins that you know in your heart hurts Him. He promises to cast them as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12: As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us). Why not tap, confess, & pray at the same time? Once you have confessed the sin to Him, continue tapping until all vestiges of remorse or guilt are gone. He remembers your sin no more, so why should you remember it?
EFT re-sensitizes you to hear the Holy Spirit’s voice clearly. All the numbness in life makes it extremely difficult to hear Him. It is an odd mechanism He implanted in us. As we tap and pray, our brain waves drop down into the alpha and theta areas, out of that busy, rattling, noisy beta state. Those lower brain waves are meditation areas where the great Christian mystics went when they wanted to commune with God. Maybe even Jesus’s brain dropped into those brain states when He talked to His Father.
EFT also quiets the chatter, the negative self-talk, we all use on ourselves. I had a ton of it going on nearly constantly. It is particularly prevalent in those who come from an abusive background. A smart lady once told me that when the abusers stop abusing us, or we are out of their reach, we continue to abuse ourselves in the exact same way they did. We learned the pattern from them. We tell ourselves we are no good, or stupid, or ugly, or worthless. Whatever your poison is, you just keep drinking it from the well of your subconscious. With EFT; however, that negative yapping stops once you have cleaned out the subconscious mind, reprogramming it and neutralizing it.
The result is peace. Oh, do I like peace! Taking a walk now is a pleasant experience. My mind is not racing, re-running all those old movies I once played over and over again, telling myself what a bum I was. And that is all the internal chatter is – old movies. Remember, the adage I used in an earlier blog? The one that goes something like this: To the conscious mind, a memory is only a memory, but to the subconscious mind it is a current event. I wish I knew who said it, but, sadly, I don’t. I’d like to give them proper credit. Until that current event is dismissed and unplugged, it will just keep playing. And it will just keep causing you emotional and possibly physical grief. Undo it! Apply the ointment of EFT to it. Cut the cord; eliminate the self-deprecating chatter that is unsettling everything in your life.
Remember Psalm 46:10 “Be still and know that I am God”. Isaiah 14:7 says, “All the lands are at rest and at peace; they break into singing”. Want to know that peace, email me for a free coaching EFT session & let me teach you how to break into singing for God? Let me teach you how God implanted in you a mechanism to stop the chatter in your mind that is bringing you down. God is waiting for you.
To schedule a free EFT coaching session, email me at eftforchristians@gmail.com
Always remember to take complete responsibility for your own health and well-being.
Always remember to take complete responsibility for your own health and well-being.
Friday, August 16, 2013
EFT is SO Effective
Hi all,
I wanted to share a little story with all you readers, as I'm hoping to show you that persistence with tapping does indeed pay off.
I have been tapping regularly and aggressively for a couple of years now, trying to clear all of my childhood emotional and verbal abuse issues. They are heavy, deep, and, until recently, pretty distressing, running my life from the subconscious level. I had no idea how much these childhood issues were driving my adult issues. It was huge!
Within the past couple of days, small events happened. I will relate one of them for you. For many of you, I suspect, you will wonder why I'm bothering to bring this up. What I need you to understand is this: small things would trigger me big time. I'd have some huge emotional blow-up over pretty much nothing.
Yesterday, accidentally, I dumped a 1/2 cup of coffee all over the floor. 4 years ago, I would have gone ballistic, calling myself all kinds of names, angry at the incident, and yelling at everyone around me. Immature behavior? You bet! Over the edge for a spill? You bet! Now, I understand where that behavior came from - that is how my Dad reacted when one of us kids spilled a glass of milk at dinner. I thought this was how everyone reacted to incidents. He went crazy about the mess! I learned the lesson so well. He called us all kinds of names, like klutz, idiot, etc. I simply took up, calling myself the same names, where he left off.
Well, low & behold, after I cleaned up the big puddle of coffee, I realized my only reaction was, "poop"! No swearing. No yelling. No calling myself names. I just cleaned it up with an "oh, well, stuff happens" attitude, like "normal" people do! Success! Those old, negative, neural pathways have been severed and new, less reactive ones, built up. Praise God! The cognitive learning has been undone! Indeed, tapping has changed my physiology!
I like this new me better. I'm more in control. Spilled coffee is not worth raising my cortisol level for 2 days! Elevated cortisol levels and blood pressure do not serve my physical needs.
God can through EFT change behaviors that I have tried all my life to change! EFT gave me the boost to accomplish what my conscious mind could not do alone! I'm so grateful to God for this precious gift, literally of life.
P.S. The friend who witnessed this incident added this comment later, "Not only did you only say "poop" or "darn"...something totally tame. The next thing you said was, 'Well, at least I got to drink the first half cup of coffee!'
I wanted to share a little story with all you readers, as I'm hoping to show you that persistence with tapping does indeed pay off.
I have been tapping regularly and aggressively for a couple of years now, trying to clear all of my childhood emotional and verbal abuse issues. They are heavy, deep, and, until recently, pretty distressing, running my life from the subconscious level. I had no idea how much these childhood issues were driving my adult issues. It was huge!
Within the past couple of days, small events happened. I will relate one of them for you. For many of you, I suspect, you will wonder why I'm bothering to bring this up. What I need you to understand is this: small things would trigger me big time. I'd have some huge emotional blow-up over pretty much nothing.
Yesterday, accidentally, I dumped a 1/2 cup of coffee all over the floor. 4 years ago, I would have gone ballistic, calling myself all kinds of names, angry at the incident, and yelling at everyone around me. Immature behavior? You bet! Over the edge for a spill? You bet! Now, I understand where that behavior came from - that is how my Dad reacted when one of us kids spilled a glass of milk at dinner. I thought this was how everyone reacted to incidents. He went crazy about the mess! I learned the lesson so well. He called us all kinds of names, like klutz, idiot, etc. I simply took up, calling myself the same names, where he left off.
Well, low & behold, after I cleaned up the big puddle of coffee, I realized my only reaction was, "poop"! No swearing. No yelling. No calling myself names. I just cleaned it up with an "oh, well, stuff happens" attitude, like "normal" people do! Success! Those old, negative, neural pathways have been severed and new, less reactive ones, built up. Praise God! The cognitive learning has been undone! Indeed, tapping has changed my physiology!
I like this new me better. I'm more in control. Spilled coffee is not worth raising my cortisol level for 2 days! Elevated cortisol levels and blood pressure do not serve my physical needs.
God can through EFT change behaviors that I have tried all my life to change! EFT gave me the boost to accomplish what my conscious mind could not do alone! I'm so grateful to God for this precious gift, literally of life.
P.S. The friend who witnessed this incident added this comment later, "Not only did you only say "poop" or "darn"...something totally tame. The next thing you said was, 'Well, at least I got to drink the first half cup of coffee!'
A beautiful example! Great job!" Sarah
To schedule a free EFT coaching session, email me at eftforchristians@gmail.com
Always remember to take complete responsibility for your own health and well-being. Contact a medical professional, if necessary.
Friday, August 9, 2013
From Woe and Misery to Healing with Christian EFT
July is here with all its impending nostalgic glory, or pain, depending on one’s point of view. Glory because I’ve been healed of my emotional pain; Pain because I had to lose 2 of my “babies” to get here.
Tonight, as I took a walk in the cool of a beautiful Wisconsin evening, I once again slipped back into the part of me where I once lived. Oh, not entirely back, just a short distance back into that pain, or guilt, that I often identify as almost survivor’s guilt.
This has to smack a bit of what our military personnel feel like when one of them loses an entire platoon, leaving the one left behind devastated emotionally, pondering the question of “why not me?”
That question once again reared its ugly head and a few tears slid down my cheeks, as I just gently, one more time, tapped away the heart pain I feel when I again realize that I had to lose two of my younger siblings in order to find myself right here, right now, in a place I never imagined I would be, if I dreamed a 1000 years.
Never could I have thought this world I now find myself in would ever have emerged out of that muck & mire. Karen died of biliary atresia at seventeen months of age; Bill was two months old when she passed; I was age 8. My entire life up until 3 years ago was run purely on the leftovers and buried emotions around Karen’s death. One day she was alive when I left for school and by evening I was being told by family friends she was gone. Gone? Oh, I was told shortly after she was born that she was going to die, but what did that mean to a 7 year old? Absolutely nothing.
I loved that baby as my own. I bathed her, I fed her, I changed her diapers, and I even stayed up for a few hours at night with her when I saw, as a 7 year old, the complete exhaustion in my Mom’s eyes. I would send Mom back to bed and deal with fussy, sick Karen on my own. No one could put her to sleep as quickly as I could. It was my 7 year old claim to fame, one of the few things Mom ever gave me kudos for.
My total memory of Karen’s funeral consists of my aunt hauling me out of church because I was wailing so hard about “my baby being in that white box”. My aunt words to me were, “You’re making a scene”. There is a short snippet of the trip to the cemetery, a comment I made about a classmate living across the street from that cemetery. That is where the memories stop; that is the sum total of Karen’s death memories.
There are no more. Karen was never spoken of again in our household that I remember. She disappeared forever. My baby simply vanished in that small white cement box.
I slipped into depression, my first, 9 years later, in nursing school when I got to my pediatric rotation. I finally was able to ascertain exactly what Karen died from. No one at home knew. And, if they did, they certainly weren’t sharing it with me. I always felt I was in the dark. No one told me anything. No one told me Karen was close to death.
I blamed myself for not figuring that out at age 8. For pete’s sake, her crib had been moved into the living room and my Grandma Rice was there with us as much as possible. I assume she & Mom traded off sitting with Karen 24/7 for those last days, but why didn’t I figure that out & ask to stay home that morning?
Isn’t guilt an interesting emotion? I have another memory, I think, that came out during Matrix Reimprinting around Karen’s death. Perhaps that is a story for another time. I must have buried a million memories. I lived unknowingly in some numb, unloved, isolated limbo of sorts for most of my life. My heart was hardened.
I was always crabby and defensive about everything. I had literally no friends. I functioned in some manner. I grew up in church, so getting into trouble or doing anything that would disappoint my parents or the priests and nuns was completely out of the question. I instinctively knew that would simply make my emotional issues worse by increasing the isolation. The family always withdrew itself from any member that remotely stepped “out of line”.
And so life went on. I guess if you could call it living. I finished nursing school, found an interesting job or two, left PA for Kentucky, and then eventually moved to Wisconsin. Looking back now, as my adult self, it is amazing that I never delved into alcohol or drugs to salve all that pain, or a series of sexual encounters with a possible subsequent chain of unwanted babies.
Somehow, God protected me from doing any of that self-destructive behavior. The self-destruction was contained solely in my own mind of my own making. I entertained myself by playing those same old recordings over and over again until those neural pathways were thick and heavy. I knew well that song of feeling unloved, unwanted, rejected, guilty, and a litany of every emotion under the sun.
Finally, I found a man who in my Dad’s words “would put up with” me. We married, his second, my first, later in my life, but that was going downhill because Brad’s issues from childhood were as bad as or worse than mine. We fought nearly constantly. Brad ended up in an early forced retirement, meaning we were together 24/7/365. It wasn’t pretty!
The impact of Karen’s death defined everything - the rest of my childhood and it shaped my adult beliefs, about me and all those around me, and still I never learned the lessons I needed to heal. Oh, I went to counseling several times, the latest was during my second depression a couple of years before Brad & I married.
I even wrote my parents a long letter at the behest of the counselor about everything in my life, hoping that would heal parts of me. That didn’t go well either. God allowed a perfect storm of sorts to simply brew. I had never recovered emotionally from Karen’s death’s, my marriage was failing miserably, I was horribly overweight, I hated myself and my life, and all of it was beginning to take a physical toll on me.
It was taking a toll on my younger brother, Joe, too, the next in line to me who was an extremely brittle diabetic who already had colon cancer 5 or so years previously. We had no tools to help us heal. The toolbox was totally empty. We hadn’t learned a thing about coping emotionally in life. August 9, 2008 struck. I sensed it had the potential to be the worst day of my pathetic life. Now, the pain really began; however, unbeknownst to me, this time this pain would lead to real healing and real tangible change in my life. How I longed for that!
The story is too long to tell here, so I will shorten it. I see how it all played out like it was yesterday in my mind’s eye. I was sitting at my computer, much like I’m doing right now, when the phone rang. I answered it, excited, as it was Bill, my youngest of the 2 brothers, an attorney, who rarely calls because he works 14-16 hours a day, and when home, spends the time with his wife and 4 young daughters. He lives 1200 miles east of me in northeastern PA, an hour or so from Manhattan.
We exchanged pleasantries, and then he got right to the point. “What did Grandma die from”, Bill asked. I’m a R.N. I knew something was terribly wrong. “Why”, I replied, “is your blood work screwed up?” I knew I had just heard some horrible news because that intuitive part of me said so and at times it seemed to be the only thing alive inside of me. The answer near killed me on the spot.
“Yes”, he replied. My heart fell out of my chest, drove itself through the computer room floor, and splatted into a million pieces on the basement concrete. My poor broken heart, dead over the death of a sister I never recovered from, dead over the parental relationships I never had, dead because nothing I could do helped me lose weight no matter how hard I tried or what I did to accomplish it, dead because my only chance, or so I thought of happiness with Brad, was dying, too, that heart, was simply now splintered.
My heart of hearts knew he wouldn’t live through what came to be a diagnosis of ALL (acute lymphoblastic leukemia) , the childhood leukemia that is curable about 97% in kids, but has only about a 35% cure rate in adults with all modalities of treatment, including a stem cell transplant. I found out later only 1000 cases of adult ALL are diagnosed yearly in the US. Yes, Bill snagged himself a bad one – it completely destroyed his DNA, the core of wellness in his body. His coping skills, too, didn’t help him at all either.
Were all 6 of us siblings doomed? I began to assume so. A tortured 2 years and 2 weeks began its course right then and there. That day I began a journal for Bill’s girls, knowing that if their Dad didn’t survive, they would “forget” him. The oldest was 18, scheduled to start college within weeks, and Bill’s baby was just 8 years old, the same age as I was when Karen died.
Bill had the craziest sense of humor on the planet and everyone loved him. He was the heart & soul of our dysfunctional family. He simply was a genuinely nice guy. I wanted to capture that for the girls, plus chronicle the disease process as something cathartic for me.
To this day, 400 pages later, I have yet to reopen that journal to once again read it. I have no idea when that will happen. It’s part of the journey, too. I spent about 6-7 weeks total of his illness with him in New York City/Hackensack, N.J./Lakeville, PA areas, nursing him, caring for him, and just generally repeating what I did as an 8 year old for baby sister Karen.
History was repeating itself in a horrendous way. Bill’s family lived 3 hours away from the medical center, so his wife couldn’t be with him and still care for 4 children. My Mom was well into her 7th decade of life and I didn’t think it fair for her to have to care for another probably dying child. Once through was enough for anyone.
As the R.N. in the family, this was my job to do. And so I did it. Those are the memories I cherish. Bill & I spent much time alone, reacquainting, reminiscing, Bill remembering childhood memories I had long forgotten, or buried, laughing and goofing off our way through days on end at the hospital, and me just holding him, literally, as procedures such as PICC lines were inserted, the procedures that brought home to both of us the inevitability and reality that all of this was really happening to him.
The tears begin anew as I type this. Today they break quickly and easily under my tapping fingers. Then I had no defense. I just plodded on day after day, filled with worry and fear, wondering when the final phone call would come. Somewhere in here, shortly after Bill’s stem cell transplant, a break happened with my 2 sisters. I, to this day, have absolutely no idea what I did or what happened.
The relationship, what little there was, simply splintered, too, like my heart that August, 2008, morning. It has yet to recover. As in usual fashion, no one else in the family saw Bill’s deterioration, or they simply denied it is probably a better description. I talked with him often, many times late at night when his pain was at its worst. The stem cell transplant held for a few months, and then the leukemia came roaring back with all its fury.
I made 3 long trips east during this time. Brad was wonderful to me through it all. He simply allowed me to do what I had to do. The last trip with Bill alive was 3 years ago this month. He simply refused to give up. No one wants to give up when all treatment options are gone, but I couldn’t seem to make him understand the need for hospice (and I promised him if he wanted home hospice, we would do that – I would stand with him every moment).
He simply wouldn’t sign the DNR, making the doctors continue every treatment option right until the end. Perhaps, another piece of my guilt was, I couldn’t take much more. I had little help, except for Mother, in caring for him, and she had my Dad to take care of back home, 6 hours away. Everyone else had families to care for. I’d call, asking for some relief from my sisters.
Return phone calls never came – they couldn’t deal with the illness either. I just kept going, somehow by God’s grace. The last 2 weeks of Bill’s life, and, of course, I didn’t know it was the last 2 weeks; I finally just went home to Wisconsin. I needed some peace. He was bad & I knew it.
Mom came to stay with him in a motel in N.J., as he was still getting a specialized radiation for an ALL brain tumor that had popped up a couple months previously, causing him excruciating pain because it was sitting right on his trigeminal nerve, mimicking tic douloureux . I had finally within the previous week convinced him to see a pain specialist.
That doctor was wonderful. Bill’s dose of oral Dilaudid was unbelievable. I’d never seen the like of it in my 35 years of nursing practice. I was permitted to allow him to take up to 32 mg of the stuff every 1-2 hours. That dose would have killed most of us. If I needed more, I was to simply call, and that phone, believe it or not, was answered immediately by pain clinic staff. He could have whatever dose he needed.
When I picked up the prescription from the pharmacy, we realized (remember Bill was an attorney, so he knew these things!) I had something like $32,000 street value of Dilaudid in my pocket! I made him hide the bottle in the house so no one would be tempted! I gave Mom her instructions and returned to Wisconsin, telling Bill good-bye for what I now know to be the last time I saw him alive.
Within 3 days, the crisis came. Mom had to deal with him. She phoned me & I made phone calls for her to get her the help she needed to make decisions for him. Bill was re-admitted to Hackensack University Medical Center where he stayed until 36 hours before he died when he was moved to a hospice facility 3 hours west in Scranton, PA.
I was no longer there with him. No one could make any decisions, as I could well understand. I, to this day, have no idea who finally put him in hospice where he should have been all along. I had done what I could for him and maybe I should have stayed those weeks instead of Mom, but the family needed a reality check. No one understood that Bill was dying, or they were denying the fact. They had to get the point.
As always, I got the dirty work of telling people he was dying. First, I told brother Joe who promptly said good-bye and hung up the phone and the following day Mom asked what I thought. I gently told her she was going to lose another child. Her tears started, she sniffed them back, bucked it up stoically, and replied, “I thought so. How long do you think he has?” I had no idea it was only about 5 weeks. Brad & I put 2500 miles on the car to bury Bill because of wakes/funerals on both ends of PA.
His professional one with all the lawyers and judges was in eastern PA and the family one with his burial in western PA. Mom essentially threw Brad & me out of her house 3 days after Bill’s burial. She to this day has no idea what she said to me. I would never confront her on it. It hurt, but it was the grief talking, I now know. I let it alone. I haven’t been back. I’m not quite ready for that just yet. I knew I had to grieve. I always told patients’ families – you grieve now or you grieve later, and later is usually worse. I took my own advice.
Let me just say, amidst that grief I learned about EFT. I downloaded the EFTU mini-manual, devoured it, tried it, got a couple one minute miracles and I was hooked! I knew it was my last chance at healing, or I was next to follow Bill to the grave. I lived with 6 months of the world’s worse chest pain, which amazingly vanished on December 18th, knowing it was an emotional issue.
No doctor was going to fix the pain. My heart was simply broken. Other people died of less issues than this. I took Dawson’s Minneapolis EFTU classes Levels 1 & 2 the following April, and the rest is history. I quickly did my EFT-INT certification, and began working on my EFT-EXP certification soon thereafter, tapping with anyone I could find, and all the while tapping furiously on my own stuff, never realizing how much there really was that needed to move.
I solicited Irene Baum, EFT-INT, in Milwaukee to help me. I have no idea how I would have done it without her! I sit here today a candidate trainer for EFTUniverse, amazed and emotionally healthy. And I mean emotionally healthy, complete, peaceful, the chatter of my previous life gone from my subconscious, free at last, our marriage mostly healed (we’re married, remember, we still have “words” some days!), thanks to Kim Eisen, EFT-INT, in Minneapolis who tapped with Brad, discharging his hate for his abusive, now dead parents.
I never really dealt with Karen’s death. It simply led from one thing to another. That early cognitive learning just compounded itself event upon event until I lived in an overwhelmed state of emotional turmoil. I have with tapping pulled out 2 early 18 month old events/memories that I know shaped everything from that moment on. They were awful memories. It was no wonder I could barely function in life.
Without sounding non-empathic, I want to encourage anyone reading this that no matter what your issues, no matter how long you have endured them, no matter how painful, no matter anything, persevere through them. I’m here to tell you that you can heal. EFT will work. Do not give up hope; just keep tapping every minute you have to spare. TAP! And find a certified EFT practitioner from the list on this website to help you, if you feel stuck or you feel you cannot go on. Call someone. Reach out. Save your life. If I can do it with childhood PTSD abuse stemming from at least 18 months of age on, so can you!
Today, I stand here, with a tiny bit of sadness remaining, knowing I’m so very alive and Bill & Karen are so very dead. But the realization dawned on me, causing some tears, that I cared for them all of their lives, at least Karen’s short 17 months of life, and Bill at the beginning, as he was 9 years younger than I, and again at the end when he needed someone to care for his every need.
I have no regrets at all of the time I gave both of them. It was my pleasure to do it. The sad pain comes knowing that in their deaths they returned the favor and cared for me. It was their deaths that was instrumental in my healing, my rebirth of sorts, by the grace of God, through EFT. My new life now begins, as I open this chapter in continuing to serve mankind, as God so deems, through the healing mechanism of Emotional Freedom Techniques.
I have to make them proud and allow them to see that their early deaths were not in vain. It all served a much higher purpose than any of us could have ever imagined. I stand amazed! God be praised. Amen. For more information, go to www.eftforchristians.com To schedule a free EFT consultation coaching session, email me at: eftforchristians@gmail.com Always remember to take complete responsibility for your own health and well-being.
Tonight, as I took a walk in the cool of a beautiful Wisconsin evening, I once again slipped back into the part of me where I once lived. Oh, not entirely back, just a short distance back into that pain, or guilt, that I often identify as almost survivor’s guilt.
This has to smack a bit of what our military personnel feel like when one of them loses an entire platoon, leaving the one left behind devastated emotionally, pondering the question of “why not me?”
That question once again reared its ugly head and a few tears slid down my cheeks, as I just gently, one more time, tapped away the heart pain I feel when I again realize that I had to lose two of my younger siblings in order to find myself right here, right now, in a place I never imagined I would be, if I dreamed a 1000 years.
Never could I have thought this world I now find myself in would ever have emerged out of that muck & mire. Karen died of biliary atresia at seventeen months of age; Bill was two months old when she passed; I was age 8. My entire life up until 3 years ago was run purely on the leftovers and buried emotions around Karen’s death. One day she was alive when I left for school and by evening I was being told by family friends she was gone. Gone? Oh, I was told shortly after she was born that she was going to die, but what did that mean to a 7 year old? Absolutely nothing.
I loved that baby as my own. I bathed her, I fed her, I changed her diapers, and I even stayed up for a few hours at night with her when I saw, as a 7 year old, the complete exhaustion in my Mom’s eyes. I would send Mom back to bed and deal with fussy, sick Karen on my own. No one could put her to sleep as quickly as I could. It was my 7 year old claim to fame, one of the few things Mom ever gave me kudos for.
My total memory of Karen’s funeral consists of my aunt hauling me out of church because I was wailing so hard about “my baby being in that white box”. My aunt words to me were, “You’re making a scene”. There is a short snippet of the trip to the cemetery, a comment I made about a classmate living across the street from that cemetery. That is where the memories stop; that is the sum total of Karen’s death memories.
There are no more. Karen was never spoken of again in our household that I remember. She disappeared forever. My baby simply vanished in that small white cement box.
I slipped into depression, my first, 9 years later, in nursing school when I got to my pediatric rotation. I finally was able to ascertain exactly what Karen died from. No one at home knew. And, if they did, they certainly weren’t sharing it with me. I always felt I was in the dark. No one told me anything. No one told me Karen was close to death.
I blamed myself for not figuring that out at age 8. For pete’s sake, her crib had been moved into the living room and my Grandma Rice was there with us as much as possible. I assume she & Mom traded off sitting with Karen 24/7 for those last days, but why didn’t I figure that out & ask to stay home that morning?
Isn’t guilt an interesting emotion? I have another memory, I think, that came out during Matrix Reimprinting around Karen’s death. Perhaps that is a story for another time. I must have buried a million memories. I lived unknowingly in some numb, unloved, isolated limbo of sorts for most of my life. My heart was hardened.
I was always crabby and defensive about everything. I had literally no friends. I functioned in some manner. I grew up in church, so getting into trouble or doing anything that would disappoint my parents or the priests and nuns was completely out of the question. I instinctively knew that would simply make my emotional issues worse by increasing the isolation. The family always withdrew itself from any member that remotely stepped “out of line”.
And so life went on. I guess if you could call it living. I finished nursing school, found an interesting job or two, left PA for Kentucky, and then eventually moved to Wisconsin. Looking back now, as my adult self, it is amazing that I never delved into alcohol or drugs to salve all that pain, or a series of sexual encounters with a possible subsequent chain of unwanted babies.
Somehow, God protected me from doing any of that self-destructive behavior. The self-destruction was contained solely in my own mind of my own making. I entertained myself by playing those same old recordings over and over again until those neural pathways were thick and heavy. I knew well that song of feeling unloved, unwanted, rejected, guilty, and a litany of every emotion under the sun.
Finally, I found a man who in my Dad’s words “would put up with” me. We married, his second, my first, later in my life, but that was going downhill because Brad’s issues from childhood were as bad as or worse than mine. We fought nearly constantly. Brad ended up in an early forced retirement, meaning we were together 24/7/365. It wasn’t pretty!
The impact of Karen’s death defined everything - the rest of my childhood and it shaped my adult beliefs, about me and all those around me, and still I never learned the lessons I needed to heal. Oh, I went to counseling several times, the latest was during my second depression a couple of years before Brad & I married.
I even wrote my parents a long letter at the behest of the counselor about everything in my life, hoping that would heal parts of me. That didn’t go well either. God allowed a perfect storm of sorts to simply brew. I had never recovered emotionally from Karen’s death’s, my marriage was failing miserably, I was horribly overweight, I hated myself and my life, and all of it was beginning to take a physical toll on me.
It was taking a toll on my younger brother, Joe, too, the next in line to me who was an extremely brittle diabetic who already had colon cancer 5 or so years previously. We had no tools to help us heal. The toolbox was totally empty. We hadn’t learned a thing about coping emotionally in life. August 9, 2008 struck. I sensed it had the potential to be the worst day of my pathetic life. Now, the pain really began; however, unbeknownst to me, this time this pain would lead to real healing and real tangible change in my life. How I longed for that!
The story is too long to tell here, so I will shorten it. I see how it all played out like it was yesterday in my mind’s eye. I was sitting at my computer, much like I’m doing right now, when the phone rang. I answered it, excited, as it was Bill, my youngest of the 2 brothers, an attorney, who rarely calls because he works 14-16 hours a day, and when home, spends the time with his wife and 4 young daughters. He lives 1200 miles east of me in northeastern PA, an hour or so from Manhattan.
We exchanged pleasantries, and then he got right to the point. “What did Grandma die from”, Bill asked. I’m a R.N. I knew something was terribly wrong. “Why”, I replied, “is your blood work screwed up?” I knew I had just heard some horrible news because that intuitive part of me said so and at times it seemed to be the only thing alive inside of me. The answer near killed me on the spot.
“Yes”, he replied. My heart fell out of my chest, drove itself through the computer room floor, and splatted into a million pieces on the basement concrete. My poor broken heart, dead over the death of a sister I never recovered from, dead over the parental relationships I never had, dead because nothing I could do helped me lose weight no matter how hard I tried or what I did to accomplish it, dead because my only chance, or so I thought of happiness with Brad, was dying, too, that heart, was simply now splintered.
My heart of hearts knew he wouldn’t live through what came to be a diagnosis of ALL (acute lymphoblastic leukemia) , the childhood leukemia that is curable about 97% in kids, but has only about a 35% cure rate in adults with all modalities of treatment, including a stem cell transplant. I found out later only 1000 cases of adult ALL are diagnosed yearly in the US. Yes, Bill snagged himself a bad one – it completely destroyed his DNA, the core of wellness in his body. His coping skills, too, didn’t help him at all either.
Were all 6 of us siblings doomed? I began to assume so. A tortured 2 years and 2 weeks began its course right then and there. That day I began a journal for Bill’s girls, knowing that if their Dad didn’t survive, they would “forget” him. The oldest was 18, scheduled to start college within weeks, and Bill’s baby was just 8 years old, the same age as I was when Karen died.
Bill had the craziest sense of humor on the planet and everyone loved him. He was the heart & soul of our dysfunctional family. He simply was a genuinely nice guy. I wanted to capture that for the girls, plus chronicle the disease process as something cathartic for me.
To this day, 400 pages later, I have yet to reopen that journal to once again read it. I have no idea when that will happen. It’s part of the journey, too. I spent about 6-7 weeks total of his illness with him in New York City/Hackensack, N.J./Lakeville, PA areas, nursing him, caring for him, and just generally repeating what I did as an 8 year old for baby sister Karen.
History was repeating itself in a horrendous way. Bill’s family lived 3 hours away from the medical center, so his wife couldn’t be with him and still care for 4 children. My Mom was well into her 7th decade of life and I didn’t think it fair for her to have to care for another probably dying child. Once through was enough for anyone.
As the R.N. in the family, this was my job to do. And so I did it. Those are the memories I cherish. Bill & I spent much time alone, reacquainting, reminiscing, Bill remembering childhood memories I had long forgotten, or buried, laughing and goofing off our way through days on end at the hospital, and me just holding him, literally, as procedures such as PICC lines were inserted, the procedures that brought home to both of us the inevitability and reality that all of this was really happening to him.
The tears begin anew as I type this. Today they break quickly and easily under my tapping fingers. Then I had no defense. I just plodded on day after day, filled with worry and fear, wondering when the final phone call would come. Somewhere in here, shortly after Bill’s stem cell transplant, a break happened with my 2 sisters. I, to this day, have absolutely no idea what I did or what happened.
The relationship, what little there was, simply splintered, too, like my heart that August, 2008, morning. It has yet to recover. As in usual fashion, no one else in the family saw Bill’s deterioration, or they simply denied it is probably a better description. I talked with him often, many times late at night when his pain was at its worst. The stem cell transplant held for a few months, and then the leukemia came roaring back with all its fury.
I made 3 long trips east during this time. Brad was wonderful to me through it all. He simply allowed me to do what I had to do. The last trip with Bill alive was 3 years ago this month. He simply refused to give up. No one wants to give up when all treatment options are gone, but I couldn’t seem to make him understand the need for hospice (and I promised him if he wanted home hospice, we would do that – I would stand with him every moment).
He simply wouldn’t sign the DNR, making the doctors continue every treatment option right until the end. Perhaps, another piece of my guilt was, I couldn’t take much more. I had little help, except for Mother, in caring for him, and she had my Dad to take care of back home, 6 hours away. Everyone else had families to care for. I’d call, asking for some relief from my sisters.
Return phone calls never came – they couldn’t deal with the illness either. I just kept going, somehow by God’s grace. The last 2 weeks of Bill’s life, and, of course, I didn’t know it was the last 2 weeks; I finally just went home to Wisconsin. I needed some peace. He was bad & I knew it.
Mom came to stay with him in a motel in N.J., as he was still getting a specialized radiation for an ALL brain tumor that had popped up a couple months previously, causing him excruciating pain because it was sitting right on his trigeminal nerve, mimicking tic douloureux . I had finally within the previous week convinced him to see a pain specialist.
That doctor was wonderful. Bill’s dose of oral Dilaudid was unbelievable. I’d never seen the like of it in my 35 years of nursing practice. I was permitted to allow him to take up to 32 mg of the stuff every 1-2 hours. That dose would have killed most of us. If I needed more, I was to simply call, and that phone, believe it or not, was answered immediately by pain clinic staff. He could have whatever dose he needed.
When I picked up the prescription from the pharmacy, we realized (remember Bill was an attorney, so he knew these things!) I had something like $32,000 street value of Dilaudid in my pocket! I made him hide the bottle in the house so no one would be tempted! I gave Mom her instructions and returned to Wisconsin, telling Bill good-bye for what I now know to be the last time I saw him alive.
Within 3 days, the crisis came. Mom had to deal with him. She phoned me & I made phone calls for her to get her the help she needed to make decisions for him. Bill was re-admitted to Hackensack University Medical Center where he stayed until 36 hours before he died when he was moved to a hospice facility 3 hours west in Scranton, PA.
I was no longer there with him. No one could make any decisions, as I could well understand. I, to this day, have no idea who finally put him in hospice where he should have been all along. I had done what I could for him and maybe I should have stayed those weeks instead of Mom, but the family needed a reality check. No one understood that Bill was dying, or they were denying the fact. They had to get the point.
As always, I got the dirty work of telling people he was dying. First, I told brother Joe who promptly said good-bye and hung up the phone and the following day Mom asked what I thought. I gently told her she was going to lose another child. Her tears started, she sniffed them back, bucked it up stoically, and replied, “I thought so. How long do you think he has?” I had no idea it was only about 5 weeks. Brad & I put 2500 miles on the car to bury Bill because of wakes/funerals on both ends of PA.
His professional one with all the lawyers and judges was in eastern PA and the family one with his burial in western PA. Mom essentially threw Brad & me out of her house 3 days after Bill’s burial. She to this day has no idea what she said to me. I would never confront her on it. It hurt, but it was the grief talking, I now know. I let it alone. I haven’t been back. I’m not quite ready for that just yet. I knew I had to grieve. I always told patients’ families – you grieve now or you grieve later, and later is usually worse. I took my own advice.
Let me just say, amidst that grief I learned about EFT. I downloaded the EFTU mini-manual, devoured it, tried it, got a couple one minute miracles and I was hooked! I knew it was my last chance at healing, or I was next to follow Bill to the grave. I lived with 6 months of the world’s worse chest pain, which amazingly vanished on December 18th, knowing it was an emotional issue.
No doctor was going to fix the pain. My heart was simply broken. Other people died of less issues than this. I took Dawson’s Minneapolis EFTU classes Levels 1 & 2 the following April, and the rest is history. I quickly did my EFT-INT certification, and began working on my EFT-EXP certification soon thereafter, tapping with anyone I could find, and all the while tapping furiously on my own stuff, never realizing how much there really was that needed to move.
I solicited Irene Baum, EFT-INT, in Milwaukee to help me. I have no idea how I would have done it without her! I sit here today a candidate trainer for EFTUniverse, amazed and emotionally healthy. And I mean emotionally healthy, complete, peaceful, the chatter of my previous life gone from my subconscious, free at last, our marriage mostly healed (we’re married, remember, we still have “words” some days!), thanks to Kim Eisen, EFT-INT, in Minneapolis who tapped with Brad, discharging his hate for his abusive, now dead parents.
I never really dealt with Karen’s death. It simply led from one thing to another. That early cognitive learning just compounded itself event upon event until I lived in an overwhelmed state of emotional turmoil. I have with tapping pulled out 2 early 18 month old events/memories that I know shaped everything from that moment on. They were awful memories. It was no wonder I could barely function in life.
Without sounding non-empathic, I want to encourage anyone reading this that no matter what your issues, no matter how long you have endured them, no matter how painful, no matter anything, persevere through them. I’m here to tell you that you can heal. EFT will work. Do not give up hope; just keep tapping every minute you have to spare. TAP! And find a certified EFT practitioner from the list on this website to help you, if you feel stuck or you feel you cannot go on. Call someone. Reach out. Save your life. If I can do it with childhood PTSD abuse stemming from at least 18 months of age on, so can you!
Today, I stand here, with a tiny bit of sadness remaining, knowing I’m so very alive and Bill & Karen are so very dead. But the realization dawned on me, causing some tears, that I cared for them all of their lives, at least Karen’s short 17 months of life, and Bill at the beginning, as he was 9 years younger than I, and again at the end when he needed someone to care for his every need.
I have no regrets at all of the time I gave both of them. It was my pleasure to do it. The sad pain comes knowing that in their deaths they returned the favor and cared for me. It was their deaths that was instrumental in my healing, my rebirth of sorts, by the grace of God, through EFT. My new life now begins, as I open this chapter in continuing to serve mankind, as God so deems, through the healing mechanism of Emotional Freedom Techniques.
I have to make them proud and allow them to see that their early deaths were not in vain. It all served a much higher purpose than any of us could have ever imagined. I stand amazed! God be praised. Amen. For more information, go to www.eftforchristians.com To schedule a free EFT consultation coaching session, email me at: eftforchristians@gmail.com Always remember to take complete responsibility for your own health and well-being.
Friday, July 26, 2013
EFT & Gratefulness
EFT and gratefulness fit together like a glove on a hand!
It is an amazing process to participate in. As I clear all my childhood emotional and verbal abuse, I just feel gratefulness to God welling up within the innermost parts of my being. My soul rejoices with the knowledge that God still does heal. Clarity in life comes as the emotional garbage is hauled away by Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT). God is taking out the trash!
He not only takes out the trash, but He comes into our soul and mind, bringing His tiny broom, dusting out the very remote corners of our emotional being, doing the housecleaning we have desired for so very long. How long I have begged Him to take away my emotional pain! Near hopelessness had set in because I could see no end to it. I tried everything I knew how to do, but still the pain persisted.
By a miracle, EFT entered my life. God did indeed answer my prayer! It took a while. No, it took what seemed to be an interminable amount of time – decades; however, God was honing me to understand the depth of my healing. Without the pain I would not be the woman today that I am. The woman He desires me to be, totally surrendered and committed to His Will. He wanted me to understand completely that He was in control and that He was the Healer and that He wanted the praise and glory from my healing. I do understand the depth of the healing and that is what makes me so extremely grateful to Him!
The worse the pain; the more impact the healing has. My heart overflows in gratitude for the healing. Praise God from Whom all blessings flow!
Hymn by Louis Bourgeois and Thomas Ken
Arrangement, Additional Chorus and Words for verse 2 & 3 by Michael Schroeder
© 2009 Michael Schroeder/Worldwide Impact Publishing (ASCAP
Praise, God from whom all blessings flow, (James 1:17)
Praise Him all creatures here below; (Psalm 145:21)
Praise Him above, ye heav’nly host; (Rev 5:11-14)
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost (Matt 28:19)
Praise to the Father praise the Son
Praise to the Spirit Three in One. (Matt 28:19, Deut 6:4)
Praise to the most high God we sing. (Psalm 136:2)
Praise to our Savior, Lord and King. (2 Peter 1:11, Psalm 74:12)
Chorus
Praise Our God, praise His Name, (Psalm 96:2)
Praise our God, for our God saves. (Psalm 68:20)
Let every mouth the Lord proclaim. (Psalm 145:21)
Let earth and heaven sing His praise. (Psalm 96:11)
Let every knee before Him bow, (Romans 14;11)
Great is our God, the Lord of all. (Acts 10:36)
Chorus
Praise Our God, praise His Name, (Psalm 96:2)
Praise our God, for our God saves. (Psalm 68:20)
Praise, God from whom all blessings flow (James 1:17)
Praise Him all creatures here below; (Psalm 145:21)
Praise Him above, ye heav’nly host; (Rev 5:11-14)
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost (Matt 28:19
The thankfulness can flow, as I tap in that gratefulness, with a newer Christian contemporary song from Mikeschair – All I Can Do (Thank You). Listen below and tap along.
All I can do is say thank you, God!
For more information, go to www.eftforchristians.com
To schedule a free EFT coaching session, email me at eftforchristians@gmail.com
Always remember to take complete responsibility for your own health and well-being.
Always remember to take complete responsibility for your own health and well-being.
Friday, July 19, 2013
EFT and Energy Techniques
I had a crazy thing happen yesterday. It was my day to go to a personal EFT session with Irene Baum, EFT-INT, on north side of Milwaukee. Last week, Irene & I pulled out some real emotional dirt for me around my baby sister’s death back in 1961, when I was 8 years old. We cleared a lot of it, but I knew it wasn’t done, so I made another appointment with Irene for yesterday. Last week, a day after the appointment, I finally tapped, asking my subconscious to please hang onto the junk for another 4 days. It has done it for me for 52 years, I just needed 4 more days over the 4th of July holiday weekend, and it could cut loose at 1 P.M. on the Tuesday thereafter. I’d be at Irene’s for this appointment and we would deal with the emotional pain/issues then. The subconscious complied until early afternoon on the following Monday. I wondered if I miscalculated and should have told it “5 days”! The subconscious is very literal, you know. It does exactly what it is told to do, right down to the minute sometimes, I think. Monday afternoon hit and I could feel something building, once again, in my chest. I was getting crabby and irritable. This is how I feel when something is trying to escape from my memories. A couple nights before, for some unknown reason, I felt so itchy all over, and suddenly the words came to me, “Something is itching to get out!” Seriously? Monday, I knew it was really “itching” to escape.
Early Tuesday morning I awoke & cried my eyes red for probably 30 to 60 minutes, eventually falling back to sleep. By mid-morning Tuesday I couldn't walk or talk straight. I’m never like this. My brain was foggy. I couldn’t figure out where my feet were, nor could I string 7 words together without stopping, like an aphasic person, to think about what the topic was I was commenting on. I was a mess, and I would have had Brad take me to the appointment because I wasn’t sure I could drive decently either, except I broke the toilet earlier and he had to wait for the plumber! I’d had better days! I had brought along a picture to Irene’s of my now dead sister from 1961, showing the 2 of us sitting on Grandma’s sofa. Those haunting eyes of Karen’s are what was getting to me emotionally. Here was my little terminally ill sister at 10 months. I was beside her, but my eyes looked as though I wasn’t present whatsoever. I was off somewhere in la-la land. That was problematic to me, as it simply showed I had already checked out of life by the time I was the age of 8.
I need not tell of everything Irene and I tapped on, or how many tears I cried, but the emotional pain manifested itself in a stabbing pain in my left temple area. Then it was a knife slicing through the back of my head into that same temple, followed by some variations thereof, but I knew what it was. It was Dad back-handing me at the supper table the time he knocked me off my chair and I hit the wall. I know it was that side of my head. It was closest to him. Irene and I tapped everything on the planet out of that memory. We thoroughly scoured it to include plenty of shame and humiliation, anger and sadness, and several other emotions. At the end of the tapping, the pain had changed and I realized it was a hollow pain, like a phantom pain that amputees get, a pain where a memory had been. A deep wound that was now empty. It was a very odd feeling. Something I had never experienced before now.
Then I realized driving home that the left temple would signify what this website showed me: http://www.nlp-practitioners.com/interactive/nlp-eye-access-cues-game.php#theFace . A friend had just emailed me this site a few days before my tapping session. The left temporal area is where visual memories are stored, according to NLP. Oh, my, that awful memory and all of its accompanying emotions of humiliation and shame of being smacked off my chair in front of everyone had been held in that field ever since. My subconscious once again had been so literal.
Not only was I clouted on the left side of the head that evening long ago, it was the same approximate area where the subconscious held those types of old visual memories. About an hour later the pain just dissipated, as I figured it would do. The memory was neutralized, and the accompanying pain just faded away. This all brought me back to an EFT class I once attended that was taught by Dawson Church. I think it was a Level 3 class, if I’m not mistaken. I remember him, when discussing the use of the Gamut 9, talking about watching the client carefully when circling with the eyes, once in each direction, because, if the practitioner watches carefully, they may detect a spot where the client simply misses in that circling. When that happens, it tends to be the spot where the memory is held, and the practitioner should just go over that spot again and again until the client no longer skips over it with the eye roll. On occasion, as I would once in a while use the Gamut 9 on myself, when I couldn’t get an emotion to totally clear, I thought I caught myself skipping the 2 o’clock and the 10 o’clock positions, or simply glossing over them.
Looking back at yesterday, I suspect that was probably true. Also in Donna Eden Energy Medicine book (2008), she mentions on pages 347-350 about using eye exercises to release trauma. Her exercises are a wee bit different than the Gamut 9, but I don’t doubt any less effective. Once again, I find all of this Energy Psychology/Energy Medicine knowledge so absolutely interesting. Each different modality builds or supplements the other, having a little bit of a different twist here and there, but all of it effective and healing in its own right. Dawson Church is doing a Whole Energy Lifestyle (WEL) workshop, Aug 31 & Sep 1, 2013, in Kansas City. Maybe he is covering topics like the ones I mentioned above. I don’t know, but, if he is, I want to know more about them! See this website: http://www.regonline.com/Register/Checkin.aspx?EventID=1239752 .
Wow, are we privileged to be living in this spectacular time when all of these techniques are coming into full bloom? I stand amazed! And I am grateful to God for showing me the way to use them for healing of both myself and others. I find it all quite humbling!
For more information, go to www.eftforchristians.com To schedule a free EFT consultation coaching session, email me at: eftforchristians@gmail.com
Always remember to take complete responsibility for your own health and well-being
Early Tuesday morning I awoke & cried my eyes red for probably 30 to 60 minutes, eventually falling back to sleep. By mid-morning Tuesday I couldn't walk or talk straight. I’m never like this. My brain was foggy. I couldn’t figure out where my feet were, nor could I string 7 words together without stopping, like an aphasic person, to think about what the topic was I was commenting on. I was a mess, and I would have had Brad take me to the appointment because I wasn’t sure I could drive decently either, except I broke the toilet earlier and he had to wait for the plumber! I’d had better days! I had brought along a picture to Irene’s of my now dead sister from 1961, showing the 2 of us sitting on Grandma’s sofa. Those haunting eyes of Karen’s are what was getting to me emotionally. Here was my little terminally ill sister at 10 months. I was beside her, but my eyes looked as though I wasn’t present whatsoever. I was off somewhere in la-la land. That was problematic to me, as it simply showed I had already checked out of life by the time I was the age of 8.
I need not tell of everything Irene and I tapped on, or how many tears I cried, but the emotional pain manifested itself in a stabbing pain in my left temple area. Then it was a knife slicing through the back of my head into that same temple, followed by some variations thereof, but I knew what it was. It was Dad back-handing me at the supper table the time he knocked me off my chair and I hit the wall. I know it was that side of my head. It was closest to him. Irene and I tapped everything on the planet out of that memory. We thoroughly scoured it to include plenty of shame and humiliation, anger and sadness, and several other emotions. At the end of the tapping, the pain had changed and I realized it was a hollow pain, like a phantom pain that amputees get, a pain where a memory had been. A deep wound that was now empty. It was a very odd feeling. Something I had never experienced before now.
Then I realized driving home that the left temple would signify what this website showed me: http://www.nlp-practitioners.com/interactive/nlp-eye-access-cues-game.php#theFace . A friend had just emailed me this site a few days before my tapping session. The left temporal area is where visual memories are stored, according to NLP. Oh, my, that awful memory and all of its accompanying emotions of humiliation and shame of being smacked off my chair in front of everyone had been held in that field ever since. My subconscious once again had been so literal.
Not only was I clouted on the left side of the head that evening long ago, it was the same approximate area where the subconscious held those types of old visual memories. About an hour later the pain just dissipated, as I figured it would do. The memory was neutralized, and the accompanying pain just faded away. This all brought me back to an EFT class I once attended that was taught by Dawson Church. I think it was a Level 3 class, if I’m not mistaken. I remember him, when discussing the use of the Gamut 9, talking about watching the client carefully when circling with the eyes, once in each direction, because, if the practitioner watches carefully, they may detect a spot where the client simply misses in that circling. When that happens, it tends to be the spot where the memory is held, and the practitioner should just go over that spot again and again until the client no longer skips over it with the eye roll. On occasion, as I would once in a while use the Gamut 9 on myself, when I couldn’t get an emotion to totally clear, I thought I caught myself skipping the 2 o’clock and the 10 o’clock positions, or simply glossing over them.
Looking back at yesterday, I suspect that was probably true. Also in Donna Eden Energy Medicine book (2008), she mentions on pages 347-350 about using eye exercises to release trauma. Her exercises are a wee bit different than the Gamut 9, but I don’t doubt any less effective. Once again, I find all of this Energy Psychology/Energy Medicine knowledge so absolutely interesting. Each different modality builds or supplements the other, having a little bit of a different twist here and there, but all of it effective and healing in its own right. Dawson Church is doing a Whole Energy Lifestyle (WEL) workshop, Aug 31 & Sep 1, 2013, in Kansas City. Maybe he is covering topics like the ones I mentioned above. I don’t know, but, if he is, I want to know more about them! See this website: http://www.regonline.com/Register/Checkin.aspx?EventID=1239752 .
Wow, are we privileged to be living in this spectacular time when all of these techniques are coming into full bloom? I stand amazed! And I am grateful to God for showing me the way to use them for healing of both myself and others. I find it all quite humbling!
For more information, go to www.eftforchristians.com To schedule a free EFT consultation coaching session, email me at: eftforchristians@gmail.com
Always remember to take complete responsibility for your own health and well-being
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