How Energy Psychology Works with Internal Issues

“How energy psychology works with internal issues: a. Bringing to mind a memory, thought, or cue related to relationship difficulties . . . b. Activates the amygdala and initiates a stress response (cortisol, adrenaline, and other stress hormones flood the system and the hippocampus goes offline). c. BUT stimulating selected acupuncture points initiates an opposing process: d. The alarm response is turned off, even though the memory or trigger is still present. e. With a few repetitions, the memory or trigger no longer evokes the alarm response. f. The hippocampus can process the current experience in concert with the prefrontal cortex. g. This becomes the “new normal” – the internal model has been changed. 4. Acupoint tapping changes the brain in any of five ways: a. Reducing the amygdala’s threat response. b. Extinguishing conditioned responses. c. Supporting hippocampus and prefrontal cortex activity. d. Increasing the neural impact of positive self-imagery. e. Increasing the neural impact of well-conceived suggestions." David Feinstein, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist who has served on the faculties of The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Antioch College, and the California School of Professional Psychology. Author of more than 80 professional articles and eight books, he has been a pioneer in the areas of Energy Psychology and Energy Medicine. His books have won nine national awards, including the U.S. Book News Best Psychology/Mental Health Book in 2007 (for Personal Mythology) and an Indies Best Books Award (for The Promise of Energy Psychology). Sherrie Rice Smith Certified EFT Practitioner EFTforChristians.com Author of EFT for Christians 5 Book Series

Are You Ready to Heal? Here's What is Going on in Your Brain!

This is a well written article about abuse/trauma.

I want to highlight out a few important points: Please read the article. It explains a lot about why you feel the way you do. It's not your fault, but it is your responsibility to do something about it!

1) "Only a state of non hyper-arousal allows activation of the prefrontal cortex needed for learning and problem solving."

Cathy Corbett Reiling says this about every post she makes! Tapping quiets the body and mind. Only when your mind and body are QUIET can you process your emotional issues. Period.

2) "When those hormones reach a high level, they suppress the activity of the hippocampus and it loses its ability to function. Information that would make it possible to differentiate between a real and imagined threat never reaches the cortex and a rational evaluation of the information isn't possible (Rothschild, 2004)."

I've said this a thousand times. We need tapping because our subconscious mind (SC) has NO concept of time (kinda like God - not saying our mind is God b/c it isn't but it is made in His image, like the rest of us!), so our old emotional stuff isn't truly IN the past tense UNTIL we tap and put it there! This is the work of sanctification. Salvation is FREE, but our work here on earth (sanctification) is to actively DO something to become more like our Savior. Tapping will accomplish that if you do it well and thoroughly!

3) "If a particular stimulus is misinterpreted as a threat, this leads to immediate fight/flight/freeze responses (to non-threatening stimuli). This causes this system to respond to minor irritations in a totalistic manner (Streeck-Fischer & van der Kolk, 2000)."

When we have had trauma, particularly early childhood trauma, we ALWAYS misinterpret everything! We've been programmed to do that. Repetition of hard emotional events ARE learned just like learning your multiplication tables in 3rd grade!! Over and over events are repeated, until trauma is implanted so solidly in our SC we misinterpret minor things in a major way - automatically. We fly OFF the handle at the slightest provocation (and then feel remorseful, sad, guilty, etc. afterwards)!

4) "Research shows that environments of extreme stress lead to increased cortisol levels (Murray-Close, Han, Cicchetti, Crick, & Rogosch, 2008) which can lead to decreased hippocampal volume. Decreased hippocampal volume has been associated with poorer declarative memory which places adults at greater risk of developing PTSD-like symptoms, and is closely correlated with experiences of depression and physical inflammations (Danese, Pariante, Caspi, Taylor & Poulton, 2006)"

Hippocampus, which is our SC's "historian", can go off-line when abuse happens in early childhood. We remember NOTHING - all our memories, both good and bad, are buried. It's a protective mechanism.

Hippocampus shrinks about 35%+ in PTSD like trauma.

Sadly, our SC knows the emotional pain is still all there and runs our life around it. We become sick, depressed feeling, anxious feeling, crabby, act out, etc. and we cannot figure out why we (or our children) do these things.

We do them because our emotional pain has never been dealt with completely. Our body, mind, and soul are screaming for help. We need to tap. We probably should hire a EFT Practitioner to help us process our emotional stuff. We need emotional help and God has created tapping to do just that!

5) "Through this chain of events, violence and abuse pass from generation to generation (Teicher, 2002)."

I've never really said what I am going to say here this pointedly, except in personal conversations. And I may make some people angry when I say this.

Emotional issues are running YOUR life and they WILL run your children's life, too. This stuff IS generational. It is what Exodus 34:7 & Numbers 14:18 say. Your emotional issue may NOT be your fault, but the pain will continue for 3-4 generations. We see it all the time. Scientific research is proving this fact.

Will the buck stop with you? Are you willing to do the work necessary so that your children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be FREE to live their lives as our Lord intended in His joy, peace, and freedom?

Are you?

Sherrie Rice Smith

Certified EFT Practitioner

EFTforChristians.com

Author of EFT for Christians Tapping in God's Peace & Joy (2016)

Author of EFT for Christians Advanced  (2017)

Author of EFT for Christians 52 Tapping Devotions (Christmas, 2017)

Author of EFT for Christians Devotions (Christmas, 2019)

Use Promo Code SAVE20 when ordering from Publisher to get 20% Off

What are Emotional Triggers?

Emotional triggers consists of thoughts, memories, or physical sensations that provoke an automatic underlying response in us. It just happens without any conscious thinking. A trigger does exactly what the word implies - it "triggers" us into a flashback type sensation or an automatic response that feels nearly exactly like the feelings we experience at the time the original trauma, abuse, or negative event occurred. It feels like we are re-experiencing the memory all over again.

The subconscious mind buries many deep painfully emotional memories for us for several decades after it happens, especially abuse memories, and in particular sexual abuse memories.

This is a protective mechanism instilled in us at creation. God knew we couldn't handle the fall-out at age 3 or 8 or 14, or any other age for that matter, when the event occurred, so it all gets buried.

Burying the hurtful memories (and that well could be a mild word - hurtful) sounds like a great idea!

It was in that moment, but TODAY those memories are running a chronic STRESS response behind the our conscious awareness. Our bodies weren't created to deal with ongoing chronic stress.

Eventually the emotional stress breaks down our body. The ongoing tension has to go somewhere if it isn't released.

It's kinda like a spring. It is designed to do a job but eventually it wears out and something breaks!

Tap, tap, tap!

We must settle down our emotional & physical mind. We must re-regulate ourselves. The Holy Spirit is right there with you to help. We must turn off the decades' old alarm bells, and triggers are those old alarm bells STILL ringing!

Triggers are messages from the Holy Spirit alerting us that there is still old faulty emotional information running behind the scene of our conscious mind.

He will bring to mind whatever memories need to be tapped on WHEN HE KNOWS YOU ARE READY AND CAN EMOTIONALLY HANDLE IT.

For those of us who have experienced very early emotional abuse, it may take months or years of sitting with the uncomfortable feelings and tapping. I often hear women say that they felt better after an hour of tapping, but then the "feelings came back." Yes, they do. This doesn't mean that your tapping and praying was wasted, it just means there is much more to do. Keep at it. Eventually the amygdala (alarm center) tends to settle down. It sometimes takes a lot of soothing to convince it that you are now safe.

Remember, EFT is NOT a substitute of good medical or psychological care, so take care of yourself by contacting your personal physician please.

Sherrie Rice Smith

Certified EFT Practitioner

EFTforChristians.com

Author of EFT for Christians 4 Book Series

Use Promo Code SAVE20 when ordering from Publisher to get 20% Off

Tapping with Children

As an EFTUniverse Trainer/Instructor, one of the most frequently asked question revolves around tapping with children and exactly how to do just that.

Because it is such an oft asked question, I decided to videotape several YouTubes around just this subject. Because my EFT specialty is tapping with Christians, these videos are all Christian oriented. To check out these videos, please go to:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmxsHG9CFSWot3rDZac2rSw/videos .

To give you 2 examples of how quickly children clear their emotional issues using tapping, I will tell you 2 different stories I received recently from an EFTUniverse Level 2 student who I have taught here in Milwaukee, and from a Christian gal who is a member of my EFT for Christians Discussion Group Facebook page found here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/352652964926202/ .

Annie texted me to tell me this story about her 6 year old daughter Brandy:

It was lunch time and Annie was preparing what usually is one of Brandy’s favorite lunches – toasted cheese sandwich and tomato soup. For whatever reason, Brandy decided that she wanted something else to eat, promptly and loudly proclaiming this fact with an all-out tantrum.

Brandy began crying and stomping through the house when Annie explained to her that the food was almost ready and she could have her second choice for lunch tomorrow.

After listening to these loud protests for a minute or two, Annie gently settled the wiggly Brandy onto her lap and began tapping on her face points. As Annie did this, all she kept saying was, “I’m angry, I’m angry, I’m angry. I want hotdogs for lunch today.”

To Annie’s surprise in about 2 minutes of tapping, Brandy went from a stomping, crabby, irritable 6 year old back to her usual happy, singing self! 

Annie had never tried tapping with her daughter while she was in “one of her moods.” The text I received simply stated at the end, “I’m thrilled this worked!”

Tapping in the moment is a great way to short circuit the “fight, flight, and freeze” mechanism that was probably triggered by some sensory input in young Brandy’s mind – nothing she would recognize as a trigger. By tapping in the full emotional moment with her daughter, Annie soothed Brandy’s amygdala, the part of the brain where emotions are felt.  She was down-regulating her daughter’s fear center (who knows what Brandy’s subconscious was really thinking, and it didn’t matter in the moment), quieting the response and teaching her daughter to self-regulate her emotions. Annie’s words were what she knew her daughter was feeling, but she could have simply tapped, saying nothing at all, and still Brandy would have quieted. It’s the tapping itself that does all the work of down-regulating behavior.

Crying and tantrums are ok for children, but we adults find them unacceptable later in life. Tapping is a great self-help tool to keep our “nerve” and stress under control.

My second example comes from an R.N. friend who has a N.A.E.T practice here in the Midwest. To that practice, Sara is now adding EFT to facilitate even more healing for her patients.

Sara related this story to me after her first Level 1 & 2 EFTUniverse Training here in Milwaukee last April.

Jake’s father came in for his EFT headache tapping session with Sara. Quite quickly it became evident that 12 year old Jake was pretty unhappy. As he sat in a chair in the waiting room, pouting, Sara inquired of the father what was going on with him.

The dad related that Jake was pretty upset that his mother had just given birth to the 5^th child in the family and Jake really wanted a baby brother. Instead a 4^th daughter had been born, and Jake had been acting out his anger ever since the baby’s birth a week ago.

Before Sara began the father’s tapping session, she asked Jake to come into the office to talk with her.

As soon as Sara inquired what was going on, Jake burst into tears. He sobbed and sobbed, but allowed Sara to gently tap on the top of his head. When he quieted a bit with the tapping, Sara began questioning him as to how he was feeling.

“I’m so mad, I wanted a baby brother, and all I got was another dumb sister. I hate girls,” he told Sara.

Again, Sara gently encouraged Jake to tap along with her, covering all the face & body points, as she repeated his own words, “I hate girls, I hate my sisters, I wanted a baby brother, I’m so mad.”

Once again Jake’s emotions began to rise as Sara asked him again about what he was thinking about his “dumb sisters.”  As he cried, Jake told her, “I want to throw a brick at them. I hate my sisters.”

Again, without any judgment on Sara’s part, she repeated Jake’s own words to him about what he wanted to do to his sisters.

Jake just continued getting more hostile as he tapped, apparently accessing even deeper feelings about how much he hated his sisters because out of his mouth came, “I want to kill my sisters!”

Sara continued to tap with him for another minute or two until Jake calmed down, finally smiling at Sara as he hopped off the exam table he had been sitting on. Quietly, he returned to the waiting room to wait for his dad. When Jake left the office with his dad, he appeared to be back to his usual good-natured self.

Sara was anxiously waiting until Jake’s mom came in a week later for her appointment when she could inquire about how Jake was now feeling about living with all these girls!

The story the mom told Sara astounded her!

Mom said she watched Jake’s behavior closely the past week, since her husband had relayed the whole “I hate my sisters” tapping episode to her.

The mom caught Jake with his arm around the sister who was next in birth order to him, explaining something she didn’t understand to her. Later in the week, the mom observed Jake with the second to the youngest sister sitting on his lap as he read to her. Never before had the mom ever seen Jake interact like this previously with any of his sisters.

The icing on the Jake cake was mom noticing, very excitedly, that Jake volunteered to change the baby’s diaper AND afterwards he held the baby on his lap cooing to her.

The mother was simply elated seeing the change in Jake’s attitude toward all his sisters, an attitude that appeared to change with a 6 or 7 minute tapping session in Sara’s office.

God bless Sara for noticing Jake’s belligerence that afternoon in her office, and then bless her for taking a few minutes out of her day to tap with that young man. From all the indications tapping that day changed Jake’s life for the better, improving his relationship with his 4 younger sisters, helping peace reign in another household and teaching Jake a self-help tool he can use for the rest of his life!

Remember EFT is not a substitute for medical or psychological care. If you need such care, please contact your own personal physician or psychologist.

Sherrie Rice Smith, R.N. (Retired)

EFTforChristians.com

Certified EFT Practitioner

Author EFT for Christians 

Stress and EFT

Our invaluable fight-or-flight system is regulated by the HPA axis which refers to three organs:  the hypothalamus, the pituitary, and the adrenal glands. This is our body’s way of coping with stress. The pituitary gland and the hypothalamus are located within the limbic brain, and the adrenal glands sit atop the kidneys. When the amygdala (located in the old, reptilian brain, e.g. our fear/alarm center) perceives an immediate threat, rather than sending the signal along to the neofrontal cortex (our conscious brain) for logical processing, the HPA axis releases stress hormones – cortisol and adrenaline – into the bloodstream. These chemicals induce quick energy, raise our heart rate, direct blood away from digestion and other less-essential bodily functions, and reroute blood to our extremities and muscles so we’re physically equipped to fight or run. The advantages offered by the rapid response of our HPA axis are clear. We often don’t have time to think our way out of a dangerous situation – we instead need to act immediately and our primitive brain does just that for us before we have time to consider and process all the variables or implications involved. 

In times of danger, this chemical mix is necessary to help us fight or run; however we can also get locked into a state of chronic stress when the adrenal glands don’t receive a signal to stop producing these hormones which are designed solely for limited application. Unlike acute stress which serves a positive purpose in getting us out of danger quickly, chronic stress is very destructive to our health. Long-term exposure to stress has truly horrific consequences for our bodies.

Among other things, chronic stress increases the damaging effects of free radicals in the neurons of the hippocampus, causing damage to the mitochondria. The hippocampi neurons themselves die from the damage, making creative learning nearly impossible. The mind/brain is now out of balance, causing us to feel paralyzed. We cannot think or feel appropriately, nor can we conjure up solutions to get us out of the rut we now feel trapped in. Our adrenal glands become exhausted, causing us to feel drained and worn out.

This overuse of stress hormones keeps us stuck where we are as we simply cannot learn from old experiences and move ourselves forward into new ones when caught in this cycle. The repetitive nature of this stress wiring instead leaves us stranded right where we are, going nowhere, and mired in the past.

This is where Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT, tapping) can play a vital role.

In order to protect ourselves from long-term, chronic stress damage to our bodies, we must reset the hippocampal rhythm. For decades, scientists wondered what actually controlled the cortisol output in the adrenal glands during stress. Most researchers were surprised when they determined the hippocampus was the adrenal glands master controller, and also its own hangman – as it turns out that high levels of cortisol actually damage the hippocampus, yet the hippocampus controls the amount of cortisol released by the adrenal glands during stressful periods!

When infants and children are traumatized in early life, the hippocampus becomes sensitized to increased cortisol. In fact, cortisol levels are often programmed into children in their very early years. As children become more and more stressed as they grow older, more and more cortisol is pumped out of their adrenal glands to deal with this ever-elevating levels of stress. As the cortisol levels rise, the hippocampal mitrochondrial neurons die off due to free radical damage, leaving the child with less cortisol control, less memory, less reserves to deal with future stress, and little to no creativity as to how they might proactively address distressing situations and resolve the problems they’re facing.

So…how can we learn to lower these hippocampal set points?

Using a stress-relieving modality like EFT is a step in the right direction. EFT lowers cortisol levels. One study alone has shown that one hour of tapping drops cortisol levels 24% (Church, Yount, & Brooks, 2012).  That’s huge in contending with this chronic stress loop which results in our minds and bodies being awash in cortisol.

EFT can reset these cortisol or “circadian” rhythms within approximately 3-6 months of establishing regular, routine tapping. Our bodies will reregulate themselves -- if we give them some help.

As we tap, EFT releases the hippocampus and the amygdala triggers. The tapping signals to these brain structures that we are safe. When we tap and recall the negative events or memories in our life, we lower the cortisol around the event, thus informing our subconscious that the witnessed or felt event is no longer happening in the present tense, nor does the event any longer have control over us. We simply neutralize the sensory information that was previously driving our unwanted behaviors and stress.

I invite you to give EFT a try. Attending EFT Level 1 & 2 classes is a wonderful way to immerse yourself in the understanding of how EFT actually works, and will provide you with a bevy of tapping practicum along with a solid basis of how to tap for yourself and for those you wish to help.

As an author of EFT for Christians (http://www.EFTforChristians.com/) and a retired R.N. with 5 years’ experience as a certified EFT practitioner within this field, I’ve seen my own life completely transformed by this gentle but incredibly effective resource -- and in my work with clients, I see EFT consistently delivering similar life-changing results. My EFT classes are being held in Milwaukee.  Please see my website for all the necessary details (including discounted hotel arrangements):  www.EFTforChristians.com/classes.html. 

God created this physiological system of ours to work this way, so I'd welcome the opportunity to meet you and personally teach you how to tap!

EFT is not a substitute for emotional or physical care by a qualified medical personal. Take personal responsibility for your own health please.

Sherrie Rice Smith, R.N (Retired)

EFTforChristians@gmail.com 

EFT and Worry - Philippians 4

Philippians 4:6 reads, “in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God”.  All our fears, anxieties, and worry are to be placed into His loving arms. It is His to carry.

But what happens when the fear, worry, or anxiety continues to rear its ugly head?  Is God not answering our prayers?  I don’t believe that to be the case at all. God created us with a specific physiology. He knows what He created and how we function within our bodies.

God’s physiology goes something like this:  We learn worry early in our lifetime. Oh, it might be something that today we would find inconsequential, like not being picked for a kickball team, or not understanding the math in an upcoming big test. Worry and anxiety set in. The cognitive learning process instilled in our mind has just begun.  Over the following decades, other problems arise that reinforce all that worry and fear and anxiety. Each time, it seems we worry more and more, or the worry is more deep set. Finally, by middle age, we find ourselves literally worrying about nearly every single thing in our lives. We can tell ourselves a million times that we have nothing to worry about – God has it all under control, but, for some reason, that never really reassures us, and we continue to worry.  Eventually, the guilt about worrying begins to set in, adding to the angst. We know in our heart it is wrong, and we pray diligently to be delivered from it.

We all know God can do whatever He finds necessary. Sometimes, He simply rescues us from our deep-seated worry, setting us free. Other times, it continues, like St. Paul’s thorn, leaving us overburdened and sick. God, at other times, brings alongside us something else to assist us, and answering our prayers in other ways.

Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) is another of those answers to prayer. While He allows worry, fear, and anxiety to be part of our human experience, one started in response to original sin our first parents committed in the Garden of Eden, He also instilled in us a mechanism to relieve just those emotions.

EFT, or tapping, is a physiology process where by these fore mentioned emotions can be permanently dismantled. How? By allowing the subconscious to bring to the surface those early memories where the worry first began, and tapping away the emotions attached to those events.

The tapping sets up a vibration that interferes with the neurochemical reaction at the cellular receptor level, breaking the cognitive learning pattern of childhood.  It re-regulates the amygdala, the alarm center of our brain, telling it we are safe. God is handling our issues. It’s how God created us when He breathed breath into Adam’s nostrils on the sixth day of creation.

Free yourself of those emotions of anxiety, fear, and worry through EFT, opening you up to an awakened spiritual experience through God’s mighty grace.  Allow God to instill into you the peace of God that passes all understanding by using this EFT mechanism God implanted in you at birth.

If any of these emotions or any other overwhelming emotion is running your life, messing up your prayer life and spiritual walk, email me. It would be my Christian privilege to teach you how EFT can change your spiritual life, as you dismantle the crippling effects of those early leaned memory patterns. Or attend one of my EFT classes in Milwaukee.

Always remember to take complete responsibility for your own health and well-being. EFT is not a substitute for medical care.

God bless your walk with Him!

For more information, go to  www.EFTforChristians.com

To schedule a free EFT 15 minute consultation session, email me at EFTforChristians@gmail.com

Sherrie Rice Smith

Certified EFT practitioner

Author of EFT for Christians