EFT Christian Spiritual Healing Collides with the Physiological

A wonderful thoughtful Christian tapper Rev. Ronda Stone wrote me, "I think about EFT and how the Lord has given this wonderful tool to us to help cope with all the trauma in one’s life, the lack of feeling loved, and the everyday stresses that accumulate and cause the body/mind to pay the toll in sickness, disease, emotional, and physical pain.

Even though we love the Lord, we are only human and made of clay when facing trials and

difficulties.  It is hard for us to put aside the difficulties and emotions without being concerned or worrying about the outcome of a diagnosis or accident. 

The Lord is there for us all along, but in our human make up and propensity to worry and fret, we block Him from being the help to us that He wants to be because of the connection we already have  to fear, sadness, anxiety etc. from past events."

Ronda's insight is right on and I replied to her this way, "And what you wrote is part of the spiritual explanation of EFT and the reason why we, as Christians, should APPLY tapping to all pieces and parts of our life. To lower the cortisol and adrenaline levels that God created in us that helped us escape REAL physical danger years ago (flight, fight), we need to tap today about what happened back then to undo the stress it continues to cause today for our subconscious mind. God created our hormones to react to REAL danger where we would be harmed or eaten (predators, warfare, assault, abuse)! The elevated levels of chemicals was the way God created us to "remember" life's lessons so we don't repeat our harmful mistakes. The chemicals help us to remember the danger lessons, they encode the learned memory. Think of a child touching a hot stove. He might do it once or perhaps twice, but never again!  This is the same mechanism we all use, but with trauma it happens on a much grander survival scale. 

Today our "danger" is rarely a true physical danger, but living with negative memories from past events literally resides in our body's cells is our present day stress level.  When we were "attacked" and we ran or fought back, we "blew" off the cortisol and adrenaline. Running or fighting back clears the cortisol and adrenaline from our nervous system. Shaking after an accident appears to do the same thing. We "discharge" the trauma, so to speak.

When we "freeze", neither running or fighting back, the incidents become trauma. Most of us "freeze". We are taught not to fight back or lip off. We then hold the horrific event in our nervous system where it stagnates, stews, and skews our Godly perspective of love and safety. Our thoughts of self-doubt, rage, resentment, and hatred arise in place of love and safety God wants us to feel. These feelings foment for decades; they rarely repair themselves without some kind of emotional support. Because those emotions are so painful to live with we shift our behavior toward self-destroying activities, such as addictions (eating, porn, gambling, sex, shopping, workaholism, etc.) to distract ourselves from what we feel. Tapping "reboots" the body systems!

Humans dislike emotional pain. It's uncomfortable so we stuff it down or drown it out (addictive behaviors). Neither strategy allows the damage or pain to let go. It most often tends to compound it. Talking about it often sends the pain ever deeper into our bodies. It's the tapping, a somatic technique, that often releases it. The emotional pain went into the body's cells as a feeling; it needs to come out of our body the exact same way.

Tapping is the language both your subconscious mind and body's cells understands. It looks like a silly technique, but it works! 

Dr. Peter Levine speaks of trauma this way, "The paradox of trauma is that it has both the power to destroy and the power to transform and resurrect...heights of transformation and mastery, depends upon how we approach it" (Dr. Peter Levine, In an Unspoken Voice, How the Boy Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness, North Atlantic Books, Berkley, CA., 2010, page 37).

Everyone has trauma of one sort or another (some minor, others horrific), every single human being does, and it is personal and specific to each of us. Our approach to dealing with it is the key to whether we heal or not. God wants us healed. We can allow the pain to destroy us, or we can transform it into life lessons where we have an unique perspective in the healing to offer other hurting human beings. That lesson often is one of hope - "I will walk with you through your emotional pain because God has helped me. I know this pain intimately, and I know a technique that will help you."

So, how is the healing done? We physically need to get our elevated flight-fight hormones (Cortisol, Adrenaline, & others) lowered in our body (tapping is that tool), removing the barriers (high adrenaline, etc.that trap the memory in our body). We need the tapping to clear the cellular receptors and quiet our brain's limbic alarm system so it stops reacting to every sound, touch, and sight around us. Peace and safety comes back to live in us once again. And it is all God's created healing touch doing the work. 1 Peter 3:10-11, 2 Thessalonians 3:16, James 3:17

The hormones God created to keep us safe often go awry during trauma (someone's mistake or sin). They stay chronically elevated as our subconscious mind plays the trauma over and over again repetitively ("movie" in our head) throughout our present day, everyday, behind the scenes of our conscious mind (we may not even know the memory is still running). This is our subconscious mind reminding you remember never to get into that situation again. This is the way your mind tries to keep you safe.

That "movie" wears us down emotionally and physically because our bodies weren't designed to live well with elevated levels of stress hormones. And our own personal trauma reactions, often self-destroying behaviors mentioned above, compound life's problems. Disease ensues eventually.

What is one of God's answers to these problems? Tapping!

EFT most often neutralizes our reaction to the originating trauma, allowing God now to free us from the impact of those traumatic memories. The fog that lived between you and Him dissipates. You see Him for Who He is. You can now step into that relationship you always desired with Him. He's always been there, but the emotional fog, and your behavioral reactions to it, has kept you from fellowship with Him! This healing becomes real to you on all levels - emotional, spiritual, mental, and often physical. Romans 8:6.

Seriously consider starting your tapping journey today!  Let Him renew your mind! God is waiting for you with open arms!

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, 2020)

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Fight, Flight and Freeze Response

I found this article on Dr. Mercola's site that explains what is going on in the background when abuse happens. I thought to share it. 

"The basic idea is that when trauma occurs, whether the injury is to your body, mind or spirit, two basic processes are activated. The first is the fight-or-flight response, which when activated increases your heart rate and blood pressure. Blood is shunted from digestion into tensing muscles, heart and lungs. Stress hormones are produced to help you fight or run.

While crucial in acute situations of danger, the fight-or-flight response is meant to be turned on and back off quickly. As soon as you’re out of immediate danger, you’re supposed to return back to balance, feeling safe and at ease. Problems arise when we go into fight-or-flight and stay there long after a traumatic event is over.

“Sometimes it’s because the trauma is ongoing. That’s what happens to kids who are in abusive or neglectful situations. But sometimes, we’ve experienced a traumatic event and we’re stuck in that fight-or-flight. It’s like our foot is on the accelerator and we can’t take it off.

So, we become anxious and agitated. We have trouble sleeping, trouble concentrating. We’re impatient with other people, impatient with ourselves. Also, we’re stuck in that past. We replay the images, the images of someone abusing us, someone assaulting us or a boss treating us badly or what happened to us when we were deployed …”

The Freeze Response

The second process activated by trauma is the freeze response. Fight-or-flight is part of the sympathetic nervous system, which is one-half of the autonomic nervous system. The other half of the autonomic nervous system is the parasympathetic nervous system.

“In general, we’re trying to mobilize the parasympathetic nervous system to balance out fight-or-flight,” Gordon explains. “But sometimes, if the situation is so overwhelming and so inescapable, we go into what is called the freeze response, which is mediated and governed by the oldest part of the parasympathetic nervous system, deep in the mid-brain.

We just shut down; we collapse. We put out large amounts of endorphins to protect us against the pain that’s there. We distance ourselves because the trauma is so overwhelming and inescapable. We can’t do anything else except shut down our bodies and close off our minds.

This happens, for example, to children who were abused by their parents, because the abuse is terrible and they can’t get away from it. It happens to people who were assaulted by others who are much more powerful than they are. It happens when we’re raped. It happens in a warzone when we can’t get away and we can’t fight. We’re just overpowered by the situation.”

When these two responses — fight-or-flight and freeze — continue, they are the essence of post-traumatic stress. “One way to look at it is that post-traumatic stress keeps us chained to the past, to the traumatic events, which we keep on replaying in our body and mind,” Gordon explains. “We’re worried it will happen again.”

The essence of healing psychological trauma is to return back into the present moment because, when traumatized, you’re chained to what happened in the past. You worry it will happen again. If you can relax and come into the present, then the trauma starts to dissipate."

Tapping is one of the tools to help us return to emotional homeostasis or neutrality. 

EFT is not a substitute for good medical or psychological care, so please contact your own personal physicians when this type of help is needed.

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!

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.