Military Mother Who Needed Tapping Help

I’m bringing this case to the EFT community to make a point that we practitioners are very concerned about our vets through the Stress Project (http://stressproject.org), but I think we need to actively watch for anyone else related to these PTSD soldiers, too, as many of them are suffering from the same issues as their loved ones. We need to see that they are also treated by using EFT to eliminate their issues around military deployment and retirement.

Catherine’s son is an active military soldier, serving his country proudly, but Catherine is the one who is also showing signs of PTSD. As she sat in my office, her stoicism came through – she was trying desperately to hold it together. I gave her my standard EFT how to speech & had her sign the waivers, etc. She pulled a package of tissues out of her purse, so I made sure I gave her permission to cry all she wanted.

Catherine started off with her story. I need not relate all the details and I used the standard Gary Craig EFT short cut tapping procedure, but in the beginning I essentially could not get Catherine to take a breath. She had to tell me the entire story around her son’s military career and how he ended up in the physical mess he is in. I literally couldn’t get a word in edgewise. After about 5 minutes, I told her I would listen, but she needed to pick a tapping spot & just tap while she talked, using the tap & rant technique. Everything was a SUDS of 9 for her.

Her deployed son messed up his back in basic and something else went wrong with his heart, giving him a cardiac issue, forcing him to the point where he was forbidden by the Army to exercise, although he had been a star athlete in high school. It took our US Senator to get the Army moving on issuing her son’s medical discharge, which was coming up soon, meaning he would be back home again with them. The empty nest was about to be refilled! Catherine was scared to death!

On his last leave her son was experiencing nightmares, screaming out much of the night, while keeping a loaded gun under his bed. “I’m scared for him” and the tears started in earnest. To be honest, I have not had a client cry this long or sob this hard ever! Usually, the tears dry up within a few minutes, but not so with Catherine! She cried for nearly an hour. Some of the time, I simply sat next to her, saying nothing, except reminding her to continue to tap & telling her the pain would release.

 Catherine, a Christian, like we all would, had some deep-seated fears around the fact that her son would hurt someone. “He loves us so much, but I’m so afraid of what he could do. He was the gentle giant in high school, always looking out for the underling & standing up for them,” she told me.

Finally, I had an intuitive hit that she was fearful that her son might simply commit suicide, so I said, “I’m afraid he will kill himself.” I surely had that one correct!

The sobbing started all over again. Then the core issue showed itself. “I want all my kids in heaven with me, but if he kills himself, I will never see him again.” And the sobbing continued unabated.

I told her that I pushed the issue, saying what the Holy Spirit whispered to me, because it was the most awful truth she was actually thinking – the bottom line, so to speak. With the core issue out in the open, and the tears finally subsiding,

Catherine & I cleaned up on a couple other emotions to include: sorrow, regret, anger, feeling stuck, EFT’s favorite thing to do, unstick us, and other odds and ends.

When Catherine left, I could see clarity in her eyes and a steadiness that wasn’t apparent when she walked in initially. I told her so, too.

She had nicely reframed most of the issues on her own and I could see she was ready to take them on however they presented themselves. We tapped in a few of her favorite Bible passages to seal the deal.

There are 2 crowning blows that makes the synchronicity of the connectedness of us all so unbelievable is this: I had a box of toys in the corner in an old poultry gift box. Catherine spotted it and told me, “It is one of ours.”

Sure enough and I had never noticed the printing before, since this was my first meeting with Catherine, the box had her last name on it! They had sold their farm a few years back when the children had all left home.

Here I had picked up that box years before at a rummage sale & now Catherine, whose farm name was on it, was sitting in my office for EFT 10 years later!

Secondly, her R.N. daughter was leaving shortly to serve at a denominational medical mission in Africa where a friend of mine 40 years was the 2nd R.N to serve at that exact mission site! What a crazy “coincidences” these are; however, we all know there are no such things as coincidences!

As a Christian, I know God has it all lined up just the way it all should be.

For more information, go to EFTforChristians.com.

To schedule a free 15 minute consultation to see if EFT is right for you, 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.

Sherrie Rice Smith, R.N. (Retired)
Certified EFT Practitioner
Author of EFT for Christians (available on my website)
EFTforChristians.com 

EFT for our Military Vets - Help Available!

I appeal to you all!  Please continue to pass the word about free Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) for our military, particularly all our vets from Korea, Viet Nam & the Mideast.

Yes, they get this for a lower cost - up to 8 hours with a specially trained practitioners who deal with symptoms of insomnia, hypervigilance, substance abuse, anger, guilt, etc. Family members are also helped by calling the same phone number.

All that is needed is a phone call to Heather at her number on the website I'm listing below.  All practitioners are specifically trained to help the veterans.

Have them call today - please! We owe them a normal life!

http://stressproject.org/

For more information, go to  www.eftforchristians.com

To schedule a free 15 minute consultation to see if EFT is right for you, email me at EFTforChristians@gmail.com

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

Sherrie Rice Smith, R.N. Retired
Certified EFT Coach
Author of EFT for Christians (on Amazon)
EFTforChristians.com 

Christian EFT & Ranting/Whining

Assuming you have a working knowledge of Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) (and if not, please see the EFTforChristians.com on the right side menu, click on the big blue EFTUniverse box, and sign up for the free EFT how to manual), I have another emotion clearing idea.

The technique is called “tapping and ranting” or “tapping and complaining” or “tapping and bitching” for those of us who are more “earthy”.

Background behind this technique is pretty simple. All of us, from time to time, call a friend on the phone and go on and on and on about some upsetting situation or event (or person). The event has simply sent us over the edge. Psychology teaches us to go ahead and whine as much as we want, as it helps by letting it all out. I want to take this idea a step further.

Complaining & “letting it out” does works, perhaps, on the short term, at the very best, but “tapping and ranting” is a long term solution to this particular problem. Why? Because, as you complain and whine, and sometimes yell and scream, about a situation, it relieves the immediate stress, but you have resolved nothing around the issue. You are still stuck with the problem and its accompanying emotions. Every time you again think of the situation your emotions flare back again to the previous level, or sometimes to an elevated level because you have thought up 10 more reasons to be mad! The more you mull the problem the angrier you get, raising your blood sugar and cortisol to unacceptable levels, physiologically. It takes you days, or weeks, to stop being angry, if you ever stop at all. In other words, the complaining simply drives the negative emotions ever deeper into your subconscious mind, burying them there permanently (“For as he thinks in his heart, so he is” Proverbs 23:7 KJV).  This is NOT a good thing. Now, you have paired a bad situation to some specific neurochemicals. These neurochemicals will raise their elevated heads again, whenever you encounter another situation similar to what you are now experiencing.

I’d like to suggest another approach to negative situations that drive you to whine and complain. I give you permission to go ahead & whine all you want, but tap while you complain. Obviously, as a Christian, I would prefer you go to the person who has caused you the angst & work out the situation, but sometimes we simply just complain about it. “Whoever covers an offense seeks love, but he who repeats a matter separates close friends” (Proverbs 17:9).

Tapping while you rant does the opposite of just “venting”, which implants the negative emotions into your subconscious, while ranting and tapping releases the emotion behind the event, situation, or person permanently, allowing you to think clearly about what actually is going on, rather than what you “perceive” is going on, by putting the 70% of the blood that drained from your thinking neo-cortex in anger back into that frontal part of your brain, so you can “think straight”. The biggest benefit is you aren’t “stuffing” those negative emotions down into your soul where they can cause you permanent harm, either emotionally or physically. Those negative emotions about events build on themselves, one on top of another, assembling for us an 89 story subconscious building of unnecessary and damaging beliefs, ones that are doing us no earthly or heavenly good. Your subconscious digests everything negative you say, taking it all literally.  It thinks this is what you truly believe and what you truly want to happen, and what you truly think about someone or something.  

Remember, your subconscious is literal, lineal, & logical. It doesn’t think for you. It simply processes what you take in with your five senses. Garbage in, garbage out, as the old computer adage says.

We can take this all one step further into the quantum physics world. What we think and say is our reality. You think negative and say negative things about yourself or others, most likely the thoughts or words will become your reality. Our perceptions become our reality! 

Proverbs 6:2 says, “You have been snared by the utterance of your lips, caught by the words of your mouth”. Your subconscious mind doesn’t know the difference between reality and imagination. Again, your subconscious is more than willing to comply with exactly what it thinks you truly want. 

Some of this is the “woo-woo” of the quantum world. Believe it, or don’t believe it – that is your choice, but scientific study after scientific study proves the concept. None of us needs to believe it in order to make it all true. I tell atheists this all the time. Just because you deny the existence of God doesn’t mean He doesn’t exist. It’s simply your opinion, as it is my opinion that He does exist. One day we will all see and know who is correct, won’t we? Death is the great equalizer.

So, my conclusion and parting advice to all of you reading this is to tap!  I would prefer that you simply sit down, alone, in some quiet place, and tap the situation and its accompanying emotions away, rather than phone a friend and gossip (“Whoever belittles his neighbor lacks sense, but a man of understanding remains silent” Proverbs 11:12).  

But, I will admit, we all do it – we vent, so vent all you want, but tap and encourage all your friends to do the same. Discharge the emotions around whatever it is you are venting about. I guarantee you will feel much better, and you will find that the incident or person will no longer have any sway over you. It just simply will no longer matter to you.  And that is the miracle of EFT!

For more information, go to  www.eftforchristians.com

To schedule a free 15 minute consultation to see if EFT is right for you, email me at EFTforChristians@gmail.com

Always remember to take complete responsibility for your own health and well-being.

Sherrie Rice Smith, R.N. (ret.)
Certified EFT Practitioner           
Author "EFT for Christians" (2015)
www.EFTforChristians.com

EFT & Memory Reconsolidation

In the article referenced at the bottom of this blog, I copied this statement:  "What most probably happens is that memories in long term storage stay fairly stable until they are remembered. The process of remembering alters stored memories in some still unknown but physical fashion so that they become temporarily unstable and need to be consolidated (made stable) once again." {in a more positive fashion when using EFT - my comment}

So, exactly what does that mean in laymen’s language?

When something horrible happens to us, and remember “horrible” is in the eye of the beholder, what is awful to one person means little to another, trauma is personal, we remember. Sometimes the memory stays in the conscious mind, but other times it is only remember subconsciously.

Once that memory is accessed or brought back into the conscious mind, it is friable, or able to be changed. Every time we re-tell a memory we change details in it.

Using EFT, or tapping, we have the ability to change an awful, traumatic into something neutral, and no longer threatening – a memory that holds no triggering charge for us, and no longer runs our life. This is called memory “reconsolidation”. The memory is changed for the better. We remember what happened in the event, but the event is no longer important to our life story, or who we think we are.

Dr Robert Scaer’s definition of a traumatic event is it is horrifically overwhelming and one thinks one is going to die because the situation is completely hopeless and the person feels completely helpless and without resources.  This is why we need to ask clients, "What were you THINKING" when that memory happened. Often the thought of death itself is so buried in the psyche it underpins the memory. Tapping on, "I was going to die" multiple times until it neutralizes, along with tapping the emotion of "shock" that the event even happened takes much of the punch & sting out of the memory, in many cases.

I don’t recommend at all that individuals tap on their own traumatic memories. This is one of those times when it is imperative that you hire an EFT practitioner to help you. Why? Because most likely you will NOT go deep enough to neutralize all the aspects of what happened at that fateful time, and in only partially “fixing” the memory you might drive it deeper into the subconscious. (Please just get help – email me! I have a list of Christian practitioners to help you).

Often huge amounts of the neurotransmitter norephinephrine are secreted during a trauma.  Norephinephrine drives the sensory memory. The more norephinephrine pumped out, the better the memory aspects stick.

"Post-traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD is, of course, an anxiety disorder that occurs sometimes in the aftermath of exposure to a horrendous traumatic experience involving death or the threat of death. It essentially involves a person ingesting a trauma memory that is so "hot" and emotionally overwhelming that it cannot be processed and grieved normally and instead is just avoided as best as can be managed. The trauma memory does not degrade as normal memories do, but instead stays fresh and intrudes into the traumatized person's awareness in an unwanted, unbidden and very frightening manner. Three classes of classic PTSD symptoms come out of this situation: 1) hypervigilance for threats, 2) attempts to avoid threats (anything which will trigger the trauma memories), and 3) chronic intrusive remembering of the trauma memory despite attempts to avoid it."

The above definition of PTSD comes from this same article.

I want to stress to you that PTSD symptoms almost never go away spontaneously and the triggers and behaviors resulting from the trauma are NOT your fault! Often trauma leads to PTSD. Memories continue to disintegrate and magnify as years pass. And there is absolutely no way a person with PTSD symptoms can work on themselves using EFT or any other energy techniques and adequately clear the trauma. It is a must that they find a practitioner who can gently lead them where they must go to resolves all the deep-seated trauma pieces of the memory.

Because these memories are so imbedded in the hippocampus, they continue to intrude into the life of the one who carries the memories. Sadly, the damage goes even further in that the hippocampus actually shrinks, taking with the shrinking the good earlier memories when life was good and pleasant, leaving the person with just a life full of bad memories.

Triggers, those short snaps of sensory input, that causes the flare-up of emotions and spontaneously erratic behaviors is nothing one can control. The amygdala in the brain is now in control once these memories are implanted deeply in the psyche.

EFT is one of the few modalities that actually effectively works on neutralizing and calming these awful memories.

Post-traumatic memories are not a weakness in personality or spirit. They are something done to you as a result of something awful that happened years or decades ago. There is nothing shameful about asking for help.

So, do you have memories that haunt you?  God has offered us an opportunity through tapping to once and for all reconsolidate those memories and put them to bed forever.

Are you ready to give EFT a try? Call and let’s talk!

https://www.mentalhelp.net/articles/memory-reconsolidation-and-treatment-for-post-traumatic-stress-ptsd/

EFT is not a substitute for medical or emotional care from a qualified physician or therapist. Call one when necessary.

Sherrie Rice Smith, R.N. (Retired)

Certified EFT Practitioner

Author of EFT for Christians – on Amazon

EFTforChristians.com

EFTforChristians@gmail.com

EFT & Neural Pathways

Dawson Church wrote, "When you pass a signal through a neural bundle for 20 seconds or more, you stimulate it to begin creating new synaptic connections. You increase its signaling capacity. It’s like an electrical cable that gets bigger and bigger as more and more electricity flows through it.

When you have a good experience and don’t savor it for those 20 seconds or more, the size of your electrical cable — the bundle of neurons in your brain that signals pleasure — does not increase. But if you deliberately stretch out the good feelings for 20 seconds or more, you build increased capacity in your brain for carrying similar signals.

When you’re meditating, feeling good, tapping, filling your mind with loving thoughts, and having a wonderful experience, stretch it out for as long as possible. Slow yourself way down today. Waste as much time as possible gazing at the brilliant hues of a spectacular sunset. Notice the kiss of the wind on your skin. Savor the delicate flavors of a sip of your favorite tea. Listen to the patter of rain on the rooftop. Remember the last time you heard a baby laugh."

We know that every hour we think about something, whether the thought is something negative or positive, we double the neural branch in our brain around that idea.

This is why, for some of us, negative neural pathways are so hard to change. They are great big, fat trunks of neurons, synapses, dendrites and axioms. Happy thoughts or affirmations don’t seem to budge them. They are difficult to break without a tool like EFT. The thoughts are stuck, cemented into place.

EFT is the language the brain structure understands to mean, “Wake up, pay attention, I have a new job for you to do. I've changed my mind.” Tapping opens the conversation with that subconscious – the part of you that you cannot normally access and the part of you that normally runs 95-98% of your life.

Tapping has the ability, since we focus on the negative thoughts, to snap those negative neural paths, allowing new, albeit smaller, ones to grow in their stead.

Feelings like thanksgiving, happiness, joy, love all grow those new pathways, allowing the old ones to die off, literally.

This is why EFT works so well.

The “trick” is we must tap out the negative before instilling the positive; otherwise it is like pouring a tablespoon of high quality perfume in a 60 gallon barrel of sewage. The perfume, like positive affirmations (or sporadic happy thoughts), aren’t strong enough to compensate for the smell of the stinky, moldy barrel.

Give Christian EFT a try today. Tap while you pray, sing, read, and allow God to change those negative pathways in your heart and mind.  He’s love to have a conversation with you today.

Remember, EFT is not a substitute for medical care. Take complete responsibility for your own emotional and physical health.

Blessings in Christ Jesus!

Sherrie Rice Smith, R.N. (Retired)

Certified EFT Practitioner

Author of EFT for Christians

EFTforChristians.com

EFT & Your Tongue

I want to teach you a simple "trick" for the times when you cannot tap, but you need to tap now!

I learned this years ago from Dawson. I use it when I'm in a hurry, and bothered, but when I can't stop and tap right now.

Drop your tongue, relaxed, on the floor of your mouth. Cross your hands over your heart, and take a few slow deep breaths. 5 seconds in, hold for 2 seconds, 5 seconds out. Do this while feeling where your angst is physically and focus on whatever the problem is.

A nice long red light is ample time to just allow whatever the feelings and emotions are to float off.

Now, teach yourself, and it takes a bit of mindfulness to do this - keep your tongue relaxed as much as possible on the floor of your mouth.

That relaxed tongue engages the parasympathetic nervous system and tells your body that there is nothing wrong no matter what you are feeling at the moment. You might be bugged, but you are NOT in any physical danger.

If anyone tries this, let me know what you think of this short-cut. It doesn't replace your daily tapping, but it can help to get you out of an immediate problem with a quick fix.

Remember, EFT is NOT a substitute for your own personal medical or mental health care professional. See them regularly whenever you feel you must do so!

Sherrie Rice Smith, R.N. (Retired)

Author of EFT for Christians (on Amazon)

Feelings and EFT

Stop listening to your emotions, many times feeling sorry for yourself, or feeling like a victim, and tap!  Tapping gives you the ability to then stand on the Word of God. Let God tell you who you are and who you belong to.

Remember, satan condemns, but the Holy Spirit convicts!  If you have asked forgiveness for what you have done, but you still feel condemned, it isn't God!

He's already forgotten what you did. If you want to move on, learn EFT, or call a Christian practitioner for EFT help. I can supply a list for you. Email me today.

Stand on the Word of God, not the words of the enemy!

To God be the glory!

EFT is not a substitute for medical care. Call your physician if this is a medical issues.

Sherrie Rice Smith, R.N. (Retired)
Certified EFT practitioner
Author of EFT for Christians (2015)
EFTforChristians.com