By L. Dunphy
“Edwin,” a gentleman in his 60s, came for an EFT session seeking support to ensure that recent improvements in his drinking habits were maintained.
Frequently in the past, he would open a bottle of wine in order to have one drink at 6:00 p.m. and finish the entire bottle, even starting on a second bottle before going to bed. He wanted to feel more in control of this habit.
Over the Season of Lent, he placed himself on a diet to lose weight. During this period, he found the motivation to stay off alcohol for the entire 40 days and he was delighted about his success.
But once Lent was over and he had dropped a large amount of weight, his motivation to stay off the alcohol waned.
Edwin previously had some conventional EFT tapping sessions with me for other issues and was therefore familiar with emotional freedom techniques. I offered him a short explanation of Matrix Reimprinting and he was keen to give it a try. We started the session by tapping on Edwin to bring up an associated memory, using the Matrix Recall Technique.
We tapped slowly on:
“Even though I have this 6:00 p.m. alcohol habit, I deeply and completely accept myself.”
After two rounds of this, with a deep breath at each tapping point, a very clear memory of Edwin as a 5-year-old boy came to mind. He was at Liverpool Street Station with his seven-year-old brother. His mom had gone to Africa for 6 months to join his dad where he was working, and she had arranged for the two young brothers to live with an aunt in Wales over the Christmas holiday. They had already started at a new boarding school the previous September, so this was going to be a disruption for them.
In the memory, Edwin and his brother had arrived alone at Liverpool Street Station, both with large identification labels tied to their coat lapels so that they could be met by a “Universal Aunt” who was coming to meet them from an agency (an agency of women who could accompany children traveling alone in London). Edwin and his brother were to be taken to Paddington and put on a train to Wales.
They would be carrying out the train journey alone.
I asked adult Edwin to approach little Edwin and introduce himself, to explain to him that he was there to support him and would like to do some tapping on him to help him with any difficult feelings he was having. Edwin’s younger self looked very confused and said that he couldn´t talk to strangers without permission. Adult Edwin had to seek permission from the Universal Aunt before his younger self would talk to him! He got permission, both to talk to little Edwin and to tap on him.
Adult Edwin asked his younger self how he was feeling. Little Edwin was afraid and wanted his mother. Even though his mother had told him many times that he was such a lucky boy to be spending Christmas with his aunt, he still wanted his mother to be with him.
We began tapping on that feeling:
“Even though you want mummy, you are still a lovely little boy.”
“Even though mummy doesn´t want you to miss her, you do, that´s okay, she still loves you anyway.”
“Even though mummy´s got to be with daddy for his work, you’re still a lovely little boy.”
After this tapping round, little Edwin felt calmer and much more relaxed. We also did a round of tapping on his fear of the train journey. I asked adult Edwin if there was anything that he wanted to say to his younger self. He told his little self that he was going to be okay: “Look at me,” he said, “I’m you as a grown-up and I´m really okay. You´re going to be okay in Wales and in your life.” They then hugged each other for several minutes.
Edwin then asked little Edwin if there was anything else he needed to help him in this situation. Edwin’s little self wanted a kitten to play with when he got to the aunt´s house and adult Edwin arranged it. Knowing there would be a kitten and knowing adult Edwin was going with them was enough for little Edwin to feel much better about getting on the next train, but he wanted one more thing. He wanted concrete reassurance that his mother really was coming back at Easter. Adult Edwin confirmed that his mother was definitely coming back.
He said his little-self looked calm, reassured, and happy.
For his new picture, little Edwin wanted a positive picture of starting his new life in Wales playing with the kitten on a thick woolen carpet in front of a coal fire. And he wanted his teenage cousin, Patricia, to be playing with the kitten too. He imagined himself holding the kitten’s soft fur to his face and stroking his cheeks and lips with it. We took this new image through Edwin’s mind, into his heart, and then sent it out into the field.
Immediately after this session, Edwin reported that he felt very close to little Edwin and had strong feelings of love for his little-self. This feeling of connection stayed with him. He reported 3 months after the session that he felt much more in control of his drinking choices at 6:00 p.m. The vast majority of evenings he chose to drink a tomato juice, and on the occasions when he chose to open a bottle of wine (mostly Friday evenings after work), he would usually stop at two glasses of wine, but it still required some discipline and tapping.
Edwin also explained that there had been four or five occasions when he had continued to drink more than he would have liked, at times when he felt lonely. I have suggested that we do some follow-up work using the Matrix Habit Reimprinting protocol and Edwin has booked to do this with me.
