Using EFT Tapping to Release the Decision to be Miserable

by Angie Muccillo

Dear EFT Community,

As Angie Muccillo was doing some generalized tapping with her client, an important core issue appeared. The client had a very significant memory of herself as a child where she distinctly remembered making a decision “to be miserable.” She was still hanging on to the past, despite wanting very much to move on. Read how EFT helped Angie’s client release the pain of her past and the misery she had been carrying with her throughout her life.

– EFT Universe

I recently had an EFT session with a woman who has suffered anxiety and depression since her childhood shortly after her father committed suicide.

Naturally this is a tragic, deeply traumatic and sad event in any child’s life. She has consequently had years of therapy and whilst she can talk about her father’s death now, it took a very long time before she could do so. At the time, due to the level of grief and overwhelm experienced by her mother and family, no-one ever talked about what happened or comforted her in any way.

All she remembers is feeling so completely alone, scared and with a constant aching sadness in her heart.

After her dad’s death she was always sent to school early and remembers sitting and crying alone and in fear behind the shelter sheds. The family’s grief was so deep and their ability to function normally so severely impaired that her needs for comfort and support were not able to be met by her immediate family.

After tapping on several issues around her father’s death, including how she felt as a child and other issues currently keeping her stuck in her life, she became saddened by the realization that so much of her life has been consumed by this.

She was still hanging on to the past, despite wanting very much to move on.

So at this point we tapped on:

Even though part of me is still hanging on to the past…

Even though I’m so sad that this has consumed so much of my life that I don’t even know what it’s like not to have it…

Even though I’ve not had the career, the family, the life I wanted because of this…

Even though if I give up the past now I won’t know where I’ll be, who I am or where to go, I choose to focus on my personal vision of peace (which she described earlier, as the life she wanted).

As she tapped on this, a very significant memory of herself as a child popped into her head. She distinctly remembered making a decision as a child “to be miserable.” The reasoning behind this was “if I am miserable someone might come.” She explained that as a child she always felt sad, alone and scared, often crying for hours waiting for someone to come and comfort her.

But all too often this need went unmet. This “childhood decision” was made at a time when she was in deep mourning for the loss of her father. The “decision to be miserable” became a part of her life was likely to be at the core of her depression.

So we tapped on something to this effect:

Even though I made a decision as a child to be miserable, I am an adult now and choose to make a different choice. I choose to be happy and focus on my personal vision of peace instead and let go of the vow I made as a hurt, sad and lonely child.

I spoke to her recently and she reports that, since the session, she has experienced “amazing relief” accompanied by a dramatic decrease in her anxiety levels and physical symptoms (stomach tension). The deep sense of sadness she has carried for such a long time has lifted and she reports feeling much lighter and more at peace.

Uncovering and letting go of the childhood “decision to be miserable” seems to have removed a major roadblock in her life and is allowing her to experience greater happiness. She has since started to take action in areas of her life where she previously felt stuck.

Her career has for a long time been a major source of anxiety for her and immediately after our session she took action by making an appointment with a career counselor to help clarify her career options/direction.

She has continued tapping at home and has started incorporating EFT with her meditation.

As she taps on her current anxiety she is finding more and more links to the past and childhood events which she continues to tap on. Whilst she recognizes the need to do more tapping, she is delighted with the changes she has experienced so far.

As we know, childhood events shape our lives. I can’t help but wonder how different her life may have been if, as a child living under those circumstances, she had EFT by her side to release all those feelings of sadness, hurt and loneliness.

Of course that would not have bought her father back, but the deep pain in her heart that she felt as a child and that manifested as anxiety and depression, could have been significantly eased if she had access to EFT at the time.

I think this highlights the importance of teaching our children to tap so that they have the opportunity, either with an adult or alone in their room or behind the shelter sheds or in any moment of need, to release the strong and overwhelming emotions that they are confronted with. A child who has lost a parent (or suffered any other tragedy/trauma) in today’s age does have access to this wonderful tool and we as adults have the ability to make a difference by teaching it to them.

EFT Tapping Releases Ulcer Pain by Clearing Childhood Trauma

By Deb Gimer

I had previously worked with Samantha (not her real name), so she had some knowledge and experience with EFT.

We initially began addressing the pain (SUD level 6) she was experiencing from a recurrent bleeding ulcer. She had also been waking often during the night and not feeling rested in the morning. With began with the Full Basic Recipe, using the Setup Statement:

Even though I have this pain in my stomach from my bleeding ulcer, I love and accept myself and how I feel.

We completed a couple of rounds on the pain and how it felt. Samantha’s pain dropped to 4—5 on the SUD scale. We then tapped while thanking the pain for being present, serving her needs, and keeping her safe. At that point, I saw a shift in her facial expression and asked her if something had come to mind. She said it was a memory from her childhood. After some discussion, we decided to use the Movie Technique.

The memory was of a traumatic childhood event, with an intensity of 10 on the SUD scale. When she focused on the event, she felt very nauseous and kept a wastebasket close at hand in case she had to vomit. When asked if the nausea had a color or shape, Samantha described it as a dark-green, roundish, smooth mass in her stomach that glowed like a cloud around the edges.

The title of Samantha’s movie was “The phone ringing.” We used the Setup Statement:

Even though I feel all this nausea at a 10 when I think about the phone ringing, I deeply and completely accept myself how I feel now and when I was a child when I heard the phone ringing.

There were six crescendos in this event. Each time after clearing a crescendo, we went back to the beginning of the movie before the phone started ringing.

We used the Full Basic Recipe for our tapping, including alternative points and some eye rolls. The Reminder Phrases we used, as supplied by Samantha, were: Listening so intently, please don’t be our ring, oh no heart sinks, it’s ours, I don’t want to go, I have to go, it always ends the same, no way out, just had to do it, no crying.

After all was cleared and she could run through the movie without upset, we proceeded again to tap while thanking the pain in her body for trying to help her and asked it to consider releasing some of the pain, that maybe it wasn’t needed anymore.

During this portion of the session, I paid close attention to how Samantha responded to the words I used. She showed no hesitancy and nodded her head yes throughout, with tears flowing down her face.

I then asked her to place her hands on her heart and take a couple of deep cleansing breaths.

I asked Samantha to check back in with her body regarding the bleeding ulcer pain we had focused on at the start of the session. She paused a minute to push on her stomach where the pain had been. Then she was shocked! She couldn’t believe it–the pain was completely gone!

She explained that had never happened. When the ulcer pain flared up, it took weeks to resolve. And here it was, completely gone, just like that!

I then asked her to remember vividly the movie about the phone ringing and to try and hear the phone ringing. Her facial expression changed, softened, and showed wonderment. She said she could see how the pain/nausea she had experienced so often in her life was really a protective mechanism to keep her safe. The high anxiety and nausea she experienced helped her keep her mouth shut so things didn’t get even worse.

I asked Samantha about the mass in her stomach and she said it was very small and just dark with no color, a 2 on the SUD scale. She said she felt it was fear and that it was what had kept her safe as a child. She wanted to sit with it a while, not yet ready to let it go, but wanted to appreciate it a while before completely releasing it.

How to Get Over Disappointment with the Help of EFT Tapping

Dear EFT Community,

Learn how to get over hurt, anger, disappointment, and unmet expectations with EFT tapping. EFT user, Catherine O’Driscoll, shares how she used EFT to deal with her disappointment and how tapping seemed to help make things better.

-EFT Universe

By Catherine O’Driscoll

There was a time in my life when seemed like things weren’t going particularly well for me.

I had organized two workshops and publicized them, but the response was so poor I had to cancel one of them. The one remaining would have to be cancelled if I couldn’t get 10 people to attend. This really upset me because I’m a marketing and PR consultant, so I should be able to communicate a workshop’s benefits.

“Why don’t people want to come to this?” I asked myself. I was depressed, really depressed.

When I realized my life wasn’t going along as I had imagined, I found myself being really angry with my husband–everything he did was wrong. One evening, I even stomped off into our garden to sit with my dogs. I felt completely devastated.

I sat there, complaining bitterly to myself about everything my husband did wrong.

And then the thought: “I am such a failure, I fail at everything I do.” came into my head.

Do you know how sometimes these thoughts are so deeply ingrained that we often don’t see them?

But I caught it! I saw myself having this thought!

So I began to tap:

“Even though I’m a total failure, I deeply and completely accept myself.”

Instantly, I forgave my husband (who was innocent in the first place). I wasn’t angry with him, I was angry with myself – the root of my depression, perhaps.

In fact, the more I used EFT, the more I realized that the negative thoughts I had towards other people, were rooted in negative thoughts I had about myself. I guess anger and depression are very closely related.

Then I returned indoors, I hugged my husband, and explained how I wasn’t angry with him, I was angry with myself and I felt much better. He was relieved!

There’s even a happier ending to this story. My workshop near where I live ended up doubling in size–more than I had hoped for. They signed up through word of mouth about my workshops. I did virtually nothing, and yet all these people were coming to my workshop.

Apart from spreading the word on EFT, which is a dearly cherished goal, I have also met some wonderful new friends.

And now I remember to tap whenever I am feeling disappointed in myself, or in current circumstances, and find that, almost immediately, everything changes for the better!

The Movie Technique Uncovers Surprising Aspects of a Car Crash

Dear EFT Community,

In this article, demonstrating the Movie Technique during an EFT workshop brought out previously hidden aspects of a traumatic crash, and led to new insights for the woman involved in the accident.

-EFT Universe

By Dawson Church

The Movie Technique (and its companion Tell-the-Story) is one of the most simple yet effective ways to use EFT.

It’s the first technique taught in Level 1 workshops, and while it works reliably for novices, EFT experts often use it as well.

In this example, systematic use of the technique during a class uncovered surprising new aspects of the traumatic event.

Cassie, a 45-year-old woman was one of a group of 5 people with whom I worked simultaneously during an EFT workshop.

Her presenting issue was a car crash two years before. As she spoke about the crash, she was flushed and trembling visibly, and when I probed for earlier childhood experiences with a similar emotional tone, she couldn’t find any, so we worked on the adult experience together.

The first step we recommend in our tutorial on the Movie Technique is to tap on the title of the movie, which for Cassie was a 10. We tapped on “The Crash” till the title itself went down to a 2, at which point we began the movie at a neutral point, before the first emotionally troubling part of the incident.

The crash occurred as Cassie and the rest of her family were driving home after a meal at a restaurant. She and her husband have three adult sons. Leaving the restaurant, she sat in the passenger seat of a truck belonging to one of her sons.

The truck was hit from the rear, unexpectedly. “He came out of nowhere,” she said, and we tapped using that as a reminder phrase.

Cassie’s SUD level dropped from a 7 to a 1. She then “rewound” the movie to the neutral point, and began replaying it in her mind again; the intensity was still low when she passed the point where the impact occurred, and proceeded to the next emotional crescendo.

That was when she got out of the truck and saw how bent the sheet metal was, though no-one had been injured. Her intensity rose to a 7, and then down to a 2, around the image of the wrecked vehicles.

Cassie’s husband was driving his car, with her other children, behind the truck, and witnessed the accident.

The driver of the other car was a man in his nineties who misjudged the distance between his car and the truck. “I’m angry at him!” said Cassie, “He was too old to be driving!” Her anger was an 8, but quickly came down to a 1 after a couple of rounds of EFT. “That’s the end of the movie,” she said, and so I suggested she then “tell the story” out loud from the beginning, starting at the neutral point when she climbed into the truck.

She began her narrative, and then gasped, and her face flushed. Her number went up to a 10.

“I just remembered,” she said, “why I was driving back with my son. My husband and I had an argument earlier that day, before we saw the kids, and I didn’t want to be in the car with him on the way home.”

We tapped on different aspects of the argument till that too had a low level of emotional intensity (Click here for our tutorial on Aspects).

I was struck by the way that Cassie recovered a memory, and we discovered a new aspect of the car crash event, that she had forgotten or suppressed till the other emotional crescendos were cleared.

It’s common during EFT sessions to find clients recovering additional details in this way, and one reason why rewinding the movie and re-telling it from the neutral point is so useful in determining that all the aspects of an event have been cleared.

EFT Eliminates Balance Problem in 94-Year-Old

Dear EFT Community,

Gilbert Robert tells how he used EFT to resolve his elderly father’s balance problem.

– EFT Universe

By Gilbert Robert

My father who is 94 years old and in very good health, told me that from time to time he experienced physical loss of balance (equilibrium) and had to hold on to something until it came back to normal. Recently, he called to say that it had started again the night before and when he woke up in the morning, the loss of balance was still there. He had a hard time getting to the phone in the living room to call me.

He lives alone in his house in the country. My mother died 4 years ago from cancer. They were married for 63 years. And he still drives his car. He passed his medical and driving tests a year ago.

So I arrived at his home–he lives half an hour away from where I live–and he was sitting by the phone waiting for me. I asked him if he would let me do EFT on him.

He answered, “Yes, yes, do that thing.” I learned about EFT 15 months ago, and he knew what it was from that time, but he had never experienced it. So I started EFT on him while he just sat in silence on a chair.

I did not evaluate the intensity of his loss of balance (he was experiencing it) and I did the tapping and the talking. Tapping the Karate Chop point:

Even though I lost my balance…

Even though I cannot stand on my feet by myself…

Even though I am afraid of falling down…

Even though I am afraid of falling down and that I won’t be able to get up by myself…

Then I tapped on his loneliness, his old age, the solitude of being by himself, the loss of his lifetime companion.

After 9-10 rounds, he said he felt much better. He walked across the living room back and forth and was around 90% better, so I tapped on “this remaining dizziness.”

After that, he told me that everything was okay. I asked him if he noticed anything special that happened when I tapped. He told me that he felt things moving inside him when I tapped on his eyebrow and collarbone.

I did some tapping on him in the afternoon and before bedtime using the same wording and again the next morning (I slept over just in case). I left him after lunch.

The next morning when I came back to see how he was, he said that he hadn’t felt that well for a long time. I asked him if we needed to do some more tapping. His answer was no.

About a month later, I asked him if there had been any change in him, in his life after we did EFT. He replied that something big was gone. He could not say what, but he felt much lighter (his words) and much more at peace with himself.

A little side benefit was that my father reads a lot and he needed to hydrate his eyes 4 or 5 time a day. This need went to 1 time or less a day and his vision became much clearer.

It has been more than 4 months now and this loss of balance problem never came back. In fact, he is feeling great. And all I did was tap for 15 to 20 minutes altogether (in 2 days). Amazing!

Now for me, the big “aha” is the following: Had I not known EFT, my father would have had to see a doctor, would have had tests of all sorts done on him, would have had to have someone to take care of him.

EFT has saved him, his family, society, the health-care system, and all time and money.

EFT Reveals Unexpected Association with Seasickness

Dear EFT community,

Rebecca Kane of Portland, Oregon, is a personal performance coach and certified EFT practitioner. In this article, she tells how tapping uncovered the hidden roots of a client’s twenty-year seasickness and resolved it so the client was able to go on a sea voyage with no problem.

-Stephanie M

By Rebecca Kane, Certified EFT Practitioner

(The names and some details have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals involved.)

One of my clients, Grace, came to me because she wanted to get rid of her seasickness before going on a cruise. She’d suffered from motion sickness for twenty years and wanted be in good enough shape to enjoy the cruise she was leaving on the next day. She thought the seasickness was caused by her inner ear not being able to adjust to the up-and-down motion.

I asked her what was hard about having seasickness. She said:

I can’t be a part of what’s going on around me (on the boat).
I feel like I’m going to fall down or throw up.
I can’t think beyond myself.
I feel clammy.

I asked Grace to imagine the up-and-down motion of being on a boat and she said it made her feel nauseated just thinking about it. She rated the worst intensity of seasickness that she could imagine at a screaming 10.

We tapped on the Karate Chop point, while saying:

Even though I get seasick when I’m on a boat, I completely love and accept myself.

Even though I can’t be part of the group and I feel so sick, I’m doing the best I can.

Even though I get seasick with the up-and-down movement, I love and accept myself.

Then we tapped on:

Eyebrow (EB): This up-and-down motion.

Side of the eye (SE): Ugh, it makes me feel sick just thinking about it.

Under the eye (UE): I can’t think beyond myself.

Under the nose (UN): I feel clammy.

Chin (CH): All this motion sickness.

Collarbone (CB): I don’t like it.

Under the arm (UA): Someone get me off this boat.

Wrists (two wrists together, TW): I feel sick.

Top of the Head (TH): I don’t like this up-and-down motion.

I asked her to take a breath and then imagine the up-and-down feeling again and rate her feeling of nausea. She said it was down to a 6. I asked her to think back to a specific time she’d been on a boat when she’d felt sick. She remembered one incident in which she said she’d just wanted to get back to land and she just had to hang on until the boat ride was over.

We tapped:

Karate Chop:

Even though I have this remaining seasickness being on this boat, I love and accept myself completely.

Even though I just want to get back to land, I’m doing the best I can.

Even though I just have to hang on until this is over, I deeply and completely love and accept myself and all these feelings.

EB: I want to get back to land.

SE: I don’t have any control right now.

UE: I just have to hang on until this is over.

UN: All this nausea.

CH: I want to get off this boat.

CB: I feel sick and I want to get off.

UA: I feel clammy.

TW: I feel like I’m going to throw up.

TH: All this lack of control.

She said that something interesting came up during that round, specifically when we said, “I just have to hang on until this is over.” She said she remembered a childhood incident in which her father was tickling her and it was the kind of tickling that went so far it hurt. She said she remembered that she wanted him to stop, that she was tolerating it and toughing it out–similar to every time she stepped onto a boat and felt sick.

I had her imagine the up-and-down sensation again and recheck her nausea. It was down to a 3.

We tapped:

Karate Chop point:

Even though my father’s tickling me and I don’t have any control right now, I deeply and completely love and accept myself.

Even though I just want him to stop but I have to tough this out, I love and accept myself completely.

Even though this tickling is too much and I don’t have any control, I love and accept myself and all these feelings.

EB: He’s tickling me.

SE: Stop it!

UE: That hurts!

UN: I don’t want to be tickled.

CH: I don’t have any control.

CB: I just want it to stop.

UA: I just have to tough it out.

TW: He’s not listening to me and I want him to stop.

TH: This lack of control.

We tapped some more on anger at her father, soreness on the side of her ribs where he’d tickled her when she was a child, and a remaining light-blue color of seasickness in her lower abdomen. When we were finished, her nausea was at a 0, her anger at her father was at a 0, the light-blue seasickness was gone, and she’d shifted to realizing that her father probably didn’t know he was hurting her when he was tickling her.

Since we were on Skype at the time, I tested her results by having her look at the screen while I moved it up and down like the motion of a boat. She said she was fine, but ordinarily that would have sent her over the edge. (No pun intended.)

She went on her cruise the next day and, despite one stormy day when it seemed that everyone on the boat was a little queasy from the ocean waves, she had no bouts of seasickness.

Rebecca Kane, EFT Certified Practitioner
rebecca.c.kane@gmail.com
http://brillianceunderpressure.com
(503) 341-0857

EFT Success with Pulsatile Tinnitus

Dear EFT Community

Tinnitus, a ringing in the ears, is a condition that usually appears in late adulthood and can cause a lot of distress to sufferers. It’s thought to be due to nerve damage from sources such as loud noises. There are several stories of success with tinnitus, though also quite a few with modest results. Here psychotherapist John Bullough finds a key to working on the condition with his client.

– EFT Universe

By John Bullough

I recently worked with a client in her 60s, referred to me by a local doctor. She had had severe pulsatile tinnitus for 7 months since a bout of sinusitis over Christmas. It was always worse when she lay down at night, creating a “banging” with an intensity of 12(!) out of 10, making sleep virtually impossible. She was feeling pretty desperate, as she hadn’t had more than 2 hours sleep at a stretch since the onset.

We have had four sessions so far and we were always able to reduce the tinnitus to 1 or 0 in each session simply by tapping on the tinnitus itself, and on any ongoing emotional issues or anxiety. The trouble was that the tinnitus always came back at night, and at full strength, and her own efforts to tap on it were not at all successful.

Quite naturally, she became dispirited by this, and in fact she wrote to me at one point, cancelling her next appointment, concluding like many others that she just had to “put up with it.” By coincidence, I happened to be reading Rue Hass’s excellent book The 8 Master Keys to Healing What Hurts, in which she describes how she dealt with a similar appointment cancellation. So I wrote to my client, taking my inspiration from Rue’s experience, and she agreed to have another try.

I think the real breakthrough came after reading David Lake’s excellent paper on Acceptance Tapping. It occurred to me that if she started to tap on accepting the tinnitus rather than fighting it (ironically, a stance not completely dissimilar from “putting up with it”!), her own tapping might be more successful. This proved to be the case, and I’m very happy to say that her tinnitus no longer has any pulsatile elements, and that she is always able (so far at least) to reduce it to 0 simply by following David Lake’s procedure.

She likens her tinnitus to a panic attack and, as every therapist knows, fighting panic is like throwing fuel on a fire–you only make it worse. We have agreed to suspend our sessions for a week or two while she gains experience of this. In the meantime, she is now managing to sleep soundly through the night, which is a huge relief for her.

I’m not sure whether it was the experience with this client, or something I took in at the recent EFT Masters Boot Camp in Denver, or a combination of both, but I’m coming to feel more and more that it is “Fighting, or not accepting, what is” that is the key contributor to the disruption in the body’s energy system, which in turn then causes the negative emotion. No surprise perhaps that acceptance is at the core of all the great religions!

One cautionary note: Each time I have worked with a client with tinnitus, I have developed minor pulsatile tinnitus of my own. Physician, heal thyself?

Advanced Alzheimer’s Shows Temporary Improvement with EFT

Dear EFT Community,

Working with a patient who cannot give coherent feedback requires patience, which Debra Lohri displays in this report. Even modest progress in Alzeimer’s disease is most welcome and Debra tells how she achieved it with EFT.

– EFT Universe

By Dr. Debra Lohri, DCH, LMT

I recently had the opportunity to work with a patient with hereditary Alzheimer’s disease. His father had it when he died, and a brother and sister are currently living with this condition. I didn’t know quite what to expect since this was the first time in my 6 years of using EFT that anyone with Alzheimer’s disease had ever asked me for a session. I told the client, we will call him Donny, that I didn’t know if it would help him, but I was willing to try.

I sat with Donny and asked him a few questions about if he remembered his childhood and he said no, and I asked if there had been any traumas or accidents or anything else that may have contributed to the disease. He said he didn’t remember. I asked his wife, who told me that there were in fact some traumatic childhood experiences. I knew that from reading material in Louise Hay’s book that Alzheimer’s patients may be trying to block out an unsafe world and refusing to deal with it as it is, so that is where I began. As I wasn’t able to take a SUD test, I decided to just tap on phrases that came to me about not being safe, not trusting the world.

I asked his wife if she had been aware of any painful memories that she believed were too mentally consuming and if she thought he had tried to block them out. She went on to explain to me a horrible generational story that started with his father. Apparently, his father was from a family where his father was not in the picture and the mother was raising several children on her own.

Financial burdens were so overwhelming on the single mother that she decided to prostitute not only herself, but also her older children. She believed the only way to keep custody of her children, be able to raise them on her own, and keep a roof over their heads and food in their stomachs was by selling them sexually for money.

So Donny’s father, being the oldest, was sent out to women, as well as to many men. He in turn grew up and started sexually abusing his own children. Although Donny was never part of the horrendous acts his father perpetrated on his older siblings, he was aware of what the five older children were going through and he would be tortured the rest of his life with those cries for help.

The father eventually went to jail for his violent offenses where he died, leaving the older children to help with raising the younger children. This gave me a starting point to get tapping on. We started with “Even though these bad things happened to my brothers and sisters…” Remember, I couldn’t ask him for a SUD level as he didn’t even remember how to tie his shoes. In his 50s, he had already had this condition for 3 years. Five years is the average lifespan after official diagnosis and I understand that is with medication.

We then worked on:

Even though I don’t remember how to sign my name…

Even though my childhood is too painful to remember…

Even though my dad abandoned me and I never got to know him…

Even though mother didn’t know what Dad was doing to the other kids…

Even though I don’t want to remember those bad memories…

Even though I am angry at my father for what he did…

Even though I feel angry at my mother for not protecting us…

Even though I feel ashamed at what happened to them…

Even though I feel sorry for them…

Nothing else came to mind as I worked with Donny. I wasn’t sure whether we had made any progress at all. It was hard to tell with someone who couldn’t think clearly and answer questions. So I blindly did the best I could. I really didn’t expect much without his SUD ratings and given his inability to communicate.

That was on a Sunday morning in April 2009. I received a call from his wife on Monday morning with excitement and happiness. She told me that she’d had to talk to his doctor about some medicines he was taking and they told her that they couldn’t discuss his medical treatments with her since she had not sent a power of attorney to the office for them to keep on file. She was really frustrated, as she already knew he would not be able to answer questions from the doctor or nurse on his own. His typical answer in our sessions was “I don’t know.” But his wife, not knowing what else to do, went ahead and put him on the phone to his doctor. They wanted to start by verifying his age and date of birth. She said he looked at her while talking to the doctor and answered, “August 15, 1956” and he then he said “I’m 53.” She said she couldn’t believe he knew those answers. She said, “Donny, did you just tell them your age and birth date? She was convinced it was the EFT, as all the medicines he had been taking gave him severe headaches, as well as made him seem a little “out of it” most of the time. For someone who couldn’t even sign his name, this was astounding!

I was really excited with his small amount of progress. However temporary or permanent the changes, we didn’t know. She didn’t think to ask him again over a period of hours or days to see if he could still remember this information, but we can be sure that EFT did make some difference to his memory, even if it was short-lived.

I believe this is promising. I believe that the more people experiment with EFT on Alzheimer’s patients, the more we can all learn and improve and take what we know works, and tweak it until the results we get are more deliberate and typical results than the hit-and-miss we get with trying to rely on these clients for communication.

I would love to spend more time with Donny, but distance is a problem as he lives far away. I don’t believe you can be as effective over the phone as you can in person with this type of client. If anyone else has had results with Alzheimer’s, I’d be very interested to hear your experiences. We could still see significant results in the future with Alzheimer’s patients as we expand the ever growing opportunities to use EFT.

91-year-old Man Tapping and Healing with EFT

by Kay Christopher, Expert EFT Practitioner

Dear EFT Community,

Expert EFT Practitioner Kay Christopher shares her story of how EFT helped a 91-year-old man move off morphine and begin taking his daily walks again. He was able to look at how his pain was related to a past traumatic event.

– EFT Universe

Joseph is 91-years-old and lives in a very small town in the mountains in the desert in an assisted living facility. Once when I was visiting him we used EFT to take care of some pain in his hip. At the time he didn’t seem too impressed. I suspect he thought the tapping couldn’t have caused the improvement he experienced.

Nonetheless, I later mailed him a copy of the EFT Manual, which he promptly set aside.

As time went by, and he continued to have aches and pains, I continued to use EFT with him over the phone and we kept getting results. One day he told me that he’d been reading the EFT Manual. Not only had he been reading but also he had been tapping like crazy, and had been able to get rid of all kinds of aches and pains by himself.

Imagine this: a 91 year old guy in an assisted living center, surrounded by elderly people with all kinds of serious illnesses, sitting alone in his room tapping and healing himself every day.

Here is a comment from him from that time period:

“I am 91-years-old and I live in a nursing home. I’ve had problems with my right hip for 2 months and the x-ray showed rheumatism and arthritis. I did EFT on it about three times and it went away. I did EFT for depression and it lifted me up. I was depressed for six years, since my wife was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. She didn’t remember me anymore. Now I’m free, not depressed at all. My mental alertness is phenomenal. Mentally I’m really up. Little things that irked me before are immaterial. I am thinking about what I’m going to do in the future. That’s kind of crazy at 91 years old, but I’m doing it anyway. I can’t be any more grateful.”

A few months later I phoned Joseph only to discover that he had been put on morphine two weeks prior for shoulder pain. He was slurring his words and his comprehension was poor.

I recognized right away that he was in danger for two reasons:

1) he had become immobilized due to the combination of the pain and the morphine,

2) he could no longer think clearly which meant he would no longer be able to use his mind to help his body heal.

I called Joseph’s son and asked how much longer he would be on morphine as I was worried that he would become addicted to it. His son told me that because he was “so old” the medical professionals didn’t think that he would ever get off the morphine.

They intended to leave him on it indefinitely because he was in pain. He was getting weaker and weaker and it appeared that this was the beginning of the end.

I immediately got Joseph on the phone and told him we were going to do two things:

1) get him out of pain, and

2) get him off the morphine.

I surrogate tapped,

Even though my shoulder is in so much pain that I need morphine I choose for this pain to go away and to get off this morphine anyway.

Even though this pain is unbearable without morphine, I choose for this pain to cease and to experience peace instead.

Within two days Joseph was off the morphine, could speak without slurring his words and could use his mind properly again. I am totally convinced that EFT saved his life because if he had stayed on the morphine and remained physically inactive it would only have been a matter of time before his deterioration would have caused his death.

Soon he was back to taking long walks (for a 91-year-old) and hamming it up.

But he also related to me that, while on the morphine, he had experienced a very severe trauma. The problem began with the fact that whenever he asked for more morphine the nurses would give it to him, so he ended up with an overdose.

This led to a series of terrifying visions that to him were very real. Just thinking about them he couldn’t breathe very well.

After a few rounds of tapping for his breathing we began to tap for the horrifying and frightening “Zombie Star” movie in which he watched people dying very slow and painful deaths. He said, “One after another, they just died, and died, and died.” His mouth became dry and we tapped for that. Then his arm began to hurt and we tapped for that. Eventually the movie went to a zero, and after that he was free of the deep torment these visions had continually caused him since the overdose.

A few months later when I spoke with Joseph he reported the following:

He had realized how bothered he still was from memories of when he was in WWII. He decided to tap on them. He said that at first all of his memories from that time went away completely, and then all of the good ones came back but none of the bad ones did, and it has stayed that way.

He is experiencing such elation over this! Since that time the doctors have reported to Joseph that his congestive heart failure has stopped progressing, and they are totally puzzled. Joseph told himself he wants to slow down his pulse and correct his high blood pressure, and they are coming down.

His long-term depression is still gone.

He has been experiencing some loss of balance lately, has been tapping on that, and it has improved.

He says, “I am flabbergasted at how beautifully EFT works.”

What I Would Do If I Was Diagnosed with a Serious Disease

by Dawson Church, PhD

Dear EFT Community,

I recently had a friend who had been diagnosed with cancer ask me: “Dawson, if you were in my shoes, what would you do?”

Wow! What a provocative question. I sent her an email with my responses, showing how to use EFT to support her emotional health as she contemplates the medical treatment ahead. Then I thought, “Why not share this with everyone?” My list is below.

You don’t need to be sick to benefit from these practices. Research shows that those who create a positive environment for themselves live much longer and happier lives. Please consider doing each of these things even if you’re in perfect health. Emotional health is physical health.

– Dawson

9 Steps to Boost Your Emotional Health

1. Get rid of absolutely every negative external influence.
Music, movies, people, books, TV shows, Internet sites, and news sources. They’re like an energy drain you just can’t afford. Simply eliminate all of it. It’s as toxic as drinking rat poison.

2. Instead, surround yourself with positive people, messages, and information.
These will be like an energy supply, building you up. I love filling my mind with ideas from inspirational leaders like Wayne Dyer, Esther Hicks, Marci Shimoff, Jack Canfield, and John Gray. They’ll flood your mind with positive messages every day.

3. Love your body with regular touch therapy.
Massage, Reiki, therapeutic touch, and use Emotional Freedom Techniques. At least 2x a week.

4. Create a vision board that you see first thing in the morning and last thing at night.
This is where you place images of everything you’d like to see in all 5 life areas:

Health
Work
Spirituality
Money
Relationships

5. Each morning, use EFT and tap while you look at your vision board.
Tune in to your Higher Power. Align yourself with that energy and tap to release everything else. I often listen to iAwake tracks during my meditations (featured in a recent EFT newsletter) and love their programs.

Start your day 100% aligned with your life purpose, with positive energy, and with your Higher Power.

“Even though I have experienced [name health issue], I deeply and completely love and accept myself.”

“Even though I have experienced [name health issue], I choose to believe that my body will heal itself.”

6. Each evening, do the same thing.
Be 100% aligned before you go to sleep. Ask your subconscious for healing dreams. If you wake up remembering a significant dream, write it down and use the Dream to Freedom technique to interpret it.

7. Post a request for healing on every prayer line you can find.
Like: Unity.org/prayer and Light a Candle. Post prayer requests with your local churches. Even those of other religions! It’s fine to have the rabbi, imam, guru, shaman, and reverend all praying for you.

8. Work with a certified EFT practitioner.
Bring in an expert, and tap on both the emotional issues that underlie disease, and on the physical parts of the experience. Research shows that tapping is epigenetic. It changes your gene expression. Nudge immunity, cell metabolism, and vitality in a positive direction by tapping with an expert.

9. All of the above is easy. Now for the hard part.

Eliminate all negative thoughts. You can’t afford a single one. Ever.

Be proactive about this by deciding on the wording of a positive thought each morning. This is the affirmation with which you’ll replace every negative thought that might come up during the day.

Write your positive “replacement thought” on post-it notes and post them in every room in the house and your workplace. Repeat your positive affirmations every morning while tapping. Spend 20 to 30 minutes on this. Don’t give even one negative thought a chance to sabotage your mind any time during the day.

Clean up what you follow in social media so that what you encounter online supports your healing goals. That means no negative news, no depressing social media posts. It means tuning out any and all negative media influences and flooding your experience with the positive.

Research shows that EFT and positive emotions change our brains and alter our gene expression. This includes regulating many genes involved in disease. So please do these 9 things.

As well as emotional intervention, it’s also worth cleaning up your diet, getting rid of any potential toxins in your home, setting up a work schedule that supports your health, participating in loving community, and making sure you do everything possible for the best possible life.

Please do this. You’re worth it!