By Bev Nerenberg, Certified EFT Practitioner
My 8-year-old granddaughter, diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, had to do a rather large school project and she was procrastinating on starting it. I was visiting for a weekend and her parents asked me to at least start working on it with her to see how far we could get.
As the project was pretty big, she was a bit freaked out about what it would take to finish the thing. There was clearly a skyscraper in the room and she didn’t quite grasp the concept that we would approach it one brick at a time. She kept seeing the whole building and it was overwhelming.
I asked her if we could tap a little on how big and impossible this project seemed. She agreed and it didn’t take much to have it be okay with her that we start it.
I kept it pretty simple, with these Setup Statements:
Even though this is so much work, I know I’m an awesome kid anyway.
Even though it doesn’t seem like we’ll ever get it done, I’m an awesome kid.
Then we tapped through the points until she said, “Let’s do it.” So we began work on the project.
After about 45 minutes, she started getting very anxious and didn’t want to work on it any longer. She had a Tappy Bear, so I got it and told her to let Tappy Bear know how much she didn’t want to do any more of the project.
And she really let him know!
She was banging on his points, actually yelling, “I am tired of doing this! I don’t want to do it anymore! It’s too big. I want to play instead. I hate this!” She went on and on like that through the points on Tappy Bear for about three rounds. No Setup Statements, just tapping the points. (See my note at the end of this article for how to get or make a Tappy Bear.)
After a few minutes, she calmed down considerably and we did more of the project. In another 30 to 45 minutes, she had another outburst, picked up Tappy Bear on her own, and let him have it again. The same calm reaction occurred. This happened two more times, and after working on the huge project for about 4 hours, it was nearly complete.
Spending that amount of time on a single project was really a lot for her and I’m convinced that she wouldn’t have been able to get as far as she did without getting the relief from her anxiety when it came up. Tappy Bear was the perfect solution. And notice how the results were produced without any tapping on herself.
When we stopped for the day, it was obvious how good she felt, and she was very proud of what she had accomplished. And, for further validation, she got an A on the project!
Note: Tappy Bear is a stuffed teddy bear that has black buttons to indicate the EFT points. Although it isn’t available anymore, you can use any stuffed animal or doll, and use a nontoxic magic marker to mark the points. (I just checked eBay and they have a couple of Tappy Bears for $140!)
