Dear EFT Community,
Professional Vocalist, Andrea Fultz of Your Healing Voice, shares how she uses EFT to help stutterers. While there’s no cure for stuttering, Andrea shows how EFT is an effective treatment that does help.
– EFT Universe
By Andrea Fultz
I had called the associations of stuttering people in Munich to offer them an Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) seminar, in the hopes of demonstrating new ways of dealing with stuttering symptoms.
Most stutterers haven’t heard of EFT, or any energy healing methods for stuttering, but most are willing to give it a try.
When I attended the University to study speech pathology, I learned that there is basically no known cure that would stop people from stuttering instantly and permanently.
However, stuttering always seems to be connected to emotional issues. Many books on stuttering point to this connection. EFT is great for dealing with and handling emotional issues, which makes it a perfect tool for stutterers.
The only real difficulty I faced for the stutterers was the speaking part of EFT tapping.
When it came to the point of applying EFT in the seminars, I decided to instruct the group attending to hum the EFT set-up phrases using their voices as if they were speaking without articulating with their lips by keeping their lips closed.
This worked very well and no one had a problem with stuttering while stating the set-up phrases.
We’d begin with a few rounds of EFT tapping on something that they’d choose in the moment. It could be a simple issue like hand pain, knee pain (something other than stuttering), which would either subside completely or improve drastically.
This exercise would convince the group to trust EFT so that we could then move on to addressing their stuttering.
I’d then move to some general rounds of tapping for releasing their stuttering issues.
We tapped:
Even though I stutter, I deeply and completely accept myself.
Reminder phrases:
I have a hard time speaking fluently …
I can’t speak freely …
Something is not working the way it should …
I have such difficulties with speaking, this stutter…
Everybody in the groups seemed to resonate well with the sentences. If it felt like the right thing to do in the moment, we’d continue tapping in a more detailed way. They’d give me additional information about the thoughts and emotions that come with stuttering.
We tapped:
Even though I am so embarrassed that I stutter, I accept and love myself the way I am.
Reminder phrases:
I am so embarrassed …
People might think I am not intelligent …
My parents might be ashamed of me …
People may think I am stupid …
Why can’t I just stop it? …
I am so embarrassed …
What’s wrong with me? …
I feel ashamed of myself …
I’m so embarrassed.
We’d tap:
Even though I am so afraid that I will stutter in front of other people, and therefore I avoid conversations with others, I know I am just as lovable as everybody else, and I deeply love and accept myself.
Reminder phrases:
I am afraid to speak …
I could mess up the words …
This fear …
I want to hide …
I am so afraid of speaking …
When I’m alone talking is a piece of cake …
But when other people face me I start stuttering …
I am so afraid …
I have a fear of speaking …
I might mess it up …
But I know that I am just as lovable as everybody else …
I sometimes don’t give them a chance and I hide …
I avoid talking to them …
I am so afraid they will not like me …
I avoid social situations …
I might mess up the words …
I’m so afraid.
After these rounds of tapping the different groups would often respond that tapping gave them emotional relief–especially when saying all the stuttering emotional phrases that resonated with them.
Each of them would read a text of about 2 minutes. Almost all of them spoke significantly more fluently, or with more ease, than they normally did. One of my participants didn’t stutter a single time throughout reading their text.
I often asked them to remember a situation when the stuttering was very intense. Remembering a particular intense situation gives us a frame of SUD level to work with.
We would then tap:
Even though [name intense situation] because I stutter, and it makes me so [angry, hurt, frustrated, sad, etc], I deeply and completely love and accept myself.
Even though I am so sad that [name situation], I forgive myself and I deeply and completely accept and love myself anyway.
I’d suggest that they tap on specific events in the past which they have an emotional intensity on, maybe a comment, maybe a picture, a certain situation that might be related to their stuttering and use EFT to calm their feelings around these events.
EFT showed stutterers a completely new way of dealing with the emotions associated with stuttering.
