Dear EFT Community,
Sherrie Rice Smith, an expert EFT practitioner, details the use of EFT tapping to uncover and clear the initiating event behind her client’s current state of “feeling stuck.”
-EFT Universe
By Sherrie Rice Smith, RN (Ret.), EFT-EXP
All the science behind Emotional Freedom Techniques teaches us how early childhood experiences hold us fast, creating our adult reality without us understanding what makes us tick. The subconscious grabs an idea and stays with it throughout our lives until we realize life isn’t giving us what we want, expect, or think we deserve.
For those of us who use EFT, we now know we can dismantle those early cognitive beliefs, changing everything, and move forward.
Recently, a client wanted to tap around her resistance to her “new life.” Retirement loomed and she wanted to create a different stream of income to supplement her savings.
Mary (name changed) told me, “I’ve tried many things, but nothing has panned out for me.”
As she talked, and I do this with all my clients, I told her to begin tapping on an acupressure point of her choice. I find that tapping from the moment the session begins while the clients explains what is happening in her life and what exactly she wants to tap on during the session, loosens up the subconscious to clarify the issues, pinpointing more exactly what needs to be released during that session.
Mary actually went on for quite some time explaining her background to me. She is a fairly new client, so we are still getting to know each other. While it could appear to outsiders, if they were listening in, that I’m not doing much to help her by allowing her to just talk, if Mary taps, it works just as well as a structured session. She is releasing all the angst around the childhood memories she is telling me.
Mary finally told me, “I feel stuck.” It was now time to tap in earnest. I inquired as to where she felt the “stuck” and what emotion was attached to it. “Embarrassment, and it’s in my chest. It’s affecting my breathing,” she said.
“Keep tapping,” I told her, “and go back in your mind and tell me the first time you felt an embarrassment in your chest.” About 15 seconds later the event revealed itself.
“My kindergarten teacher brought me to the front of the room and put me on her lap,” Mary recalled. “I was embarrassed by the attention.”
“What SUD level do you have around the embarrassment?” I asked.
“It’s a 10!”
We tapped on the embarrassment of being in front of the class and being “stuck on the teacher’s lap.” Mary exclaimed that she had tapped on this episode several times before, but she had never seen it in the light of “being stuck.”
Within a short time, Mary dropped to a 5 on the SUD scale. I asked my usual question, “How come it isn’t a 0?”
Mary’s answer was interesting. “I don’t recall struggling. I was passive and accepting in the teacher’s comfortable soft lap. I felt love, but I was embarrassed by it all.” She went on to relate that, apparently from an early age, she realized the family’s hard financial struggle. She always told herself a high school class ring “didn’t matter” when in reality it did, but nonetheless she never got one.
My oldest sister was “out there and always got what she wanted,” but “I never spoke up for myself. I was the goody-two-shoes, my sister said.” Mary went on, “I remember being given a bag of used clothing that fit me. I ironed them up to wear to school the next week and my sister took them and she wore them instead. I let her do it.”
There were a few other incidents around babysitting and high school prom, too, that entered into the memories and subsequent tapping.
I inquired as to what emotion that all elicited. It was “sadness” and “regret” on a SUD level of 4.
We continued tapping on the three emotions and bits and pieces of the events for a short time. It all vaporized quickly to a 0 SUD score.
Mary was thrilled and I was amazed, as always, how “stuck” in kindergarten manifested today, years later, as “I feel stuck.”
“I’ve tapped on this many times,” Mary said, “but I never made that connection. That was an immense help to me. I’m anxious now to see where this all goes as I step out into my new life.”
I, too, am anxious to see where it all goes! EFT is a wonderful tool for exploring and rooting out those early, embedded beliefs we have about ourselves and who we think we are. None of it is true. We can be anyone or do anything we choose, no matter the age, once we uncover and dismantle the block we learned early in life.
What a privilege to do this work! I feel honored.
