By Jennifer Suarez
Brian came to me to see if EFT could help his brain capacity and memory loss. Despite being young, he had already had several concussions and brain injuries. He was very frustrated that the brain traumas had compounded and resulted in difficulties articulating to the outside world what he was thinking internally.
Though he would take the time to think carefully through larger problems in his life, it was the small issues that he didn’t have time to spend on, which were proving to be a challenge.
For example, he would think of a word in his head, such as “much” and know that it is spelled “M-U-C-H,” but then write it “M-C-U-H,” without realizing that it was wrong.
Inquiring into his memory capacity before the concussions, I uncovered that, on top of the concussions, Brian had limited memories from his childhood. I made a note of this, as it can be an indicator of unprocessed trauma.
We started with the problem statement:
“Things don’t happen in real life like they do in my brain.”
I asked him to repeat the statement and to notice in his body if he felt any sensations. He was feeling a pain in his head. Together, we dug deeper to get as specific with the sensation as possible. He decided it was a “throbbing pain in his forehead.”
On a scale of 0 to 10, the initial SUD level was a 7 for the problem statement, a 10 for frustration, 17 for disappointment.
Since this was one of his first times with EFT, I explained how we wanted to “go back” in his memory to the first time he remembered feeling this throbbing pain in his forehead. If we were able to process the emotions in that situation, the benefits would likely carry forward into the present day and reduce the current issue. I asked Brian to follow the feeling back to the first time he remembered feeling it. Then on the count of three, I asked him how old he was.
The memory that came up was of when he was 18 years old at work in his office. However, he could remember nothing beyond that or “see” anything else in the memory.
We started working with what we had:
“Even though I can’t remember what’s going on, I deeply and completely love and accept myself fully.”
“Even though all I know is that I’m at work, I deeply and completely love and accept myself anyway.”
“Even though my memory is fuzzy and I can’t remember what else is going on, I choose to love and accept myself anyway.”
We did several rounds of tapping on the frustrations of his memory loss, not being able to remember anything else about the scene, his memory being fuzzy all the time, and being disappointed with himself.
We also tapped on “feeling safe enough to let go and allow my subconscious mind to help me heal my brain.”
After a few rounds, we checked whether there had been any progress. I asked him to go back to that memory of being at his desk at work. This time, he remembered more–and said the memory was from the day he had his first head injury at work. He had just hit his head on a metal pipe, was extremely embarrassed, and went to sit down at his desk to recover.
”¨We tapped on the feelings as they came up, especially the embarrassment and shame of being a “klutz,” “struggling” in life, and always messing up.
I checked back in with Brian to see if anything new had come up in the memory. He said that now he remembered his boss coming over, seeing him, and being upset that he wasn’t helping the rest of the team clean up. I asked Brian if he was still feeling embarrassed.
All of a sudden, his voice and face changed, and he said he just felt very detached: “The man at the desk is not me.”
Recognizing this detachment as a coping mechanism for uncomfortable memories, we tapped for many rounds on “It’s okay to remember memories,” “It’s safe to feel my feelings,” and “It’s important to process what happened before, so the memories aren’t stuck in my body.”
I checked in continuously with Brian during the tapping to make sure he was feeling safe.
He shifted after several rounds and noted that now he was just worried about being overwhelmed from all his bad memories coming up at once and being too much to deal with. We tapped on allowing them to come up gradually, only as he was ready to deal with them, on feeling safe, and being able to handle what his subconscious gave him.
All of a sudden, his memory opened up and he told me he had a flood of memories that suddenly returned to his mind from his childhood through his adult life. There were too many to address in one session, so I asked him to choose the one that seemed the worst to work on first and we continued the session using the Movie Technique on that specific memory.
By the end of the EFT session, the frustration and disappointment were gone and he had taken the first step toward healing his memory.
