By Sherry Banaka, Certified EFT Practitioner
In this session, “Jodie” (not her real name) wanted to work on her foot pain. She was having trouble with the arch of her right foot, which was painful when walking. Her SUD level of intensity on pain right then was 4, and 5 out of 10 when she was walking.
After tapping a Basic Recipe round on:
“Even though I have this pain in the arch of my right foot, I deeply and completely love and accept myself,”
with
“This pain in my right foot”
as the Reminder Phrase, Jodie’s SUD level of intensity dropped to a 2.
I asked her if the pain was trying to tell her something. She answered, “I’d like to be better, to exercise and walk and not hurt.” I asked Jodie if the pain had a color. She told me it was hard for her to visualize, so I asked what her learning style is. She replied that it’s auditory, but she wasn’t hearing any sounds associated with the pain.
We tapped another Basic Recipe round, and Jodie said she was having happy thoughts about being able to walk and exercise without pain, but she was also having some anxiety about doing a lot of walking during an upcoming 3-day convention. I asked if she could remember the first time she felt this anxiety.
She said, “Memories of this pain in my heel in the left and right foot last year during the state fair.”
Jodie said she had lots of events coming up: the 3-day convention, then 4 days in Canada, and then the state fair again.
I asked Jodie to tell me more about her experience being at the state fair last year. She said it was stressful and by 4:00-5:00 p.m. that day, the pain in the heel of her right foot was getting really intense and she needed to rest. She repeated the word “stress.” Jodie’s SUD level on “stress at the state fair” was 8. “I can’t seem to stop when I need to,” she said, “I have a compulsion to go, go, go. If I stopped, I wouldn’t get stuff done.”
I asked Jodie what would happen if she didn’t get everything done.
She replied, “People will be disappointed in me.” I asked when was the first time she felt that. Jodie said, “I always had chores to do before Mom got home. If I was at a friend’s house, I would feel guilty and rush home to get my chores done. I wanted to play first and then had to rush to get things done. Mom was always go, go, go. I was afraid of not getting everything done.”
“What was the consequence of not getting it all done?” I asked. Jodie answered, “I would get whipped if I didn’t. I was scared-to-death of Mom.” The SUD level on this fear was 10.
We tapped a round using the 9 Gamut Procedure, beginning with:
“Even though I am afraid of the consequences if I don’t get everything done,”
and
“This fear of the consequences,”
“Scared to death of Mom,”
“I’ll get a whipping if I don’t get done,”
as the Reminder Phrases.
Jodie said, “My right foot started throbbing during the round but then it calmed down when I was rolling my eyes around the clock face.” (During the 9 Gamut round, I had asked Jodie to roll her eyes in large circles, as far to the periphery as she could, as though she were moving them smoothly along the numbers of a large clock face.)
I asked if anything else came up. Jodie said, “Sadness for all the emotions of that. Mom was mean.”
She said her mother had never wanted kids and she ended up raising four of them by herself because she divorced their father when Jodie was 3. She didn’t know how to be a mom. She did remarry later, and Jodie’s stepfather was a good dad and helped relieve her mom’s burden. Jodie was 13 by then, and there were no more whippings after that, though her mom was still verbally abusive.
Jodie said she has forgiven her mom by now. Her SUD level on fear of her mom was now 0, but her SUD on sadness was 7, and her SUD on foot pain was 5 when bending her foot.
We tapped a Basic Recipe round on:
“Even though I have this level 7 of sadness when I think of my mom,”
with
“This sadness,”
“This sadness about my Mom and my childhood”
as the Reminder Phrases.
Jodie’s SUD level on sadness was now 2, but the SUD on foot pain was still 5, and she said:
“I was thinking I punish myself by keeping going so I won’t disappoint other people, friends. I’m always doing, doing, doing for everyone else, and now it’s an expectation. I would feel bad if I didn’t do what I normally do. I do a lot of cooking. I feed the world. I enjoy it. I enjoy being the caretaker of the family, including the extended family. The downside is I can’t stop. I feel OCD about it, like they can’t even butter their own banana bread, so I slice it and butter the slices before I wrap it up. It’s like I’m afraid they will be missing out if they eat it without buttering it first.”
I asked Jodie what she thought would happen if she told her family she just couldn’t do it this time. She said they would understand, so it’s not a fear of their judgments. It’s just a standard of how they were raised. Her sisters bake, too, and her brother makes wine.
I asked Jodie how true this statement is for her: “If I stop to rest, I won’t be able to give to others as much as I want to and I won’t receive as much joy as I want.” Jodie’s VOC (Validity of Cognition, or percentage of feeling true on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being very true) on this statement was 10. She said she had recently weeded her friend’s garden for her and then went shopping to get ready for her trip, instead of resting when her foot hurt.
She said, “I punish myself often.”
We tapped a round using the 9 Gamut technique followed by the floor-to-ceiling eye roll, beginning with:
“Even though I do things for others at my own expense, and I punish myself often, I deeply and completely love and accept myself anyway,”
with
“I help others at my own expense,”
“I punish myself often”
as Reminder phrases, and continuing with
“I can’t stop to rest, I’ll miss out on too much.”
Jodie said her VOC on “If I stop to rest, I won’t be able to give to others as much as I want to and I won’t receive as much joy as I want” was now 0, but she was feeling a level 5 of anxiety at the thought of stopping to rest. She said, “We missed out on so much as kids because Mom wouldn’t let us go do the things we wanted to do.” I asked Jodie for her VOC on “I can’t stop to rest because I will miss out and I don’t want to miss out.”
It was 10, and she had a level 10 of “sadness on missing out.”
We tapped another 9 Gamut round, followed again by the floor-to-ceiling eye roll, beginning with:
“Even though I have a level 5 of anxiety at the thought of stopping to rest, and I have a level 10 of sadness that I will miss out if I stop, I deeply and completely love and accept myself just as I am, even with this anxiety and sadness,”
continuing with
“This level 5 of anxiety,”
“All this sadness,”
“I’ll miss out if I stop to rest, and I don’t want to miss out,”
as the Reminder Phrases.
Jodie’s SUD score on sadness dropped to 2, and her SUD on anxiety dropped to 0. I asked Jodie to evaluate the pain in her foot. She reported it was now SUD 0, too.
I asked Jodie for her VOC on the statement, “If I stop to rest to allow my body to heal, it will allow me to do even more.” Her VOC on this was 10.
We tapped a final round using the Choices Method, beginning with:
“Even though I don’t want to stop and rest because I don’t want to miss out, I am willing to accept the possibility that if I do stop to rest, my body will heal, and then I can do more,”
followed by a round of positive-negatives:
“I can’t stop, I’ll miss out on too much,”
“If I rest, my body can heal and I can do more,”
“I don’t want to stop, I’ll miss out,”
“If I rest and heal, I can do even more and without pain.”
We followed that with:
“Even though it’s hard for me to stop because I don’t want to miss out, I choose to accept the possibility that, if I do stop to rest, my body will heal, and then I can do more, and I can do it without pain, and I deeply and completely love and accept myself,”
with
“I choose to rest and heal my body,”
“My body will allow me to do more,”
“I choose to rest and heal and then I can do more and I can do it without pain.”
as the Reminder Phrases.
After this round, Jodie’s SUD level on sadness was 0, her SUD on anxiety was 0, and her SUD on pain was 0.
Follow-up
When I contacted Jodie about having this session published in the EFT Newsletter, she sent me the following testimonial:
Dear Sherry,
After speaking with you about having my tapping session [published], you sent me the manuscript for my permission to have [it] published. After I read through it, I realized that I had completely forgotten about the pain I had in the arch of my foot. This was the whole reason why I sought help from you. This to me was amazing! Here is my story.
Before I contacted Sherry I had been seen by a chiropractor who specialized in sports injuries. Unfortunately, he could not help me. After which I went to a different chiropractor who specialized in muscle testing. I had several sessions with him working on the arch of my foot with chiropractic treatments, and it too was unsuccessful, so I asked him if he could muscle test me to see if the pain was emotional instead of physical. The conclusion was that it was emotional. This is when I contacted Sherry for help. She specializes in “tapping” to relieve pain associated with emotions. I had a 2.5-hour session over the computer (Skype) in which we applied the technique of tapping. I could not believe how much this actually helped!
After 5 months, Sherry contacted me wanting permission to publish our session. As I was reading through her letter, it dawned on me that I had no pain in the arch of my foot. My pain was 100% gone! This is why it was amazing to me. Because I totally forgot I had the pain! I wasn’t suffering anymore. In addition to this story, my sister also benefited from my tapping session with Sherry. I recorded the session and my sister listened to the recording and applied the tapping technique. She had a sprained ankle, which she had suffered from for over 2 months. She is now also pain free 100%!
