By P. Davis
A woman attending an EFT tapping seminar complained of a pain on her right shoulder blade. She expressed that for 18 months the pain had been unrelenting. She answered that her SUD Level of Intensity for this pain was about an 8 or 9 out of 10 with 10 being the most extreme pain.
I started her tapping with the straightforward “Basic Recipe” setup, tapping on the knife-hand strike point and saying:
“Even though I have this pain in my right shoulder blade, I deeply and completely accept myself.”
Then we used the reframe: “Shoulder pain.”
Her pain dropped down to a SUD Level of 7.
I asked her to give the pain a color. She said it was a black pain. I also asked her to be more specific about where the pain was. She described it as being under her shoulder blade and towards the bottom.
We the tapped:
“Even though I have this black pain underneath the bottom of my right shoulder blade, I deeply and completely accept myself.”
Reframe:
“This black pain underneath the bottom of my right shoulder blade.”
Her pain then dropped a a SUD of 6.
At this point, I saw that we were not going to relieve this pain quickly for her. I was sure that with persistence, we could have done it, but I wanted to be more elegant than that. The fact that the pain was only reducing by one point on each round told me that this issue had to be tackled in a different way. In my experience, it is also a strong indicator that the emotional problems causing the pain were most likely near the surface.
I said to her, “IF there was an emotional cause for this pain, what would it be?”
She replied “I have no idea!” I then asked, “I know you have no idea what the emotional cause might be for this pain, but if you DID know, what would it be?” (I love this way of turning things around, sometimes it can pay big dividends). But this time, she looked blank again and said, “No idea…”
I asked her to think of ANY emotional event in her life. (I find that when the client is tuned into a problem, the chances are that they will guess at the right one) She replied, “Sending my mother to live in a home.”
At this point I saw that there were tears in her eyes. I guessed she was at a SUD Level of 9 or 10 on this issue. I tapped with her without saying anything for about 3 or 4 rounds, to reduce the distress. This worked well and she was ready to continue. I decided to have us try one of those long rambling setups. Out of concern for her privacy and to keep this story short, I will not include everything, but I introduced the idea that the guilt she was feeling had manifested as pain in her shoulder blade.
We then tapped:
“Even though I feel guilt over sending my mother in to a home, I deeply and completely accept myself.”
“Even though I feel guilt, I deeply and completely accept myself.”
“Even though I feel guilt in my shoulder blade, I deeply and completely accept myself.”
“Even though I am feeling this ‘Mother guilt’ in my shoulder blade, I deeply and completely accept myself.”
Her SUD intensity level over the guilt went straight down to a 0. She said, “Actually, she does quite enjoy it there.” Which made everyone laugh.
Her pain in the shoulder blade also went down to a zero at the same time, and she has been pain free ever since – 6 weeks now!
This brief example shows how with a little ingenuity, you can achieve some wonderful results when exploring EFT Tapping as a pain-Management tool by attacking the possible emotional roots of physical pain.
