A: You might have memories of events that were painful, but when you try and assign them a SUD score, your mind goes blank, or you don’t feel any strong feelings. There are several approaches you can use in such cases.
One is just to invent a SUD score. Perhaps a bully beat you up in second grade in school and you know it was a horrible experience, but you can’t figure out what your SUD number is. You can simply imagine a score, making it relative to other experiences in your life. If a happy memory is a 0 and the worst experience of your life is a 10, give the beating a number that seems logical even if you can’t come up with a SUD number based on your feelings.
Another is to tap without identifying a SUD score. You can formulate a Setup Statement and perform a whole round of EFT without any SUD rating at the beginning or end. Afterward, think of the problem and ask yourself, “Do I feel better now?” If you do, that’s an indication EFT has worked, even though you never assigned the problem a numerical score.
The SUD rating is a useful way to assess progress, but like any other part of the EFT routine, if it hangs you up, drop it and tap anyway. Don’t let the inability to come up with a SUD score serve as a block to starting a round of EFT.
–from The EFT Manual, by Dawson Church
