EFT uses the term “aspects” to refer to the parts of an event.
In the previous tutorial, we explained the importance of finding specific events, rather than tapping on generalities.
Within those events, aspects are the parts of the experience, and it’s vital that we identify all the aspects of an event, and tap on each one till it loses its emotional charge.
Here’s an example of tapping on aspects, drawn from experience at an actual EFT Workshop.
A woman in her late thirties volunteered a subject. She had neck pain, and limited range of motion, after an automobile accident six years before. She could turn her head to the right most of the way, but she had only a few degrees of movement to the left.
The accident had been a minor one, and why she still suffered six years later was something of a mystery to her.
We asked her to feel where in her body she felt the most intensity when recalling the accident, and she said it was in hear upper chest. We then asked her about the first time she’d ever felt that way, and she said it was when she’d been involved in another auto accident at the age of 8.
Her sister was driving the car. We worked on each aspect of the early accident.
The two girls had hit another car head-on at low speed while turning a bend on a country road. One emotionally triggering aspect was the moment she realized that a collision was unavoidable, and we tapped till that lost its force. We tapped on the sound of the crash, another aspect. She had been taking to a neighbor’s house, bleeding from a head cut, and we tapped on that.
We tapped on aspect after aspect.
Still, her pain level didn’t go down much, and her range of motion didn’t improve.
Then she gasped, and said, “I just remembered. My sister was only 15-years-old. She was underage. That day, I dared her to drive the family car, and we totaled it.”
Her guilt turned out to be the aspect that held the most emotional charge, and after we tapped on that, her pain disappeared, and she regained full range of motion in her neck.
If we’d tapped on the later accident, or failed to uncover all the aspects, we might have thought, “EFT doesn’t work.”
Aspects can be pains, physical feelings, emotions, elements of an event, or beliefs.
Make sure you dig deep for all the aspects of an event before you move on to the next one. Check each sensory channel, and ask, “What did you hear – see – taste – touch – smell?”
Thorough exploration of all the aspects will usually yield a complete neutralization of the memory.
If there’s still some emotional charge left, the chances are good that you’ve missed an aspect, so go back and find out what shards of trauma might still be stuck in the picture.
