Emotional Freedom Techniquestm

This is an Email support list for those who have taken our video based EFT courses.  Anyone is welcome to listen in, however.

Thought for the day..."Money talks, but all mine ever says is good-bye."  Anonymous

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Hi Everyone,

I know that "How to approach a 100% success rate" is an aggressive title and I thought long and hard before actually committing it to print.  My thoughts, however, had nothing to do with the truth of those words.  Rather, I was concerned about their acceptance.

Many cannot accept this possibility because they have "bought" that 100% success rates are impossible and thus misleading to the public.  Such sinister proclamations are, they think, the wayward words of charlatans and evil doers who falsely build the hopes of the hopelessly afflicted and then walk off into the sunset with their pockets filled with gold.

Sigh!

Please understand that what I am discussing here is NOT put forward as the ultimate cure for cancer or schizophrenia (although the door should not be closed on those possibilities).  Rather, it is put forward as a highly efficient way to handle the debilitating SPECIFIC EVENTS in one's life that, in many cases, cause or contribute to everything from OCD and addictions to depression, cancer and schizophrenia.

Further, we need to define success if we are going to properly claim near 100% success rates.  Thus success, for these purposes, means....

An obvious emotional improvement
in the SPECIFIC EVENT being addressed.

Often (but not always), this results in bringing the unnecessary emotional charge on the SPECIFIC EVENT down to 0.

Given this definition....AND....EFT's ability to handle SPECIFIC EVENTS, approaching 100% success rates is quite feasible.

I have been beating the drum for many years about BEING SPECIFIC with EFT.  In more recent times I have urged EFT'ers to break down emotional issues into the SPECIFIC EVENTS that underlie them.  When this is done, we are addressing the true causes and not just the symptoms.  While there is a skill to doing this, those that have done so have watched their success rates climb impressively.  They are also doing deeper, more meaningful work.

I have found, and demonstrated consistently, that applying EFT to the smallest component of a bothersome memory almost always works.  In fact, I haven't failed to gain success in this way over my last 200 attempts.  This idea has the potential to substantially improve EFT's success rate AND pave the way for healing in areas previously thought difficult or impossible.

This is particularly useful....even critical .... within Borrowing Benefits.  Why?  Because the audience members (clients) are prone to tap on global issues UNLESS they are clearly instructed to zero in on SPECIFIC EVENTS.  Thus, absent proper instruction, Borrowing Benefits clients will tend to shift around within their global issue and not notice the results they are getting.

Here's more about the concept...

Most clients present their emotional issues in very global manners.  They say things like, "I feel abandoned"... or..."I'm always anxious"... or... "I was an abused child"... or... "I hate my father" and so on.  To them, THAT is the problem and THAT is what they ask the therapist to fix.

But, despite this perception of the client, THAT is not the problem.  Instead, those feelings represent SYMPTOMS of the problem.  The real problem is the unresolved SPECIFIC EVENT(s) that CAUSE the larger issue.  How can one feel abandoned or abused, for example, unless there were SPECIFIC EVENTS in one's life to cause those feelings (e.g. mother walking out of the house or father administering a beating)?  Those feelings just don't appear out of the ether.  They must have a cause.

If we consider the larger issue (e.g. abandonment) to be a table top then the table legs represent the SPECIFIC EVENTS that support the table.  Obviously, if we reduce an issue to the SPECIFIC EVENTS supporting it and then collapse those table legs, the table top will fall for lack of support.  This way we address the true causes (the SPECIFIC EVENTS) and not the symptom.

Unfortunately, many EFT practitioners still apply EFT to the table top and not the causes.  Thus they might start with....

"Even though I have this feeling of abandonment...."

Being too global like this is the number one error made by new EFT'ers (and some seasoned ones, too).  Interestingly, this will sometimes get results but it is not nearly as thorough or precise as going for the supporting table legs (causes).  Also, because this global approach lacks precision, clients are more likely to report that their issues "came back."  What appears to "come back," of course, are unresolved pieces (table legs) that were not previously addressed.

In addition, approaching an issue in such a global manner creates an environment wherein the client often "shifts" from event to event.  Since the client and the EFT Practitioner are often unaware of these shifts, the EFT practitioner will often misread the client's responses.  This can also lead to some unexplained and sudden client intensity.  It is difficult enough to deal with this in one-on-one sessions but it is even more difficult during Borrowing Benefits where you have little or no one-on-one interface.

Soooo, you can be much more accurate and achieve greater success rates if you reduce those global issues (table tops) to the SPECIFIC EVENTS (table legs) that cause them.  Examples for the global issue of "I feel abandoned" might be....

The time my mother left me in the shopping mall at age 8.

The time my father told me to leave home when I was age 12.

The time my 3rd grade teacher gave me that "I don't care about you" look.

These SPECIFIC EVENTS are much easier to deal with than the global issue and, so long as the client is properly instructed to stay with them (without shifting), your success ratio on those SPECIFIC EVENTS should be very high (approaching 100%).

Two points about this idea that deserve special note....

1.  There can be hundreds or thousands of such SPECIFIC EVENTS underlying a larger issue (table top) and thus, theoretically, addressing them all can be a tedious process.  Fortunately, you do not have to address every SPECIFIC EVENT to collapse the larger issue.  You can usually do the job by collapsing somewhere between 5 and 20 of those table legs.  This is because there is usually a commonality or "general theme" among all those SPECIFIC EVENTS.  Thus, after appropriately collapsing a few of those table legs with EFT, a "Generalization Effect" occurs that serves to collapse ALL the legs.

This Generalization Effect is described and displayed in our "6 Days at the VA" video (part of The EFT Course ).

2.  Sometimes the SPECIFIC EVENT is too long and has so many pieces to it that it should be treated as a separate table top.  The example given above....

The time my mother left me in the shopping mall at age 8

...is such a candidate.

Why?  Because it is likely several hours in length and probably has many pieces such as....

The fear of being all by myself.

The fear of all those big adults walking around me.

The guilt I felt for what I might have done to cause this.

The "I don't care look" in mother's eyes when I arrived home.

And so on.

Each of those pieces can be a SPECIFIC EVENT all by itself and should be addressed separately.

There is an art to properly identifying which issues are table tops and which are legs, but that comes with time and experience.  When in doubt, go for the smallest pieces.   Your success rates will go much higher when you do.  I've seen entire issues collapse by just addressing a small but important piece such as, "the hateful look in father's eye."   Sometimes the entire global issue can be reduced to a 2 second SPECIFIC EVENT and collapsed in moments with EFT.

Choosing the SPECIFIC EVENT can be crucially important for some people during Borrowing Benefits.  That is why instructions need to be so clear.

More next time.

Hugs, Gary