Using EFT for "Everything is my fault!"

By Sarah Marshall

Hi Gary

I've recently been working with a couple of clients and our sessions together have led me to think about The Law of Attraction and how it works when we're children.  If we take The Law of Attraction at face value - that we attract what we focus on - then this would literally mean we attracted everything that happened to us as children.  Now if our childhood was abusive (whether it was emotional, mental, physical or sexual) then taking it literally it would mean we attracted it. This is something that doesn't fit for me, as the child is always innocent in the abusive situation.

One of my clients, who I will call ‘Alison’, had fully recovered from ME/CFS (chronic fatigue syndrome) and we were now using EFT to clear trauma that she experienced in her childhood which she believes led to her eventually getting CFS in her adult life.  

Although she was fully recovered and had worked through a lot of what had caused her to get ill in the first place, she was still experiencing stress due to negative beliefs - one of which was 'everything's my fault'.  She also felt the world was an 'unsafe' place.  Logically she knew this wasn't true but emotionally she had felt this way for as long as she could remember.  So we started tapping with, Even though everything's my fault…

I then asked her where she learnt this and her Mum came into her mind so we tapped on, Even though Mum taught me that everything's my fault…  I then asked her when she learnt this and she got a sense of being in the womb so we tapped, Even though I learnt this in the womb…

She felt she kept ‘slipping’ into the memory and wanted to tap whilst in it.  Although she had intensity, she felt this was the right thing for her to do (in working together we have discovered that she is kinesthetic in NLP terms so she re-experiences early events in feelings rather than visually).  So we started tapping with how it felt:

Even though it feels dark, cold and lonely…

Even though it doesn’t feel safe, I know I’m ok…

At this point she felt jittery feelings in her body and gave it a level of intensity of 8 out of 10, but she felt it was ok to stay in the memory and we tapped on, Even though I have these '8' jittery feelings…  Once the jittery feelings came down to 2 out of 10, she felt that she was 'receiving' anger from her Mum through their connection, and she could feel it flowing into her.

Even though I’m receiving anger from Mum through our connection…

Even though I can feel it flowing into me, I know I’m ok…

Even though she blames me for everything…

Even though it’s cold and icy, I’m still ok…

Once the feeling of anger had gone, I then asked Alison to guess what the intensity would be if she were to imagine being her Mum at that time and tell me what was going on.  She said it would be a 6 on a scale of 0 to 10.  So we tapped on the 6 intensity until it came down to a 1 out of 10.

We had her ‘become’ her Mum and she felt (as Mum) that she was under a lot of pressure.  She was very young and was working full time and her husband spent a lot of time with his friends.  She felt that she had very little support and her pregnancy was making her very tired and she blamed her pregnancy, and therefore her child, for making her life even more difficult ... and this is what Alison had picked up - it was all her fault.  So I got Alison to tap as though she was her Mum.  So we tapped on the following,

Even though I’m under a lot of pressure and I can’t cope…

Even though I have no support and I’m so tired…

Even though my husband is always out with his friends, and I’m left to do everything with no support…

Even I have so much to do and I’m so tired from being pregnant…

Even though I’m so angry that I have to deal with everything on my own…

Even though I’m so angry and need someone to blame…

We kept tapping until Alison, as her Mum, felt calm - even though I always look for specific events and this was not specific, my client and I have discovered this is how she re-experiences specific events – as emotions/feelings.  Alison realised that she had picked all of this up on a non-verbal feeling or energetic level.  So Alison's feeling or energy vibration was 'it's my fault' and this is what she had been sending out since she was born.

Now if you believe everything that goes wrong is your fault and people will be right to blame you, you are naturally going to fear 'things going wrong'.  And when we fear something, this can become our focus which is what happened in Alison's case.

Now if you're sending out an 'it's my fault' vibration, you will attract people who are looking to bully or blame others, which is what Alison experienced - she had experienced a lot of bullying in her childhood.  As anyone knows, things do go wrong  - but when they did for Alison and people blamed her, she naturally accepted it because she knew it was (emotionally) 'true' because of her belief.  This further confirmed that everything was her fault, and strengthened her belief and therefore her vibration.

Alison could have blamed her Mum for all of this and to begin with there was a lot of anger towards her Mum.  She also felt a lot of pain about the fact that her Mum could feel that way towards her. We tapped on both the anger and pain until the intensity reduced to 0 and Alison gained perspective and understanding.  She realised that her Mum was reacting to her limiting beliefs and what they had attracted to her; she too would have learnt those beliefs from somewhere.  This brought up sadness in Alison as her Mum hadn't had it any better or easier than she had.  So we continued tapping;

Even though I feel this Mum sadness...

Even though Mum didn’t have it any easier than me and that makes me sad…

Even though I thought Mum blamed me, it wasn’t really about me, she was just responding to the writing on her walls…

Even though I thought Mum blamed me, she was just doing the best she could, and I forgive Mum for not being the Mum I needed her to be, she was only young doing the best she could...

She was able to forgive her Mum (although this does not mean that she condoned her Mum's behaviour or said that what her Mum did was right).  The work we did together had a profound effect on her because previously she had no idea why she had this negative belief and she felt that she must just be a type of person that got everything wrong.  Her whole life had reflected this, and she blamed herself because she must have been attracting it (as she had been reading with interest the information on Law of Attraction).

To test the work we had done, I asked her how she felt emotionally at everything being her fault.  She felt emotionally that everything wasn't her fault, and felt a lot of empathy towards her Mum for the situation she had been in when she was pregnant with her.  We also got her to go back into the womb and it felt a safe and peaceful place to be.

A few weeks later she reported that she was now naturally trying things that in the past she would have avoided for fear of ‘getting it wrong’ and being blamed by someone for doing so.

Now, coming back to the Law of Attraction and children - these are only my thoughts.  In this case (and others I have worked with) beliefs were formed before birth and this had set up on a feeling or energetic level what they would be attracting.  Depending on our beliefs, we could say that we must have been attracted to our parents to begin with - the Law of Attraction is not the only Universal Law in action.

In the case of the Law of Attraction and childhood, maybe one of the reasons why we experience what we do in childhood is connected to our 'energy vibration or what we attract' being set up before we are born as in the case of Alison.  I do believe there is so much we are not aware of but by looking into the subtleties we can start to gain an understanding and an opportunity to change.

With love and warmth

Sarah Marshall