How do you do EFT to fit a time slot?

By Judy Byrne

When I am doing EFT training courses, I am often asked how I manage to finish a session on time when EFT can open up such big emotional issues for people.  Trainees often say that they just cannot finish a session in exactly an hour and want to know how to handle it if they cannot.

Here are some of the things I find helpful:

Do not expect, feel obliged to produce, or encourage your client to believe every session will be a one-shot wonder.
One shot wonders do happen.  When they do we get so excited we write them up and send them to be published and tell everyone about them.  But many clients and many issues are far more complex and do not resolve in a few inspired rounds of tapping.  When demonstrations appear to have resolved an issue, what they have usually have resolved is an aspect of an issue.

Be professional in your approach to arranging sessions.
Even if you are a newbie practitioner and have only one client for the day in your appointment book, schedule an appointment of whatever length you want to work and tell the client in advance exactly how long the appointment will be - and stick to it.  It is good practice for when your appointment book fills up, and it will make you seem more professional.

Some therapists are comfortable working in 50 minutes slots, of 55 minute slots or one hour or an hour and 15 or an hour and a half.  Whatever works for you is fine.  But it is important that you do decide and that you make it clear to clients.  If you seem professional, they will feel safe. 

Put a clock where clients can see it.
It is amazing how good people’s unconscious minds are at managing therapy.  I often have someone who seems really upset 15 minutes before the end of a session but they seem to be able to bring themselves back to an okay state by themselves by the time we are due to finish.  I find a high percentage of clients like having the clock and having the decision about just how they use their time.  Of course this only works if you have put in place a firm arrangement as I mentioned above.

Put a clock where you can see it
I like to have a clock where I can see it without breaking eye contact for more than a split second.  I keep mine five minutes fast because it reminds me to wind up in time to answer any final questions and sort payment and make another appointment.  I don’t work in a centre where a receptionist would do that for me.  If you do, you can adjust your timing accordingly.

When you are inexperienced, make a conscious decision not to open too many doors in a session. 
If you think in terms of not opening more than two or three doors, you can always go through another if you have finished off those two or three and still have time in hand.  Often, though, you will go from door to door and need enough time to go back and finish the ones you sidetracked yourself from before you close the session. 

I also think it is helpful, unless you have a superb memory, to jot down a few phrases to remind yourself what you have started and not finished.  The more clients you see, the more you may find it becomes difficult to remember completely and reliably without help.

Make sure your clients know how to tap for themselves.
If you accept that you cannot clear everything in a single session, you need to know that clients can take care of themselves until their next one.

Make sure clients know they can tap for themselves between sessions and ensure that they know how to do EFT.  Sometimes it is easier for newbie practitioners, who follow the EFT basic protocol, to encourage clients to tap on themselves because they are doing mechanical EFT.  More experienced practitioners work intuitively and freely and their clients may not be confident that they can come up with their own tapping phrases.  I often have clients tell me, “I could not possibly think of all those words the way you did.”

For more experienced practitioners, I think it is really useful to pre-frame that there are two quite different ways of doing EFT.  I show them the way they can do it for themselves and assure them that that is all they need.  And I tell them that if I wanted to work on me that is how I would do it.  If I wanted to work on me the way we have been working in the session I would go to another therapist.  

I have cards with the tapping points on one side and the protocol outlined briefly on the other.  I give these to clients to remind them what the basic routine is.  I hope, because they are credit card sized, that they will keep them in their wallets and it will not only remind them how to do EFT but also to do EFT.

I also have a larger printable chart on my website that clients can print off for themselves.  I encourage my students, and any other therapist who would like to, to link to from their own websites to it until or unless they have something similar of their own.

Use Heartmath breathing/sending love to bring them to a good place to finish.  Sometimes I feel that clients need something to steady and balance them before they go out into the street.  This is one of the techniques I use:

I ask the client to take a couple of deep breaths.  Then I ask them to imagine they are breathing through their hearts.  They can put a hand on the heart chakra if they wish.  I do not suggest that but those who know about chakras ask if they can.  They can.  If people are very concrete thinkers they may need you to add: “I know you cannot actually breathe through your heart, but just imagine you are.”

Then I ask them to do one of the following, depending on the client: a) imagine being somewhere you love being for a few minutes; b) think of a time when you felt really appreciated;  c) imagine you are sending love to someone.  The third option is the safest if you do not yet know enough about a client to be confident that they will not be thrown off by realizing they cannot think of anywhere they love being and have never felt appreciated. People will usually feel much calmer when you have done that.

Use the Lightstream technique.
I say something like this: “Close your eyes and imagine a beam of light coming down on you.  You can imagine it any colour you want, any intensity.  You can just see it or feel its warmth.  You can start with an intense pinprick of light and expand it.  Imagine it any way you want.  And keep your conscious mind really engaged on imagining that beam.

“And while you do, I am going to ask your unconscious mind to put away all the unfinished business from this session, all the emotions you are still feeling right now.  And I am asking it to put everything somewhere really safe, where they do not have to bother you at all until it is a time and place that it is appropriate to make them available to continue but where you will be completely untroubled by them until we meet again.”  And just stay with that for a few minutes.(I repeat a variation on that at least once more.)

Judy Byrne