A 60-year old shocking memory collapsed in 30 minutes

By Lori Gilbert, L.Ac

Dear Gary,

My mother had been haunted every Christmas for the past 60 years (she is now 73) by a shockingly painful incident that happened Christmas morning to her when she was just 13.  At Christmas time my mother would be very upset sometimes but would never tell us what it was about, until a couple years ago when I got her to tell me what had happened.  And it took until two weeks ago that she finally let me do EFT with her about it!

What had happened was that one Christmas morning my mom had found her own mother, Mum, drunk, in bed with the man who was renting a room at their house.  This was just a little over a year after her father had died of a heart attack.  Being Catholic, she had been taught that this was wrong and she held a lot of anger, shame, and sadness regarding her mother's behavior, but never said anything to her about it.  She was not even sure her mother even knew she had found her and the man together like that.

Since then, every Christmas time had been one of flashbacks to that incident and she would cry about it, every year.  I know it affected her health, as she has been disabled since she was 40, and was never able to get pregnant when she did want a family of her own (hence she was happy to have been able to adopt myself and my brother when we were babies.)

Finally I was able to work with her on the issue, two weeks before this Christmas, as the flash backs to the incident were coming again.  I did some tapping on her, first asking if she would please just let me try this tapping with her - doesn't she want to let this pain go that happened so long ago?  Weepily she said yes.  So I asked her what was the most intense feeling she had about finding her mum like that.  Sadness was first.

Even though I have this sadness about what Mum did so long ago...  We did a couple rounds of tapping on this.

Then it was about her ANGER towards her Mum - the hypocrisy of the situation, the expectations Mum had of her.  We tapped on things about the anger, and rage.  She really cried during this part as I tapped on her points and said the words for her.  She said she really just wanted to be able to forget about this.  So we tapped for that too.

Here are some relating items that came up that we tapped about:

Shock at finding Mum like that, and the pain she felt about it. 

She realized that at 13 she was also very confused about what had happened.

She also really missed her father who had died so suddenly - this led into tapping about him dying, how she KNEW he was going to die that night he was having the heart attack, and she couldn't help him, other than running to the neighbor's house at 3:30 am to use their phone to call the doctor.

She was reminded of how her alcoholic Mum would falsely accuse her of being a tramp, during her Mum's rages later in her life.  That made her really angry.

She also missed Christmases with her brother and sister who have died.  She has lived far from them though for many years now, but is OK with that.

These are the main points I can remember that we tapped on.  Near the end, my mom was asking me, "What is this stuff called that we're doing?"  I told her, “It's EFT.  This is what Brad (my husband) is trying to make his practice into now."  “Oh yes,” she recalled.  Now she finally knew what it was that he does!

Isn't it amazing the difference between telling someone what EFT is, and actually having them know what it is from their own experience?

It took about 30 minutes to do all these things.  I checked in on her about how her feelings about the incident with "finding Mum like that" so many years ago was.  She said, "It just doesn't seem to matter now."

I said, "Good, that is what is supposed to happen!"  And then I told her about how if she got any flash backs to it again, she could just tap on these points while she was thinking about it, and it would help her feel OK about it again.

Today, Christmas day, we were over at my Mom and Dad's house for our family gathering, and Mom said to me, that the incident with Mum really had not been bothering her at all, just one thing came up the other day, and she remembered to tap around her eyes, and under her arm, even though she could not quite remember how to do the set-up phrases, but it worked anyway. 

After we returned home tonight, Mom called and thanked us for coming over, like she always does, but she also thanked me for the EFT session we did, saying, "That really was one of the best Christmas presents I have ever had." 

Blessings,

Lori Gilbert, L.Ac