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Deepak Chopra, MD
"EFT offers great healing benefits."
EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques®) Where emotional relief brings physical health
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Releasing 14 years of pent up grief and trauma
Hi Everyone,
Rod Sherwin from Australia relieves his client of long standing emotional anguish in two EFT sessions. In the process he details his use of our very useful movie technique. At the end he says, "On a personal note, I have only recently begun working full time as an EFT practitioner and I was amazed, awed, grateful, and surprised at times during the whole process because of the depth of emotional intensity and the many, many aspects that came up and were cleared. The idea to just "keep tapping" was the core to freeing Susan to move on with her life."
I would like to share a story of a client of mine who, with the help of EFT, overcame 14 years of pent up grief and trauma about her father's death.
"Susan" came to me wanting help in figuring out why she had not been in a relationship for a long time. Susan was an attractive woman and desperately wanted a partner and children. In the first few minutes of our session, I asked how long it had been since she was in a relationship and she replied "14 years. I've been shut-down since my father's death". This was a pretty strong clue as to where to start. Susan had tried many other modalities of treatment around her father's death and had thought that it was "handled".
However, when I asked Susan to access the memory of the day her father died she could not even get the words out without breaking down into tears, even 14 years later. So we did a few rounds of tapping to handle the initial sadness and pain so that she could start to tell the story.
Susan's father had died of a heart attack without warning. Susan had received a phone call at home from her mother and rushed across town to the scene where Ambulance (Paramedics) officers were attempting to revive her father. She was in hysterics on arrival and, at first, had been prevented from getting to her father by an Ambulance officer. Then she held his hand knowing that he had already moved on and she felt hopeless and frustrated knowing there was nothing she could do. Seeing her fathers body was a terrible shock since the body did not appear to be her father.
I explained about the movie technique to Susan and asked her to start running the movie in her mind and stop whenever intensity spiked. Although, I didn't askethe length of the movie initially, over time I learned that there were several hours over which the traumatic events had taken place.
In our initial 3-hour session there were many points in the movie where Susan completely broke down and could not speak so I would tap for her. No words or scaling were needed because she was obviously at a 10 in intensity and fully tuned into the emotion.
When Susan was capable of telling me a little about the parts of the movie which were intense, there were many, many different aspects that came up, for example:
Even though my father was just lying there, ...
Even though I couldn't stand the sight of his eyes rolled up in his head,...
Even though the Ambulance Office tried to keep me from my father,...
Even though I was afraid to close my fathers eyes, I deeply love and forgive myself,...
Even though I was angry at the Ambulance officer for giving up, I forgive him.
Even though I watched my father being zipped into a black bag, ...
Even though I felt so helpless that all I could do was hold his hand and pray, I accept that I was doing the best I could, and what I did was enough.
Even though I can't accept that he is gone, I know he still loves me, is with me and I still love him.
Even though I've been beating my self up with this memory, ...
Even though I've been fighting with myself to get over this memory, ...
Many tears, tissues and deep sighs later, Susan could at least describe the order of events without breaking down.
Several times during our session, I asked if Susan wanted to take a break but she was insistent on wanting to get through this. This strength to continue was something that, later on, she was able to be grateful to her father for instilling in her.
Because of the intensity of the work we had covered in the initial 3 hours, I suggested Susan give herself time to integrate the changes and come and see me again a week or so later.
Before her return visit, I followed up with a phone call to see how she was doing. She mentioned that she had started introducing herself with a name she hadn't used for many years. I explained that this indicated some identity shifts within her and to pay attention to what else was different.
At the start of our second visit, I asked her if we could test the movie to see if there was any further emotional intensity. I only asked her to run the movie mentally first and not try to speak about it. Again, more points came up which we tapped on. Susan said that she was very surprised about the amount of detail that she could now recall about the events.
As a final test, I asked her to narrate the events to me from before she had got the initial phone call right through to the end. There were only a few remaining intensities of 2 or 3 left in the whole scene. Susan was amazed that she could work through the whole movie, frame-by-frame, like a movie director witnessing each scene with high levels of detail.
The second session was about 2 hours and at the end Susan looked at peace, felt no tension in her body and looked 10 years younger. So in only 5 hours we have unburdened 14 years of grief and trauma. Incredible!
While Susan is not yet in a relationship, she believes we have now handled a major stumbling block towards this goal.
On a personal note, I have only recently begun working full time as an EFT practitioner and I was amazed, awed, grateful, and surprised at times during the whole process because of the depth of emotional intensity and the many, many aspects that came up and were cleared. The idea to just "keep tapping" was the core to freeing Susan to move on with her life.
Regards,
Rod
