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Deepak Chopra, MD
"EFT offers great healing benefits."
EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques®) Where emotional relief brings physical health
Self help method often works where nothing else will No Drugs Involved ~ High Success Rate
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Nightmares
My 7 yr. old grandson had an episode this spring in which he caught his arm in an outlet at the bottom of a hot tub while on vacation. His mother, father, and brother were right beside him but didn't realize he was caught in this outlet. When his father recognized that he was stuck he dove down and had to pull about 3-4 times to get his arm released from this intake outlet. There was no cover on this outtake and his arm had gotten sucked in up to his elbow and he couldn't get loose. He had passed out and had to be revived. His arm was badly burned from skin being rubbed off trying to get his arm out and he had to spend most of the day in the hospital and go back for a check every day for about 4 days.
He is ok, but has started having nightmares from this episode. I have done some tapping on his body cause he wants me to tap on him, doesn't want to tap on himself. I have told him he can tap on himself if he wakes up scared in the night and have also shown his parents how to tap for anxiety and trauma.
They are having a hard time calming him down from these nightmares because he is hysterical and does not wake up easily to be comforted.
Any suggestions-like what are the words you say to young children and do you sometimes do the tapping for them? Anyone had experience with nightmares with children.
Thanks for any suggestions and help.
Blessings to all.
Peggy Olson, LPC
Dear Peggy and the list,
In response to your recent post, I suggest that EFT should work quite nicely with your grandson's nightmares. You will find ample evidence of this on the EFT tapes. For example, some of our Vietnam Veterans had awful nightmares that completely subsided on the "6 Days at the VA" tapes and Steve (on our audiotapes) had a recurring nightmare about his father that disappeared totally. I realize that these cases are not with children but there shouldn't be any difference in the end results. After all, us "big folks" are just little kids with wrinkles. However, the approach with children often requires some creativity.
Peggy, you and I spoke on the phone about this problem early this morning and you indicated that your grandson "doesn't want to talk about it" or "doesn't remember it" during the daytime. In fact, he has you "figured out" and knows when you are trying to do EFT with him and he resists your efforts (presumably because it is painful for him to "get into it"). Here are a few thoughts that might be helpful.
1. Children love to play games. So make a game of it. I once helped a 5 year old girl get over a fire phobia by having her say "stomping out the fire" as she was tapping. She giggled through it and it worked fine. For the PR affirmation I had her say, "I know there was a fire, but I'm OK now. I have my Mommy and Sally (her doll) and they're OK too." With your grandson, you could sneak up on it by tapping for "stomping out scary monsters and other scary things" and trust that his system will bring up the necessary aspects. His system is likely to do this, in my experience. This may take a little longer than the standard protocol but, of course, that is part of the art of delivering this process.
2. Try EFT through surrogacy and/or intention. Find a quiet time when your grandson might like to hold hands with you or snuggle up in your lap. Then assume you are your grandson and tap on yourself either physically or through your imagination for the aspects of his problem that you believe are there. You learned in our advanced seminar that both surrogate diagnosis and imaginary tapping on oneself can be quite effective. Here is a great place to try it out in a surrogate manner. Further, tapping on behalf of someone else (even if done via intention only) has produced many impressive anecdotal stories. It's worth a try and I would love to hear your results.
3. In reading your post, I saw the potential for many, many aspects. Examples: (a) getting sucked up to his elbow, (b) father pulling on his arm 3-4 times to release it, (c) almost drowning (passing out), (d) couldn't get loose, (e) skin being rubbed off, (f) the hospital stay, etc. etc. This whole event may have to be unraveled aspect by aspect before he is free of it. It may take a fair amount of detective work to uncover the proper issues for tapping.
With hugs to everyone, Gary
P.S. About a year after this event Peggy Olson wrote to say that her grandson's nightmares have disappeared.
