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Children

Behavior

Clever use of EFT for an 8 year old girl's anger

Important Note: This article was written prior to 2010 and is now outdated. Please use my newest advancement, Optimal EFT. It is more efficient, more powerful and clearly explained in my free e-book, The Unseen Therapist™.  Best wishes, Gary

Hi Everyone,

The clever thing about this article by Miranda Sterling is how she worked EFT in for her resistant daughter's anger issue. This was especially creative considering that the child claimed at first that EFT was making her feel worse.

Hugs, Gary


By Miranda Sterling

Dear Gary,

Here is a brief EFT session I did tonight with my youngest daughter, who is 8.

I've done a little EFT with my kids here and there, but they both started to just roll their eyes when I'd suggest it, so I haven't pushed it much.  This evening, though, my youngest was upset about some troubles with some other girls in school, and seemed willing to try some energy work.

We'd started to do a little bit of EFT and some Zensight about these things, but really didn't seem to be going anywhere.  Actually, it appeared to be making her worse!  I hadn't measured her level of intensity, but she began calmly enough.  After a few rounds of EFT, though, she quickly grew more and more despondent, sluggish, and weepy. 

She tearfully insisted it hurt to breathe, hurt terribly, and she needed to go to a doctor, and I was just being cruel to make her do this stupid energy work … couldn't I see that she was DYING???

Well, I have 8 years of experience with this particular child, and I know her ways.  Her lungs were clear, she had no fever; I knew she was fine.  My sense was that we were getting somewhere, and what we were seeing was either PR, or another issue that was maybe too scary right then to work with, which was really bothering her more.

Still, she was unwilling to continue, so I sent her to the bath to breathe a little steam.  This helped her relax, and she soon called me into the bathroom to tell me how frightened and upset she was by a particular girl I'll call Janey.

I told her about a time when EFT had really helped me, so she got willing to try it again.  I got down next to the tub and started tapping for her, and invited her to just talk about Janey, and then I used our good old family silliness tricks to help her to open up and let the feelings out.

One thing that won't make sense about what we said if I don't explain it, is that my daughter has a fantasy game where she is queen of a world of bears.  She has a huge stuffed teddy bear, and we talk about bears, especially if she feels upset and needs comforting.

So there in the bathtub, with me perched on a little stool beside it, with her supplying details, but me mostly supplying the words at first, and just tapping on her any old where, we evoked something like the following:

Even though Janey is SOOOOO scary, I am still queen of the bear world, and all my bears go poop in the woods, so I deserve to feel just great about things.  She knows how EFT is "supposed" to go, so I said this to surprise her.  I was trying to lighten her mood just a bit, enough to get her censor out of the way and let the anger come out.  It worked.

That stinkin' Janey!  She's so bossy.  She loves to push me around.  I hate her so much!  She's EVIL!  She smells.  I wish she were dead, dead, dead!...  This last bit came straight from the kid.

I've come to be a big believer in the power of Tap and Rant, especially for those of us who are maybe a little too well controlled.  If you can use a bit of humor or some other distraction to get that cork to pop, a lot of pent up stuff can spew out very rapidly!

Once she started to let it go, she got into it, and I didn't have to say too much more.  I just kept tapping and pretty soon, there was no more hesitation or silliness, just pure angry rant.  It really didn't take very long, only a few minutes.

All of a sudden, this kid who had been holding her chest and whimpering to go to her bed, sat up and drew a deep, deep, happy breath, smiled hugely, and said, "It worked!!  I feel wonderful!  I love you!  You're the best mom in the world."

I'm still smiling over this, and will be for a while!  My guess is that she'll have an easier time with Janey, but I also suspect there are more issues there for her about dealing with other kids.  I hope that having such a quick and fun success, she'll be more willing to try it again next time.

Miranda Sterling

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