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Articles & Ideas

Core Issues

When "insignificant" childhood events are the real core issues

Important Note: This article was written prior to 2010 and is now outdated.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

Note: This article assumes you have a working knowledge of EFT. Newcomers can still learn from it but are advised to peruse our Free Gold Standard (Official) EFT Tutorial™ for a more complete understanding.

Hi Everyone,

Newbies and Professionals alike would do well to carefully study this article by John Digby of the UK. It clearly points to "hidden" core issues and how to bring them out. At one point in his article John says, "Again she could not see how this “insignificant” event had any bearing on her current fears as a thirty-something woman.  I asked about the wall-paper, the carpet, the smells, the sounds – at this point she noticeably winced....."

Hugs, Gary


By John Digby

Recently I have had two patients who had the same reaction to my questioning about issues in their past.  The reasons they came to see me were quite different, but the cores issue that triggered their presenting symptoms were lurking in their past.

They were both candidates for the heading “When EFT Doesn’t Work”, as we had looked at momentous events in their past and tapped on them with little or no effect.  As we were using visualisation to re-live some historic incidents I noticed that “little things” were ignored in favour of major events.

My first patient had commitment problems in that he would fall in love and start looking to the future with his partner only to sabotage the relationship and break up.  I asked if anyone had hurt him in any way in an early relationship and he said, “Yes” and went a bit glazed.  I asked when and who it was.  He said something like, ”Oh, that was ages ago.  I was five and she was six; it’s far too silly to be that” and tried to get back to the issues HE had thought to be the cores.  I asked again about the first girlfriend and after my persistence, he began this little story;

“I remember it was a lovely summer’s day and we had been together for months.  We were sitting on the garden wall outside a house and eating ice-cream cornets we had bought from an ice-cream van; I was so happy.  As we sat there, Wendy looked over at me and said ‘you’ve got a smelly nose and I don’t like you any more’ and she ran off.  That broke my heart!”

It was then quite obvious that this childhood break-up had left an enormous negative charge around the event, so much so that whenever the adult man was approaching the point of being “So Happy”, the five year old stepped in to break up the relationship before he could be hurt again.  So the self sabotage persisted because the patient thought the childhood issue was “too insignificant” to affect his adult self.

A few taps around “She broke my heart”, “Smelly nose” and “She really hurt me, but I’m OK now” and we had a  level of intensity of 0 on a scale of 0 to 10.  He is now engaged to be married and has no wobbles over his emotional future at all!

The second was a patient I have successfully treated for other issues, but she still had the odd feeling of immense insecurity.  On questioning, again using past event visualisation, she remembered sitting in a corner of her bedroom as an eight-year-old, with her arms holding her knees tight to her chest and sobbing.  She could not remember why, just crouching there and rocking.

Again she could not see how this “insignificant” event had any bearing on her current fears as a thirty-something woman.  I asked about the wall-paper, the carpet, the smells, the sounds – at this point she noticeably winced.

She said that there was this loud noise in the next room and it was her mother and elder brother arguing about something he had done.  She didn’t remember what he had done but said, “It was probably my fault”.  At this observation the patient’s face opened up as a realization set in.  Her mother and brother were often arguing over something her mother had decided her brother had done, when in reality it was HER fault and he was being blamed.

She realised that she had harboured guilt over the punishment meted out to her sibling for her sins and a few taps on “this childhood guilt” cleared her final barrier to healing completely.

So, I would say; never overlook “the insignificant”.  To a child it was anything but insignificant.  The problem is that as an adult looking back it SEEMS insignificant NOW!   But to the younger version it was devastating and it is that energy that persists until dissolved by tapping.

Love and energy,

John Digby

I don’t just practice EFT – I LIVE IT!

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