By Miranda Sterling

Dear Gary,

This article is about my idea of "emotional allergies," and how I came to discover it.

For the past two years, I have been very diligently applying EFT on a daily basis. I've worked on many issues, but always with the ultimate goal of healing "it," the set of factors that has recurred in my life again and again, with devastating results to my relationships, professional life, finances and self-worth.

"It" was the exact reason that brought me to EFT in the first place; I've been seeking a resolution of this problem for as long as I can remember -- and I'd say the vast majority of the serious problems in my life are a result of "it." I've always known that I could heal this problem, and I've always known, somehow, that the cure would be very simple, something I could do for myself.

Until recently, however, I never knew what "it" was. I've called it many things over the years, in my efforts to understand and deconstruct it. Others have "helpfully" labeled it for me, too. Laziness, stubbornness, depression, vitamin deficiency, ADD, dreaminess, lack of ambition, brain imbalance, and confusion are just a few! I've explored every remedy for the various terms and symptoms I could find, with not much result. I always kept coming back to the same place.

EFT is the first therapy I ever tried that has consistently given me results, and not just the brief, mild improvement I've experienced with most other things I've tried. The ease and obvious success of the method have inspired me to keep after it, continue digging, go ever deeper, to be very bold and persistent, more so that I have with almost any other thing in my life. I've had amazing revelations, healed the worst things that have ever happened to me, shared the process with everyone I meet.

Still, getting to the bottom of "it" came from an unexpected direction. My eldest daughter has had some severe anger issues, and has provided us with daily raging temper tantrums for nearly her entire life. She refuses to allow EFT on her, and my efforts at surrogate work for her haven't done a thing as far as I can tell.

I read a book about children like her called The Explosive Child, and while the author talked only about kids with rage and depression disorders, I found myself generalizing his idea and suddenly the whole world appeared completely different to me.

Here is the version of his idea I've been developing:

Some people have a susceptibility to certain negative emotions that in many ways resembles an allergy. Such people will

(a) Experience their particular negative emotion far more frequently than the average person ever would, sometimes even daily or hourly..

(b) They will be triggered into that emotion by many factors that the average person would not necessarily even notice or find upsetting.

(c) Once they have become triggered, for a time, they are "lost to reason." Often they will not even realize they are experiencing that emotion and may even forget the event that triggered their fugue. They cannot be talked out of it, reasoned with, or brought out of it by any normal means.

(d) The exact behavior during the episode will vary between individuals, but remain generally consistent for each person. One will always rage, one will always withdraw, and so on.

This is really only a different way of saying "they have a bee up their nose," but I have found that this way of looking at it gave me a great deal of sudden and obvious help. I knew my daughter had a problem with rage, but what I had never realized before was that I also had an "allergic emotion," which was despair.

The "lost to reason" component of the syndrome had made it nearly invisible to me for decades. I knew I would get distracted, and that I would forget what I was supposed to be doing. I knew I would let my work go, ignore my family and stare at a book or the computer for hours. I knew I felt just terrible about things, but I never had realized that it would all be triggered by one little unhappy incident, and the feeling of, "oh crap, here we go again, I'm overwhelmed again, everything sucks like it always does" would start up, and that would be the end of me for hours, days, weeks, months.

I simply could not function for a time once I felt that sense of despair. And I had never before realized that I've been feeling it all my life.

You advise people to tap for specific things that have caused their emotions, and I think that is valuable advice, and I have done it. But for some of us, there is just so much, and so much of it has been forgotten, especially if you have lived a lot of your life in the fugue state of emotional allergy.

Once I figured out I had this allergy, though, I have just tapped on that. "Even though I keep feeling this despair," "even though I have this allergy to despair," "even though this despair is my normal reality," "even though I stop thinking once I have this despair," "even though it's normal to feel despair every time something unexpected happens," and so on.

That really seems to have helped. No longer do I feel overwhelmed by everyday tasks. My sense of despair has lifted. Spending time with my children is a pleasure instead of a burden. And many other "little things" have fallen into place and no longer appear to be a problem. I feel like a new being in the world.

I've explained some of it to my daughter in moments when she's calm and receptive, and I have hope for her, too. If anyone is moved to do some surrogate tapping for a bright and gregarious little ten year old in Central Texas, I'd be deeply grateful.

Sincerely,

Miranda Sterling