Is it safe to change?

This is an excellent three part series by EFT master Carol Look.

Part 1 of 3

In the early days of EFT and TFT, the topic of “safety” was considered one of the subjects therapists would treat as a cause for “energy reversals.”  Being “reversed” meant that your energy system was temporarily upside down, confused, or not working efficiently, and either your system would not “take” the treatment to begin with or the treatment would not “stick.”  There were and still are many complicated ways to address and treat this problem.  However, treating the real issue --- being afraid to change --- with the basics of EFT has always worked in my practice.

If someone was apparently reversed --- meaning energy therapies weren’t working on them --- the conclusion was made that there were some emotional reasons for not wanting to change.  Safety, not deserving, being unwilling to do what it takes, not being able to accept yourself unless you change --- all of these conflicts were considered tappable issues using the standard reversal setups statements.

When my answer to numerous emails this week centered around encouraging clients to allow themselves to feel safe to change before forging ahead, it reminded me that feeling safe is the bottom line regardless of what technique you are using, whether traditional talk therapy or EFT.  If your body and mind are not congruent with the consequences of releasing the old patterns, you will not feel safe to change or stay changed and nothing permanent will come of the therapy.  In other words, if your energy system is “reversed” because it feels emotionally threatening on any level to make the changes, you will eventually regress to the original behavior, habit, or fear.  In some cases, you won’t regress, however, you will be left with an odd empty feeling, as you don’t feel quite right with the “new” you.

We often use our problems and conflicts to protect ourselves from something --- feelings, confrontations, truths --- it doesn’t matter what we feel the need to protect ourselves from, it only matters that we have developed these patterns because our mind is telling us we need to.

So you need to take a good honest look at what might not feel safe to you if you change in order to find the tappable issues.  By the way, this isn’t “bad” if you don’t feel safe, it is merely feedback from your organism.  We all feel unsafe to varying degrees about moving forward or releasing old habits and conflicts.  Sometimes the reasons are irrational and illogical because of what and how we learned certain lessons from our childhood.  Sometimes the reasons make perfect sense to us on a conscious level.  It doesn’t really matter.  The point is, if you don’t feel safe, you won’t change and stay changed.

The first clue that you may have this issue of SAFETY blocking your forward movement is that your treatment is neither working very well nor sticking in the long term.  Below are important questions, explanations, and suggested tapping sequences for possible reasons you might not feel entirely safe to move forward in your personal, professional, or physical life. Read on