Happy New Year Everyone!

Safe trauma recovery with Babette Rothschild

Feelings of betrayal

Each betrayal begins with trust ~ Phish

We can often feel betrayed by different things in life. Try this tapping script if you have ever felt betrayed. EFT short cut diagram and procedure.

Even though I feel betrayed by ... (for example, my mother, my father, my body, myself) I accept myself anyway

Even though it really hurts to be betrayed, I accept my hurt

Even though being betrayed by ... feels ... it's ok to feel that way

Top of the head: It's hard to trust ...

Eyebrow: I feel betrayed

Side of eye: By ...

Under the eye: It's hard to take

Under the nose: It makes me feel ...

Under the chin: I want to protect myself

Collar bone: From this hurt

Under the arm: I want to close myself off

Top of the head: From being hurt

Eyebrow: I'd like to shut down

Side of eye: My feelings

Under the eye: Of betrayal

Under the nose: So I don't feel hurt

Under the chin: Or the pain

Collar bone: Of being betrayed

Under the arm: I'd like

Top of the head: To not feel this hurt

Eyebrow: I accept how I feel

Side of eye: I'm not going to fight how I feel

Under the eye: I feel the way I feel

Under the nose: Even though I don't want to feel this way

Under the chin: I do

Collar bone: And that's ok

Under the arm: Well, it's not really but I feel this way anyway

Continue tapping until you find relief, be specific about how you feel betrayed, you may have many memories to tap on. Stay with it and be persistent.

We have to distrust each other. It is our only defence against betrayal ~ Tennessee Williams

Using EFT for self acceptance

Safety

Safety is the body's response to the environment ~ Stephen Porges

This is an excellent interview with psychiatrist Stephen Porges. It illustrates how important the body and its messages are for healing and feeling safe.

http://SomaticPerspectives.com/2011/11/porges/

Tapping script for feeling safe

Safety isn't expensive, it's priceless ~ Author Unknown

Everybody Hurts by Arthur Janov

Article by Dr Arthur Janov.

When I watch TV it seems like every commercial is about some kind of pain killer: Tylenol, ibuprofen, pills for stomach distress, headaches, high blood pressure and on and on. The best kept secret is that we are nearly all in pain but nobody says it; the emperor is really naked but we all are looking the other way; we are looking outward instead of inward. The distress is caused by this or that in the environment, we think, but never what is inside. That is obvious since few of us can look inside. 



We are all hurting but in different ways; the hurt goes to where we are most vulnerable. That is the health crisis that no one speaks its name. So why is that? Because no one can see it! It was installed so early and so subtly, long before we had conscious-awareness, that it doesn’t even have a name. So I give it a name: Primal Pain. And a location: the imprint: and the chemical means: methylation. But what we may not be aware of is that its one of the leading causes of death among us, more so than deaths in traffic accidents, according to a recent study. Some of us are in so much agony that we take far too much medication and threaten our lives. We use Xanax, Vicodin, Fentanyl, Demerol, Oxycontin and Soma; we are treating the wrong thing, and that is why we do not get relief. We treat the symptom and not the person; we treat appearances and not generating sources. That gap I call the Janovian Gap. It is between origins and our conscious awareness of them. So long as Primal Pain exists it will militate toward wherever it can. Worse, sometimes we have both headaches and back aches so we take pain killers for both and again risk an overdose. The medication normally will not kill us but when we take more and more it will. Read on

Honour your experience

One of the greatest moments in anybody's developing experience is when he no longer tries to hide from himself but determines to get acquainted with himself as he really is ~ Norman Vincent Peale

Person Centred Therapy ~ Carl Rogers

Using EFT for chronic fatigue syndrome

Dr Robert Scaer calls syndromes such as chronic fatigue dis-eases of the freeze response. Dr Veronique Mead has also written an article entitled: ME/CFS and Freeze: A Metabolic State of Hibernation That is Not in Your Head.

Please customise these phrases to how you feel and to suit your own unique situation. EFT short cut diagram.

Even though I feel ... I deeply and profoundly accept myself

Even though I am so tired, I accept myself

Even though I am too tired to .... I accept myself anyway

Top of the head: I'm exhausted

Eyebrow: I want to sleep

Side of the eye: I want to hide

Under the eye: From ...

Under the nose: I am so tired

Under the chin: Of ...

Collar bone: It's all too much

Under the arm: That's the way I feel

Top of the head: Everything is such an effort

Eyebrow: I have no energy

Side of the eye: To ...

Under the eye: And that makes me feel ...

Under the nose: It's really difficult to feel this way

Under the chin: About myself

Collar bone: About others

Under the arm: About life

Top of the head: It feels too ...

Eyebrow: I'd like a break from this exhaustion

Side of the eye: This tiredness feels ...

Under the eye: The alternative to this tiredness would be ... ?

Under the nose: And that feels ...

Under the chin: I don't know how I feel about that

Collar bone: Am I ready to let this go?

Under the arm: Even a little?

Top of the head: What's making me feel so tired?

Eyebrow: When did I start feeling this way?

Side of the eye: What's sapping my energy?

Under the eye: Where is my energy gone?

Under the nose: What's holding my energy down?

Under the chin: What am I holding down?

Collar bone: My energy feels ...

Under the arm: I feel ...

As she had been walking from the ward to that room, she had felt such pure hatred that now she had no more rancor left in her heart. She had finally allowed her negative feelings to surface, feelings that had been repressed for years in her soul. She had actually FELT them, and they were no longer necessary, they could leave ~ Paulo Coelho, Veronika Decides to Die

Going around and around

When we feel trapped in a closed loop the consequences can feel awful. We are trying our hardest to find our way out but all we seem able to do is go around in circles repeating the same things over and over again. There seems to be no way out of the vicious cycle and that can feel hopeless.

When people are referred to as an “angry” person or a “fearful” person, what they are probably experiencing is feeling caught in this closed loop. They are acting out their emotions for some relief. I don't believe labels like this are helpful at all because they just do not get to the core of the issue. I believe we need to look beyond the surface behaviour to truly hear and understand what is really happening and actually do something constructive about it.

Peter Levine describes a 9 step method called pendulation for transforming trauma which you can find here. EFT can help you feel the frightening emotions and sensations associated with the immobility response so you do not become overwhelmed and stay frozen in a continuous helpless loop.

Some favourite quotations ...

Using EFT for OCD

Why do we perform rituals? Sometimes to celebrate, to soothe and comfort or to honour something or someone, the reasons are varied. Obsessive compulsive anxiety dis-orders such as OCD also have ritualistic elements. Take someone who washes their hands all the time, what do they gain from these repeated actions? I would say, a sense of safety, routine, comfort, security, some sense of control, and many other things that will be unique and meaningful for them.

OCD is a symptom, or a collection of symptoms, mostly due to unfelt pain. Unfelt pain often manifests as anxiety and one of the most common sources of anxiety is an attachment dis-order. If we don't bond early on with our mothers/caregivers we won't feel safe, comforted, loved and secure. In the experiment below, we can see the powerful effects that a strong attachment can provide.

It's very important to honour the defenses or rituals someone has created for themselves in order to feel safe and comforted. Shaming and criticising doesn't work, it often drives the person deeper into anxiety and shame which then needs to be relieved in whatever way they have found works for them. See if any tailenders (objections in the form of emotions, beliefs, thoughts, memories, sensations) come up when you say the following:

I honour my need to feel comforted

I honour how I am meeting my unmet needs 

I accept my need to repeat ... to feel safe

I choose to feel kindness for my need for (name the need, or needs, that you feel most strongly right now)

My behaviours/rituals make me feel ...

Doing ... makes me feel very safe and that feels good

Ritual is the passage way of the soul into the Infinite ~ Algernon Blackwood

Being in your body and aspects

One of the most important (and common) reasons that EFT does not work is because of unresolved aspects. Aspects can be anything; a smell, a look, the taste or texture of something, a physical sensation, a feeling. If you have been working for a long time on a particular issue and certain aspects are just not “going away”, you might not be fully living in your body.

We need to be in our body to feel, taste, touch or smell. If we are dissociated in any way we are not in our bodies. We can't successfully address and dissolve certain aspects and bring the emotional charge to 0, if we are not embodied. If an issue is left at 2, 3, 4 or more on the SUDs scale it's like an open wound that hasn't closed or healed properly and the chance of reoccurrence is high. The body is where we are able to feel difficult, uncomfortable and even terrifying emotions and sensations, and it's for those very reasons that we dissociate from our body. James Joyce puts it so well in Ulysses when he writes “Mr Duffy lived a short distance from his body”.

Does anything come up when you say the following statements, preferably out loud? Tap on anything that might come up.

I am comfortable in my own skin

I can feel any emotion without being overwhelmed (this not does not have to be true 100% of the time, it's human to feel overwhelmed sometimes, but when it's your normal response to certain emotions, you know that that emotion needs healing)

I can stay with difficult sensations in my body without being overwhelmed

I can stay present in difficulty without avoiding, distracting, burying, denying or suppressing how I feel

I feel ... about my body (be as truthful as you can be here, if you find you don't want to admit something, that is EXACTLY what you should tap on)

Don't explain your philosophy, embody it ~ Epictetus

Feeling and expressing an emotion

It's amazing how often we can feel we're not allowed or don't have permission to feel or express certain emotions. There is a difference between feeling an emotion and expressing an emotion. No one else but you has to know what you're feeling. When you allow yourself to feel, you can choose whether or not to express that feeling to another person. It is so important for our health that we feel all of our emotions, but the reality is most of us have a “bad” and “good” list. We can reach conclusions that because certain emotions are unacceptable/not allowed/not permissible that there is something wrong with us for having them, feeling them or expressing them.

Rate the truth of the following sentences from 0 to 10, 10 being true and 0 being not true at all. Write down all that comes up, particularly the emotions, memories and people that have a strong emotional charge and start tapping.

I am allowed to feel ... (why?)

I am allowed to express ... (why?)

I am not allowed to feel ... (why?)

I am not allowed to express ... (why?)

I have permission ... to feel (who do you have permission from?)

I have permission ... to express (who do you have permission from?)

I don't have permission to feel ... (who do you not have permission from?)

I don't have permission to express ... (who do you not have permission from?)

I give myself permission to feel ...

I give myself permission to express ...

The emotion that is the easiest for me to feel is ...

The emotion that is the easiest for me to express is ...

The emotion(s) that is most difficult for me to feel is ...

The emotion that is most difficult for me to express is ...

Men are no more immune from emotions than women; we think women are more emotional because the culture lets them give free vent to certain feelings, "feminine" ones, that is, no anger please, but it's okay to turn on the waterworks ~ Una Stannard

Using EFT for wanting to get rid of something

At the heart of personality is the need to feel a sense of being lovable without having to qualify for that acceptance ~ Paul Tournier

Using EFT for depression

But are not this struggle and even the mistakes one may make better, and do they not develop us more, than if we kept systematically away from emotions? ~ Vincent Van Gogh

Pain relief world summit

Sign up for this free event, starting October 3rd http://painreliefworldsummit.com/ There's a great line up of practitioners including EFT masters Carol Look and Rue Hass.

The body's sensations

When the energy of an emotion moves through our body, felt as physical sensations, we are feeling or processing that emotion.

What happens when we don't feel an emotion for whatever reason? It becomes stuck and frozen in our bodies.

An accumulation of unfelt emotion is often experienced in the body as uncomfortable physical sensations or physical pain. Physical pain, if not resolved, can become serious disease. Acknowledging physical discomfort in our body is one of the first steps towards feeling our emotions. Our body affects our mind just as our mind affects our body. Tap on what is happening in your body right now. Examples could be:

My gut tightens whenever I feel ....

My gut feels fit to burst when ...

I get a lump in my throat when I think of ...

My head throbs when I remember ...

I feel sick to my stomach when I feel ...

My heart aches when I think of ...

I feel inflamed when I remember ...

My jaws clench when I feel ...

I start to sweat when I remember ...

I can't sleep and toss and turn when ...

I feel out of control when my throat closes in ...

I feel helpless when ...

I feel enraged when ...

My body wants to collapse when ...

I feel dread in my stomach when ...

Feel

If we don't feel, we don't fully experience life. Irish psychiatrist, Ivor Browne, defines trauma as unexperienced experience. When we feel, we can experience, digest and integrate all that happens in life, especially the more difficult and uncomfortable experiences. Feeling all of your feelings is one of the most powerful and important things you can do for yourself.

Using EFT to dissolve trauma

Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary. The people we trust with that important talk can help us know that we are not alone ~ Fred Rogers

The evolution of thoughts

Thoughts don't change anything unless they feel true. If you state a thought that you don't believe, you won't sense/feel it in your body and there will be no energetic charge. It will fall off you like water off a duck's back.

If you say “I'm a horrible person” and that thought/belief feels true, and you are muscle tested, the muscle being tested will remain strong, meaning your body is saying Yes to this belief, it senses and feels this as a truth. If you say “My name is Ann” when it is in fact Sarah, this won't feel true for you and your muscle will test weak.

The thought or belief would have no validity or influence without the sensation and feeling in the body that it is true.

What gives rise to a thought/belief such as “I am a horrible person”? Life events. Events in which we felt bad about our self. Initially this belief could have started out very early in life, as physical sensations, it might have felt like a sharp jab in our stomach. If the sensation becomes too overwhelming, we won't/can't feel it which creates a short circuit in our energy system. The sensation and later, the attached emotional charge become stuck. To make some sort of sense out of what is happening and to feel in some way safe and in control, we'll arrive at conclusions. If we need the person who is hurting us, we can't hold them responsible, so we'll come to the conclusion that we are to blame. There must be something wrong with us, for this to be happening, otherwise it does not make sense. Hence the belief “I'm a horrible person”.

Thoughts and beliefs affect and shape us when we sense and feel they are true. Positive affirmations won't work if they don't feel true. We need to address the underlying sensations, emotions and feelings that give rise to these thoughts and beliefs, not the other way around.

Stay with it

Stay with how you feel as much as you can. Know from experience that the more you stay with painful feelings, and feel them, that they will transform. It will get easier! Go as gently and slowly as you need to.

Pendulation is about the innate organismic rhythm of contraction and expansion. It is, in other words, about getting unstuck by knowing (sensing from the inside), perhaps for the first time, that no matter how horrible one is feeling, those feelings can and will change. Without this (experienced) knowledge, a person in a state of “stuckness” does not want to inhabit his or her body ~ Peter Levine, In An Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness

EFT short cut diagram and procedure
Anxiety audio
Pain audio

*To download the audio files right click on a PC, control click on a Mac.

Embodying presence

Being present is a practice that takes practice. I believe it is the most valuable practice we can have, because when we're present to ourself and others, we're showing love. Thich Nhat Hanh writes about the practice of mindful breathing to bring our mind and body together in his book, True Love. When you're breathing in say, “I know that I am breathing in” when you're breathing out, say, “I know that I am breathing out.” Constricted breathing technique

Our minds are often daydreaming or in a completely different place to our bodies. By practicing this simple exercise every day, as often as we can, we can bring our body and minds back together again. When we're in our bodies, or embodied and associated, we can feel, which is often the reason why we don't want to be in our bodies. It can feel too painful and we'll find numerous ways to distract our self. If we practice being present even for a few minutes every day, it gets easier and easier to be in our bodies. Very often when we suffer from anxiety and all the forms that anxiety takes, it is exactly because we can't stand to be in our bodies. We live in our heads where we try to control our thoughts so we don't feel so afraid and out of control. But thoughts will never change how we feel, only feeling can do that.

The capacity to self-regulate is another priceless benefit from practicing mindfulness and presence. Peter Levine writes, In An Unspoken Voice:

"In mammals, this capacity for self-regulation is essential. It endows the animal with the capability to make fluid shifts in internal bodily states to meet changes in the external environment. Animals with developed orbitofrontal systems have evolved the capacity to switch between different emotional states. This ability (known as affect regulation) allows animals to vary their emotions to appropriately match environmental demands. In humans, this highly evolved adaptive function, according to Schore and others, is the basis for the core sense of self. These same circuits in the orbitofrontal cortex receive inputs from the muscles, joints and viscera. The sensations that form the inner landscape of the body are mapped in the orbitofrontal portions of the brain. Hence, as we are able to change our body sensations, we change the highest function of our brains. Emotional regulation, our rudder through life, comes about through embodiment."

When we learn to be present with our self, we start to become friends with our sensations, emotions and feelings. We become less afraid of feeling uncomfortable and difficult sensations and emotions and as a direct result our resistance lessens. The amount of resistance is always in proportion to the amount of fear. Peter Levine calls this rocking back and forth between contraction and expansion, pendulation. He writes:

"I have named this shift from the feelings of dread, rage or whatever one likes to avoid toward “befriending” one's internal sensations pendulation, the intrinsic rhythm pulsing between the experienced polarities of contraction and expansion/openness."

Expanding ...

If your everyday practice is to open to your emotions, to all the people you meet, to all the situations you encounter, without closing down, trusting that you can do that - then that will take you as far as you can go. And then you'll understand all the teachings that anyone has ever taught ~ Pema Chödrön

I have gotten to the stage where the meaning of letting go, vulnerability, powerlessness, helplessness and surrender feel the same for me. What they all amount to is an acceptance of how I'm feeling. Knowing you can enter and exit these difficult states by pendulating (see last week's post) will give you the courage to feel and even embrace difficult feelings. By experiencing pendulation we become less afraid and are able to dissolve any overwhelm, which so often keeps us trapped in the cycle of repetition and re-enactment. There is an important distinction between feeling an emotion, expressing (acting out) an emotion and wallowing in an emotion. When we don't fight and resist how we feel, we can move through the most uncomfortable and difficult emotions. It's not always easy, but it is necessary if we want to move forward. The following phrases are probably going to bring up a lot of great stuff to tap on. Take as long as you need to on each statement. EFT short cut diagram and procedure.

 

I can let go/accept

I can feel vulnerable

I can feel powerless

I can feel helpless

I can surrender

I am willing to let go/accept

I am willing to feel vulnerable

I am willing to feel powerless

I am willing to feel helpless

I am willing to surrender

It is safe to let go/accept

It is safe to feel vulnerable

It is safe to feel powerless

It is safe to feel helpless

It is safe to surrender

When things are shaky and nothing is working, we might realize that we are on the verge of something. We might realize that this is a very vulnerable and tender place, and that tenderness can go either way. We can shut down and feel resentful or we can touch in on that throbbing quality ~  Pema Chödrön

Pendulation

I've been reading In An Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness, by Peter Levine. It is an excellent book. The lasting impression this book has made on me is one of hope. There is a way out of trauma and our own body has the innate capacity to transform it. What really got me excited about this book was how he described pendulation*. Pendulation “is about the innate organismic rhythm of contraction and expansion. It is, in other words, about getting unstuck by knowing (sensing from the inside), perhaps for the first time, that no matter how horrible one is feeling, those feelings can and will change. Without this (experienced) knowledge, a person in a state of “stuckness” does not want to inhabit his or her body.”

Therein, lies the hope and potential that trauma and its effects can and will change. We can find our way out of the (seemingly) never ending, cyclical, closed loop of repetition and re-enactment which inevitably leads to overwhelm and hopelessness. I have heard the same information in a million different ways, but it was the concept of pendulation that I really “got”. While reading about pendulation an image came to me of being on a swing, swinging back and forth between helplessness, dread, paralysis and rage and no matter how high I swung or how out of control I might feel, the swing eventually comes to a natural stop when we don't push, fight or resist it.

Entering immobility can feel excruciating, unbearably vulnerable, helpless and can fill us with the most awful dread. It can feel as if we're going to die if we allow ourself to enter this “collapsed” state. It's no wonder we avoid it and find ways to sedate the pain. Then, as we exit immobility, it can feel like we have an enormous volcano of rage inside. We're afraid of this powerful rage erupting, sometimes that fear can help dampen the rage, but other times we act on it, which can make us feel deep shame. Both entering and exiting immobility can feel like the proverbial black hole which could annihilate us if we were to go anywhere near it, so we stay away from these unbelievably difficult feelings. And we stay away and we stay away, until we can't any more. Our bodies and minds won't and can't carry any more pain and they start to buckle under the weight of trauma. Who actually wants to experience these feelings? None of us do. But that's exactly what we need to do. Peter Levine writes:

"Successful trauma therapy helps people resolve trauma symptoms. The feedback loop is broken by uncoupling fear from immobility. Effective therapy breaks, or depotentiates, this trauma-fear feedback loop by helping a person safely learn to “contain” his or her powerful sensations, emotions and impulses without becoming overwhelmed.

In the short run, the suppression of immobility sensations appears (to our denial-biased mind) to keep the paralysis and helplessness at bay. However, in time, it becomes apparent that evasive maneuvers are an abject failure. This “sweeping under the rug” not only prolongs the inevitable, it often makes the eventual encounter with immobility even more frightening. It is as if the mind recognizes the extent of our resistance and in response interprets it as further evidence of peril. If, on the other hand, one is able to utilize the vital assistance of titration [small doses] and pendulation, one can touch gently and briefly into that deathlike void without coming undone. Hence the immobility response can move ahead in time toward its natural conclusion, self-paced termination."

Uncoupling the fear from immobility is absolutely necessary because unless and until we do that, we will not enter immobility because it's too frightening and consequently the likelihood of being flooded, overwhelmed and even retraumatised is very high. We get tastes of what it's like when we're triggered, we'll feel some of the fear or dread, get scared and then feel rage that we can't escape our situation, which leads to hopelessness which can then descend into blaming and shaming our self for not being able to help our self. And so we push our pain down as much as possible, until the next time. It is the experience of pendulation, the rocking back and forth between contraction (fear, collapse, rage etc) and expansion (feeling empowered, calm etc) that gives us hope, and resiliency. It breaks the closed loop of feeling trapped and we can move forward. He writes:

"The shifting (between the fear/resistance and the unadulterated physical sensations of immobility) evokes one of the most important reconnections to the body's innate wisdom: the experience of pendulation, the body's natural restorative rhythm of contraction and expansion that tells us whatever is felt is time-limited ... that suffering will not last forever. Pendulation carries all living creatures through difficult sensations and emotions."

* He describes the same process in the brilliant Waking the Tiger, but does not call it pendulation.

It is the first purpose of hope to make hopelessness bearable ~ Robert Brault

Dr Gabrielle Rutten on chronic health issues

Dr Gabrielle Rutten on using Emotional Freedom Techniques for unresolved stress and emotions, often the cause for chronic health issues. Personal peace procedure and EFT short cut diagram and procedure.

Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself ~ Marcus Tullio Cicero

Uncomfortable emotions

Emotions have evolved over millions of years, we could never have survived without them. Emotions enable us to assess situations and people and act accordingly, acting as guides and maps for surviving and thriving. I believe our relationship with emotions in general could be healthier, particularly emotions widely considered to be “negative” such as fear, anger, rage or guilt. The only reason we refer to these emotions as “negative” is because we don't know how to feel them and as a result they feel uncomfortable.

When we're able to allow emotions, though they may feel very powerful and scary, to move through our bodies, we're fully feeling our emotions. It's when we half feel emotions that they become an issue, they get stuck and start short circuiting in our system. This can happen if we become frightened of the enormous power and energy that emotions such as fear and rage carry, energies that power us to deal with certain situations and people. We can freeze feeling these emotions if we are unable or unresourced to take any action. The resulting short circuit or incomplete response can then be triggered every time we feel the same emotion in the future. If not released and resolved these short circuits contribute to an increasing build up of stress, which puts enormous pressure on our whole system.

Another reason for labeling certain emotions as “negative” is early conditioning. Take anger as an example, many adults believe children don't have the right to feel, never mind express, anger. It is possibly one of the most derided emotions in our “civilised” society, but anger is a very normal and appropriate response when our sense of self is being threatened. If a child is abused, not listened to, not taken seriously or not respected, anger arises in an effort to re-establish and reset their personal boundaries. But if a person's sense of self worth has been eroded, they will have problems feeling and expressing anger when it arises to protect them, because they don't feel worthy of protection. If they do manage to feel or express some of their anger they can be shamed for having the audacity to assert their sense of self worth and personal boundaries. A parent who allows and encourages their child to feel and express their anger, cultivates the child's self worth and personal freedom to define what behaviour they will or will not accept from others. Problems with feeling and expressing anger are related at the deepest level to self worth.

Anger, when unfelt and unexpressed can lead to rage. Rage is an enormously powerful energy that alerts us to the fact that we have been severely wounded and need protection from further hurt. It really is a cry for help. It is very very difficult not to act out from unfelt emotions. Unfelt emotions such as rage carry a huge energetic charge that propels us to discharge it, and unless we know of healthy ways, we'll discharge the energy in any way we can, often hurting our self and others. We'll take whatever temporary relief we can get. A felt emotion does not carry the same charge, so emotions are not the problem, not feeling emotions is the problem. We need to remember that what we don't feel, we act out, not the other way round. Many of us need to heal our relationship with anger and let this beautiful protective emotion serve us.

Anger is one of the sinews of the soul ~ Thomas Fuller 

Stay on one point

Until you yawn, sigh, burp … whatever your sign is for releasing tension, keep tapping on one point until it happens. As in SLOW EFT start on the karate chop point or the sore spot and pick a word or phrase that describes how you feel, or a word that holds a charge for you about something or someone. Let's say for example that the phrase “it's hopeless” describes how you're feeling about a situation or person, start tapping at the karate chop point and keep saying “it's hopeless” until you release stress in your unique way. Then move on to the top of the head until you hear another sigh or yawn. Be aware that each time you sigh, yawn, burp, hear gurgling in your gut, feel jerks in your legs or arms, your nervous system is releasing tension. It feels good to know that your stress levels are coming down and your body is giving you very real convincing physical signs that stress is being discharged from your system. EFT short cut diagram and procedure.

Freedom to feel

Emotional Freedom Techniques helps us process and feel uncomfortable emotions. As we learn to be comfortable with feeling our emotions, our capacity to allow any emotion move through our energy system grows. What this means in a practical way is we can process an emotion, no matter what it is, without having to dissociate from it or distract our self from feeling it. Feeling helps the emotion or energy move freely through our system so it doesn't short circuit. Emotional freedom is the freedom to feel any feeling, it doesn't mean freedom from feeling.

What causes a short circuit in our energy system? It seems that anything other than experiencing love and acceptance carries with it the potential for short circuiting our energy system. Love and acceptance feel good and flow through our system uninterrupted. Unless of course we are shut down to love because of being hurt or if we have not experienced love right from the beginning of life. Because if we can't allow our self to feel love, the experience of love can short circuit in our energy system. We can construct walls for protection, but the walls we build cut off this vital nourishment and our system atrophies. Love nourishes us in every way that we can be nourished.

Hurt, guilt, shame, anger, fear carry huge potential for short circuiting our systems, that is, until we learn how to feel or process these emotions. It's the reason why these emotions are often referred to as “negative” and why they can instil so much fear. This fear propels us with an urgency to tap the emotion away, get rid of it and avoid it so we don't have to feel it. When we can fully feel uncomfortable emotions, our resilience grows, we become stronger and our energy system evolves. All emotions are ultimately good for us when they are felt.

What helps us feel uncomfortable emotions? It appears that feeling loved right from the start of life gives us a head start in handling emotions. Feeling loved gives us resiliency, security and a strong foundation from which we can bend when the wind blows and not snap and break into pieces. When the having and the expression of different emotions are accepted and even encouraged, a sense of esteem and self worth blossoms. Feelings and the person who is having them, are taken seriously and respected which leads to self trust.

Learning how to feel our emotions as early as possible can save us from a lot of heartache later in life, but we can always choose to feel at any stage of our life. It takes courage to feel and EFT can help us accept, sit with and feel our emotions.

Connecting the dots

In the theatre of the body, trauma can be transformed. The fragmented elements that perpetuate traumatic emotion and behaviour can be completed, integrated, and made whole again. Along with this wholeness comes a sense of mastery and resolution ~ Peter Levine, Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma: The Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experiences

If you have ever questioned how you feel, or if others have ever questioned how you feel, and as a result you have wondered whether you're imagining your feelings, dramatising them, maximising them, taking them too seriously, going around the twist, have completely lost the plot, have just not gotten over them and you feel you “should have” at this stage, or you feel the pressure of others thinking that you're a broken record, take a moment and listen to your body. Do you have any chronic health issues that have not responded to allopathic medical treatment?

Our body is a container, and its symptoms are windows into our unconscious, all we need do is look and listen. The next time you or another question the validity of your feelings, or you feel like beating your self up for where you are, listen to your body's symptoms, they never lie. You can always, always trust your body. Your body is showing you, in every way that it can, how to take your self and your feelings seriously. If you choose not to listen or don't hear, your symptoms will scream as loud as they have to until you do hear what they're saying.

The majority of us would agree that stress is one of the main causes of disease. Stress, or more specifically, undischarged stress, can cause havoc with our health, it can contribute to heart disease, strokes, inflammation, insulin resistance, depression, anxiety, chronic fatigue syndrome, the list goes on. The presence of chronic symptoms in our body is our evidence of a cause, evidence that we're not stark raving mad. And so often that cause is the early imprint of feeling unloved which puts extreme stress on our system from the beginning. The stress and pain of not being loved has to go somewhere and so often our body absorbs it because we just don't have the resources to feel that kind of pain when we are babies and children and we often lack the resources as adults as well.

When we are not loved and wanted, there's no safe haven where we can be our self, have our needs met or thrive, so, we do our best to adapt and survive, we contort our true self in order to try and get the love that we need. The operative word being “get”. This relentless search for getting love changes who we are, and it can be a long road back to our true self. If the trauma of feeling unloved remains undischarged, it causes absolute mayhem in our bodies and lives. Until we can fully connect to that pain, we will continue to re-enact the trauma and/or manifest its effects in our body in order to find resolution.

We seek not rest but transformation. We are dancing through each other as doorways ~ Marge Piercy

Compassionate presence

Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals ~ Pema Chödrön

When we know what it is to feel our pain, we can feel compassion for another feeling their pain. We can't create a safe container for our self, or others, when we're afraid of pain. I once heard Jennifer McLean saying that “our body is the safest place to be”. When we're in emotional pain, our body can feel like the least safe place to be, because our emotions and sensations are felt and processed in the body. That's if we're associated with our body, feeling puts us in touch with our body and emotions which can feel unbearable, so we may dissociate and subsequently think and believe that feeling is an enemy to our peace of mind. So we avoid feeling.

Our willingness to feel our pain keeps us emotionally (and physically when there is no other cause) healthy. What we don't feel, we will act out. If we fear the emotions of others we know we have some work (i.e. feeling) to do with our own emotions.

What compassion translates to in a very practical way is being present with someone's feelings, all of their feelings. It isn't a multiple choice test where we get to tick off for others what the “good” or “bad” emotions they are feeling are. A vital ingredient of compassion is acceptance, so any discomfort we might feel about what someone else is feeling, shows us where we need healing. We might not have the same experience in common with someone, but we all have feelings in common. Most of us know what it's like to feel rage, frustration, sadness or delight. Nothing is more human than feeling our emotions and yet it can be so painful to do just that. We may need another person to create enough safety for us to be able to feel deep pain, someone who is present, willing to go there with us, doesn't try to fix it or reframe our feelings or situation too quickly before we feel heard.

For "full" emotional communication, one person needs to allow his state of mind to be influenced by that of the other ~ Daniel Siegel

What is trauma?

Trauma is often defined in terms of little t trauma and big T trauma, or soft and hard trauma. This definition of trauma is event dependent. It is looking from the outside in, instead of from the inside out. In my experience it is not the event itself that is significant in terms of defining what is traumatic, but how we experienced and resolved the event or events. Trauma is an individual experience and how we respond and resolve it, is unique to us, our situation, our age and available resources. Any experience that remains unresolved or unexperienced can lead to trauma.

Trauma is in the nervous system, not the event ~ Peter Levine

There are many ways an experience can remain unresolved. If we have ever felt helpless, powerless or like our survival was at stake, then the experience, whatever it was, was potentially traumatic for us. We can be deeply hurt and wounded (the word trauma comes from Greek and literally means wound), physically, sexually and psychologically, by something or someone and if we can't process the hurt, trauma can result. If we freeze and are unable, for whatever reason, to discharge the freeze response this also creates trauma in our system. The traumatic experience can then be triggered or re-enacted over and over again until resolution is found. If subsequent freeze responses are not discharged and compounded pain is not resolved, an enormous strain is put on our system and our resilience becomes severely depleted.

One of the most devastating and insidious traumas is the ongoing experience of feeling unloved and unwanted, which usually starts in the womb. When a baby feels unloved and unwanted, it can be experienced as a real threat to their survival and can result in feelings of helplessness and hopelessness. The wounds of feeling unloved go very deep and often remain unexperienced or frozen just because they are so unbearably painful. The imprint of these wounds will be played out and re-enacted in all sorts of different ways in order to resolve them. We're always looking for resolution, we need resolution.

If the essential need for love is not met, babies learn to mistrust and deny all of their needs, because if they are not worthy of being loved, they are not worthy of having their needs met. When traumatic imprints are laid down as early as our time in the womb, freezing can often become the habitual response when we feel threatened later in life because of lowered resilience. Our threshold to assimilate life's stresses is affected by unresolved trauma, we become hyper vigilant, feel unsafe, we dissociate, feel anxious and depressed, we do whatever helps us to sedate and keep our pain repressed.

Trauma: unexperienced experience ~ Ivor Browne

Trauma imprints in the body

Acceptance can be difficult. That's an understatement if ever there was one. When we reject or resist feeling our feelings, we can't experience them and the experience remains undigested or unexperienced. Psychiatrist Ivor Browne calls unexperienced experience trauma. This is one of the ways trauma imprints in our bodies. What we don't feel and experience our body takes on.

Chronic indigestion, or undischarged trauma, can show up in our life in all sorts of ways; IBS, acid reflux, bloating, chronic inflammation, anxiety, stress, depression, chronic fatigue and so on. Finding a way to digest the indigestible is important for our health. Ask your self what has been the hardest for you to digest or accept in your life?

I believe it's nigh on impossible to let go of something that we haven't digested or even acknowledged is there. And that's where the frustration and overwhelm come in, we try and struggle in vain to let go of something that hasn't been acknowledged, accepted or felt. The overwhelm goes beyond frustration, it very often, if not always, leads to feelings of powerlessness and hopelessness. The helplessness is also felt because of not consciously knowing due to repressed or unconscious pain, a pain so painful that it is deeply buried. But our body lets us know in the form of symptoms, as it is the container for all our pain.

The first physical signs of indigestion can be low stomach acid, we don't digest our food as well and feel off and bloated. If left unchecked this can become chronic and can lead to issues such as IBS and many others. Emotional signs of undischarged trauma are feeling overwhelmed, flying off the handle at the 'slightest' thing, being called 'too' sensitive and feeling like it's all 'too much'.

One of the reasons we won't allow our self to experience anything traumatic is we fear we'll never be able to exit from the feeling or experience and it will be unbearable. Which is usually how we felt when it first happened and we don't want to return there. We're terrified it will stay with us forever and swallow us up in its pain so we resist feeling it with all our might. The strategy of avoiding pain in the short term (the freeze response) works really well and can be life saving, but in the long run we pay a huge price for suppressing what's crying out for acceptance from us. Tapping diagram and procedure.

Back pain

Our need for others has its roots in our earliest experiences and is bound up with our deepest feelings. This may be obvious, and yet a hundred years of otherwise creditable psychological thinking took it for granted that we begin life as individuals, who somehow at some later stage get in relationships with each other ~ Josephine Klein, Our Need for Others and its Roots in Infancy

10 years ago I injured my tail bone while cycling. Ever since then I have had lower back issues and once in 2004 I was in bed for 3 weeks with severe pain and sciatica. I am still healing this injury, which goes far deeper than the physical one I sustained that day on my bike.

Whenever I feel unsupported, or try to push through, my back lets me know. I have this habit or pattern of not listening to myself, not taking my feelings seriously, and being far too concerned with how others feel and taking responsibility for that, it's no wonder I don't feel supported sometimes. So when I'm not listening and paying attention to how I feel, my back lets me know.

The first chakra is all about stability, safety, support, having strong roots and feeling grounded, so it's not surprising that back issues tend to show up in people who have issues in these areas. Try this tapping script for back pain:

Even though I feel unsupported, I accept how I feel (if a memory pops up, tap on that)

Even though my back feels like …(it's going to pop, give way etc), I accept my back and all its messages

Even though all these feelings are stored in my back, I accept them all

Top of the head: I don't feel supported

Eyebrow: I have to do it all alone

Side of eye: And that makes me feel …

Under the eye: Lonely

Under the nose: Weighed down

Under the chin: On shaky ground

Collar Bone: I don't feel safe

Under the arm: I'd like to be looked after for once

Top of the head: This pain

Eyebrow: It feels ...(be as descriptive as you can)

Side of the eye: I feel it when …

Under the eye: And that makes me feel …

Under the nose: I accept how I feel

Under the chin: I choose to take my feelings and experiences seriously

Collar bone: I choose to support myself

Under the arm: That feels …

Top of the head: What's the bigger message here?

Eyebrow: What's stored in my back?

Side of the eye: The mechanical injury isn't healing because …

Under the eye: My feelings need to be taken seriously

Under the nose: I need to take myself seriously

Under the chin: And stop trying to be brave

Collar bone: And trying to do it all alone

Under the arm: I can reach out …

Tap on anything that this script brings up and make sure to customise it to how you feel. Suggested reading:
1. The Body Bears the Burden by Robert Scaer 

2. Waking the Tiger by Peter Levine

3. Your Body Doesn't Lie by John Diamond

Don't turn away

Turn towards your self. Turn towards your feelings. Turn towards your experience. Don't push through, pay attention, listen. Tap for the courage and the strength to feel and experience whatever it is. EFT short cut diagram and procedure

Remember the Body. Touch the Earth. Heal Wounds.

I really loved this article by Benjamin Riggs and I'd like to share an excerpt here. You can read the full article here.

"The body is a place many of us have not been for quite some time. We have forgotten our bodies. In our modern world, the sensitivity and immediacy of the body is treated like a nuisance. It is almost as if the body is always interrupting the head, with it’s plans and strategies. With our ambitious heads in the driver’s seat, we push our bodies to the edge. As a result, we are plagued by aches and pains, fatigue, addiction, and illness. We seek escape from the prophetic wisdom of  intuition, but the persistence of this wisdom reveals our plans and strategies to be a cowardly exercise in futility—preordained tendencies that seek to escape the inevitable reunion of mind and body. Then, in an act of desperation, we drown out the realization that we are seeking escape. We begin to chase oblivion, and in the process, we silence the voice of our body. We go numb. The impending reminders of our corporeal condition are, often times, so extreme and overwhelming that the body has come to be regarded as a burden. At best, most of us see the body as a bag of bones, which chauffeurs around the tyrant lodged between our ears. This condition is referred to as “disembodiment.”

Inbred thinking is the origin of our disembodied condition. A decapitated head is an industrious mentality characterized by confusion, speed, and clutter. In short, it is insane. When thought is divorced from reality, consciousness becomes infected with insanity. In a disconnected mind thought is forced to supply itself with content, which is the origin of insanity.

At birth we are fully embodied. As a matter of fact, we are still fully embodied; we are just ignore-ant of this fact. As we begin our initiation into the human race, we inherit a program that seeks to fragment awareness for the sake of organization. The true nature of thought is pure energy, but language begins to interpret this energy, molding it through a process of conformity. Eventually, the thinking mind is governed by a pre-ordained system of dynamics and unquestioned assumptions." Read on

Dissolving an underlying energetic pattern of fear

This exercise is from Donna Eden's excellent book Energy Medicine. I have had great success with this beautifully simple exercise:

When you are caught in fear, anxiety, or a phobia, tapping a point on the triple warmer meridian (gamut spot in EFT), which governs the flight-or-flight response, can alleviate the fear. The next time you feel afraid (time - about 1 minute): 

1. Start tapping on the gamut spot. Tap for about a minute.

2. If you still feel fear, tap on the other hand. 

Even for a long-standing phobia, repeatedly using this technique begins to alter the underlying energetic pattern.

Are you "too" sensitive?

Do you believe your self to be "too" sensitive? I think there is a difference between being receptive and sensitive. I believe that being too sensitive or hyper sensitivity is actually an overwhelmed nervous system. Try this tapping script to help your nervous system release some of that undischarged frozen energy. Tapping diagram and points.

A very receptive state of mind...not unlike a sheet of film itself - seemingly inert, yet so sensitive that a fraction of a second's exposure conceives a life in it ~ Minor White

Even though I am too sensitive, I accept myself anyway

Even though I feel too much, I accept all of my feelings

Even though I wish I could turn the switch off on my emotions so I don't have to feel them, I accept how I feel

Top of the head: I'm too sensitive

Eyebrow: How do I know?

Side of the eye: I've always been told I am

Under the eye: I've always been highly strung

Under the nose: I've always felt too much

Under the chin: I can't handle my feelings

Collar bone: And neither can others

Under the arm: So I push them away

Top of the head: But it doesn't work

Eyebrow: They get stronger

Side of the eye: Because I'm not listening

Under the eye: I'm not acknowledging

Under the nose: What my feelings are trying to say

Under the chin: So they get louder

Collar bone: So I'll listen

Under the arm: But it's hard to listen

Top of the head; When they feel so strong

Eyebrow: And overwhelming

Side of the eye: It's hard to accept my feelings

Under the eye: Because …

Under the nose: It's difficult to honour how I feel

Under the chin: And feel those feelings

Collar bone: They feel too much

Under the arm: I feel too much

Top of the head: My nervous system is overwhelmed

Eyebrow: I can help it discharge some of this stress

Side of eye: Tapping and releasing

Under the eye: Tapping and releasing

Under the nose: Tapping and helping this energy to move

Under the chin: And go where it needs to go

Collar bone: Helping this energy move

Under the arm: Helping this energy move

Feeling=Movement

When you feel, you keep things moving. And when your energies are moving it feels good and you feel good as a result. When a feeling feels uncomfortable, we have the ability to stop feeling that feeling and suspend the experience. The discomfort can come in the form of shame, guilt, fear or feeling wrong for having the feeling in the first place. Allowing yourself to feel allows you to fully experience your life. Feeling is completely free, it's a natural ability most of us have that is underutilised and undervalued, it is a skill you can access any time you choose to. Things tend to fall into their rightful place when we allow our self to feel all of our emotions, we don't feel so stuck, stressed and overwhelmed.

It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power ~ Alan Cohen

Try tapping on “Feeling keeps my energies moving”, “When my energy moves I feel good”, “It feels good when my energies are moving”. Describe the energy and how it feels as it's moving, or not moving as the case may be, be as descriptive as you can about how you feel when you're tapping. You'll know you're making headway if you start to yawn, sigh, burp or when the emotional charge on the feeling lessens and it feels more comfortable to feel that feeling. These are all very good signs of a shift and energy starting to move. EFT is great at helping us to feel emotions that we find difficult to feel. It's easier to let the feeling move through your system without it causing a short circuit in your energy (electrical) system when you tap.  If energy has been stuck or has not moved in a long time, it can feel hard and very frustrating, it can take a bit longer and some persistence to help it start moving again. Let your intention be for the energy to move and see what happens when you let go of any resistance to feeling all of your emotions.

Feel the way you feel ...

Trust your own instincts. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else's ~ Billy Wilder

If there is one thing I've learned in life, it's to trust my instincts. If I make a mistake, so what? I can start again, apologise or change direction. I can let myself off the hook.

Trusting how you feel is also part of trusting your instincts because you feel your instincts. Don't allow your self or anyone else to talk you out of how you feel. You feel the way you feel and allowing your self to feel whatever it is will help you in ways you can't imagine.

Try saying “My intention is to allow myself to feel ..” and tap on all the points as you say it. If you can't identify the feeling or there are many feelings, where is that energy showing up in your body? How do you know you have that feeling or feelings? Be as descriptive as possible when you're tapping and talk about how you're feeling as you're tapping. Have a conversation with your self. Keep going until the emotional charge lessens and the feeling is flowing smoothly through your system. This might take more than one go, but if you find some relief you'll feel encouraged enough to keep going, knowing it's helping you.

Each time you allow the energy of a feeling to move through you, with the help of tapping, or any other technique you find useful, you get better and better at feeling ALL of your your emotions. And your ability to release the emotional charge on feelings that feel uncomfortable or overwhelming will grow too. You'll find that it gets easier and easier each time you allow your self to feel whatever it is. There is no right or wrong here, there's just allowing. EFT shortcut diagram and procedure

I learned to be with myself rather than avoiding myself with limiting habits; I started to be aware of my feelings more, rather than numb them ~ Judith Wright

Tim Douglas

Tim your kindness echoes endlessly ... thank you and I love you.

Freezing on the spot

When we freeze it can feel like we're helpless to say or do anything to help our self. Many of us can feel like we were weak for having frozen and it can be really hard to accept that we didn't do or say anything to help our self. We may feel that we could have prevented whatever from happening if only we had fought back or been able to escape.

It is crucial to know that the freeze response is involuntary, you do not have any voluntary control over it. Depending on the threat that your system detects, it will decide whether to freeze or not. Your ability to physically move or call out will be prevented so that no more harm (for example, death) will come to you. Therefore your ability to fight back or put up a struggle is not under your control. It is crucial for anyone dealing with sexual abuse (among other abuses and neglect) to be trauma-informed so that the victim is not blamed. It is also important to note that we will freeze according to our stage of development and any resources available to us, therefore the younger we are, the bigger our propensity to freeze.

The ability to freeze an experience is a great survival mechanism that serves us really well in situations where we don't have the resources to deal with it in that moment. As Ivor Browne states ~ Whenever we are faced with an overwhelming experience that we sense as potentially disintegrating, we have the ability to suspend it and "freeze" it in an unassimilated, inchoate form and maintain it in that state indefinitely, or for as long as necessary.

Top of head: I froze
Eyebrow: I should have fought back
Side of eye: It's all my fault
Under eye: I'm weak
Under nose: I felt helpless
Under chin: And powerless
Collar bone: To do anything
Under arm: And I can't accept myself for having done nothing

Top of head: I should have done something!!
Eyebrow: But I froze
Side of eye: I wanted to survive
Under eye: I was weak
Under nose: At least it felt that way
Under chin: Why didn't I do something?!
Collar bone: I could have prevented ...
Under arm: It's really hard to accept that I did nothing

Top of head: I did my best
Eyebrow: What??
Side of eye: No I didn't
Under eye: Yes, I did
Under nose: I could have done more
Under chin: I wish I had done more
Collar bone: I wish I had spoken up
Under arm: For myself

Top of head: I accept myself anyway
Eyebrow: I really did do the best I could at the time
Side of eye: I really did
Under eye: My need to survive was strong
Under nose: Stronger than the urge to fight or run
Under chin: And that's ok
Collar bone: That doesn't make me weak
Under arm: It makes me strong

Our strength grows out of our weaknesses ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The great illusion

Article from The Irish Times, Tuesday, October 12th, 2010:

According to Prof Ivor Browne, treatment of mental illness can not – and should not – be undertaken without the effort of the patient, and the power of change and recovery being firmly placed in their hands

THE WORLD is a sea of troubles and we have to adapt to these as best we can. People use all kinds of ways to manage. Some are better than others, while some are counterproductive and land us in difficulty. Mental illness is seen as a disease caused by either a disturbance in our biochemistry or by genetic influences – but this is a myth.

This view of mental illness arises from a reductionist scientific concept, where the disturbance of the whole person is seen as caused by something wrong with the parts. It’s derived historically from Galileo’s statement that, to make scientific progress, we must concentrate on things we can measure. But this is only half the story and it breaks down when applied to living creatures such as ourselves.

When a new whole emerges, this is a completely new reality, quite distinct from the parts that make it up. It’s not explainable by simply analysing the parts. Once the new reality, for example of a person, emerges, the causal direction reverses. The new whole takes control over its parts – thus we have to take control of our behaviour, cells and biochemistry, and not the other way around.

This is why, in dealing with emotional problems, there is no therapy the psychiatrist or therapist can apply to the person to bring about real change. The person has to do the work of changing themselves, with the support and guidance of a therapist.

This concept of “self-organisation” is synonymous with what it is to be alive. Anything that diminishes our state of self-organisation lessens our control over and management of our health and will be a step towards sickness.

Because of the mechanistic attitudes that have accompanied advances in science and technology, the western mind has fallen prey to the illusion that there is a remedy for every ill; we expect to be able to avail of these without any effort or suffering on our part.

When a person comes to a doctor or therapist with symptoms that indicate depression or anxiety, they expect the doctor to do something to relieve them.

Certainly doctors can relieve symptoms, but without the natural healing power of the body and a functioning immune system, medicine and doctors are largely helpless.

In dealing with psychiatric illness, there is no treatment you can apply to a person that will bring about real change in them. The person has to undertake the work himself and this involves pain and suffering. Read on

*Article Unexperienced experience by Ivor Browne

Free EFT resources

Emotions are celebrated and repressed, analysed and medicated, adored and ignored - but rarely, if ever, are they honoured ~ Karla McLaren

25 EFT tapping scripts on allowing your feelings, anger, trust, letting go, feeling stuck and lots more.
Audios ~ listen and tap along (to download right click on a PC or control click on a Mac):
Anxiety
Overwhelm
Pain
Sinus issues
Diagram and procedure of EFT Short Cut
Diagram and procedure of EFT Full Basic Recipe
Tips on getting the best from EFT
21 questions to help you find core issues and beliefs
The EmoTrance Primer

Emotions are movements in the energy body ~ Silvia Hartmann

The best way out is through

The best way out is through ~ Robert Frost

I don't know of any other way out of pain but through. Going around it, avoiding it, pretending it's not there, willing it away or covering it up, creates a labyrinth where we lose our way and can find no exit. The way out takes willingness and the courage to connect with your pain. To finally feel, for the first time, that unexperienced experience which psychiatrist Ivor Browne calls trauma, untangles the confusion and clears our path. We can emerge from our pain with a true sense of who we are.

I believe the only way we can truly know our self is to go through our pain. What I know for sure is that avoiding pain is what keeps us stuck right in the thick of pain. Movement towards our pain, no matter how small, or how slow, is always healing.

There is no coming to consciousness without pain ~ Carl Jung

Clogher Beach, Ballyferriter, Kerry, Ireland

EFT shortcut diagram and procedure

Even though I don't want to go through this …. I accept how I feel

Even though avoiding my pain isn't working, I'm willing to try another way

Even though I'm confused, I trust it will all be ok

TH: I want to avoid …

EB: And that's ok

SE: I understand why I feel that way

UE: I can have compassion for why I feel that way

UN: I know the reasons why I avoid pain

UC: I accept those reasons

CB: I have kindness for myself because of those reasons

UA: It's hard

TH: I don't want …

EB: And that's ok

SE: I can understand why I don't want …

UE: I can have compassion for why I feel that way

UN: I know the reasons why I don't want …

UC: I accept why I don't want …

CB: I have kindness for myself for not wanting …

UA: It's …

TH: I want …

EB: And that's ok

SE: I can understand why I want …

UE: I can have compassion for why I want …

UN: I know the reasons why I want …

UC: I accept why I want …

CB: I have kindness for myself for wanting …

UA: It's …

TH: I choose …

EB: And that's ok

SE: I can understand why I choose …

UE: I can have compassion for why I choose …

UN: I know the reasons why I choose …

UC: I accept why I choose …

CB: I have kindness for myself for choosing …

UA: It's …