There is a well known procedure in EFT
called chasing the pain. You 'chase' or follow where physical pain
leads you. It may lead you around your body in the form of different
sensations, or an emotion may come up as might a memory. Things
usually daisy chain together until you find relief from the physical
pain and/or you gain insight into an emotional issue that has
contributed to or even caused the physical pain.
You can do the same thing with your
emotions. You can follow where anger may lead you, for example it
could be hurt, sadness or fear. This is akin to different aspects
coming up. Very often if someone taps on their anger and it's 8 out
of 10 and it decreases to 0 but then sadness comes up and it's a 10,
they might feel EFT didn't work. What has happened is they have come
across another aspect of the same issue, in this case; sadness.
Chasing emotions like this is like peeling an onion, and of course it
might make you cry too!, but it's worthwhile in the end.
Apologies for my website and email being up and down over the last few days, hopefully it'll be back up again permanently over the next day or so. You can also email me at noreen(dot)barron(at)gmail(dot)com
... when you're really really stressed? Do you say things like:
Life is unfair I'm jinxed I am a failure/I feel a failure Things never go right for me I am a bad person/I feel like a bad person It's hopeless Good things never last This always happens to me Bad things always happen
These beliefs are what you are affirming, they are what feels true for you in your life. When things are going wrong and we ask our self this question, our answers tell us how we really feel about our self, life and others. There is no point in sugar coating something if underneath we feel entirely differently. Affirmations can be either positive or negative, for an affirmation to be true, it has to feel true. Whether or not it is true is another matter, what's important is that it feels true for you. A better question might be, does this belief/affirmation serve me?
You can take one of your statements when you do this exercise and ask yourself what evidence do you have for believing it to be true and then start tapping. EFT short cut diagram and procedure.
Perhaps this is most true when it comes
to looking after your health.
I gave birth on the 15th
November 2012, I was 42 weeks and 3 days pregnant and under
severe pressure from the hospital to be induced. I didn't want to be
induced, I had researched it and spoken to many women who had been
induced, and knew it usually ended up in a cascade of interventions
with a cesarean section being the end result far too often. The drugs
they use for induction are off label and have numerous side effects,
or direct effects as I like to call them.
I had been transferred from midwifery
to obstetric care on October 5th because of three high
blood pressure readings and +1 protein in my urine. When I met with
the obstetrician he immediately diagnosed me with pre-eclampsia, or
toxemia as he called it, and then proceeded to tell me that
“pregnancy is an illness” and “women who want home births
usually end up with every intervention in the book”. He then
informed me he wanted me in hospital until the birth, which was
October 29th, over three weeks away. My husband and I left
his consulting room shell shocked. I had just secured a home birth
the week before so this news was devastating.
The next six weeks were very traumatic
as we advocated for our voices to be heard. They weren't. I didn't go
into hospital (apart from a two day stay to check the protein levels
in my urine, which were fine), but I did go for almost daily check
ups for the baby. Most of the time, all I heard was I could convulse,
seize and die at any moment or the baby could be still born and so
on. I had to sign a release form on more than one occasion. Trying to
explain that I understood the risk factors and didn't need them
explained to me every day for six weeks fell on deaf ears. I wasn't
the 'expert'. I felt harassed and traumatised by this form of
'health care' and tried to explain how I felt on numerous occasions,
some lovely people did listen but in general I was ignored and even
sneered at for informing myself.
I did not go into labour, our baby's
heartbeat fell and I had an emergency cesarean which was the last
thing I wanted, but it was a true medical emergency so that consoles
me somewhat. Do I wonder could I have done things differently? Of
course I do, I should have gone for chiropractic adjustments, I
should have worked more on my psychological state which was full of
fear, thinking of going into hospital to give birth. At the end of
the day we have a beautiful healthy son but that still doesn't negate traumatic feelings around his birth and the last month of my pregnancy which
needed to be worked through.
Too many women have traumatic
experiences during pregnancy and birth and it really is time to take
back our own power and be our own best advocates.
For every effect there is a root cause.
Find and address the root cause rather than try to fix the effect, as
there is no end to the latter ~ Unknown
What does it mean to be listened to? It
means to be heard, validated and witnessed. Research shows that
children who receive little to no affection don't thrive and can even
die and adults can develop mental and physical dis-orders that
seriously impact the quality of their life. Because we need each
other -we're social beings after all- one of our most important needs
is to be listened to. We interpret being listened to as being important in
someone's life, they're present to what we're experiencing and are
accepting us without wanting to change us, make it better or reframe
things. Being listened to is like a warm mental hug, we feel
connected in a way that feels good and nourishing, it is essential for our mental and emotional health, which of course affects our physical health. I think it is one of the
greatest skills we can learn in this life.
When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen ~ Ernest Hemingway
