Pin the tail on the right target

I have just finished reading Kathy Brous’ new book, Don’t Try This Alone: The Silent Epidemic of Attachment Disorder. I laughed and I cried throughout, and most of all I felt hopeful after finishing it. Her tenacity and willingness to reach out for help and to keep going is amazing.

One of the gems I got from the book was to pin the tail, or tale, on the right person or situation, or you’ll never get true relief. Now I’ve heard that said a millions times before in different words, but the way she explained it really struck a chord with me. I really really got it. Maybe we need things said a thousand different ways over many years to really download it into our cells.

She would repeat “Move the tale, move the tale” throughout the book when she was recounting incidents/people where she felt triggered. And what she meant by that was to go back to when you first felt that same way. That is, the first person or situation that triggered that feeling or sensation in you.

Oftentimes, it’s our parents or another important figure in our early life who is the initiator but we often find it easier to project our wounds onto others and this is why we don’t find complete relief. Or maybe we’ve forgotten, or suppressed where the real pain came from just because it’s too painful. We pay attention to current woes not linking them to our past when they first happened.

In hypnotherapy, this is called the initiating event and everything else that happens after that is a trigger; an echo or reminder of the original experience. Because we’re so good at dissociating from pain, especially early pain, the initiating experience might not trigger us until we’re in our 20s or at 50 as in Kathy’s case. Dissociation is a brilliant survival mechanism until it becomes chronic and persistent.

In EFT, an important question is “What/Who does that remind you of?”. And I’ve asked this question of myself and others hundred of times, but “Move the tale” really makes the initial pain become laser sharp and crystal clear. When I watched Gabor Maté do a few sessions in Cork with some people, he got to the root straight away by the types of questions he asked and it only took him a few minutes because his focus was where it was supposed to be: the root. You could see the look of relief and hope on people’s faces as they realised where their pain really came from.