“The need to remain consistent with our identity is the strongest force in the human psyche.”
– Anthony Robbins

Your identity defines and constrains. Pay attention to you language both internal and external for statements that begin with “I am …”. Statements that begin with “I am …” are identity statements, for example:

I am a firefighter
I am a mother
I am a loner
I am an engineer
I am middle-aged
I am over the hill
I am a man
I am a victim of …

Each of these statements, some empowering, some disempowering, defines and constrains our identity. Pay attention to your conversations and listen for how you define yourself.

If you find an identity statement that is disempowering then you can apply EFT to it by making the identity statement part of the set up:

“Even though I’m an engineer who can’t trust his intuition, I choose to trust my intuition ”

“Even though I’m a single mother and don’t have time for relationships, I choose to love and accept myself”

“Even though I’m a victim of abuse, I can use this as an excuse to fail or motivation to succeed”

You may need to explore all the aspects of the identify statement using some form of brain dump to get to specific issues. Then dilligently apply EFT on each of the individual aspects.Related Posts:

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• Releasing 14 years of Grief and Trauma

Thankfully, the idea came through me of asking her about a favourite pet which in this case was a dog. The memory of the dog and the tricks it performed was a happy memory.

Now, if the traumatic memory started to take hold of her when I asked her to guess at the intensity, I would immediately ask her to think about her pet dog and this would snap her out of it. When she was at least able to tap, we were able to tap around the feelings that she had brushed across in the memory and gradually get deeper and deeper into the memory.

I used the memory of Vera’s dog quite often during the 2 hour session to pull her out of the trauma of the memory and thankfully at the end of the session she was able to recount the memory without being reduced to tears and the foetal position – something she had never been able to do before in her whole life.

I have since used this technique with another child abuse client. In this case we used the thought of a friend who always made her laugh. Whenever the memory got too intense, I would ask her to think about her friend and this would interrupt her state.

Many of you will recognise this as a ‘pattern interrupt’. Having Vera change her focus from the traumatic memory to thinking about her dog interrupts the emotional pattern and allows her to access a more resourceful emotional state in which we can tap and clear the feelings.

Note that at the time I came up with this idea, I wasn’t thinking in terms of pattern interrupts. It was only later that I analysed what I had done and how it worked. At the time it was very much a case of ‘through me, not by me’ as Gary teaches.

Originally published in Gary Craig’s EFT Insights Newsletter.Related Posts:

• Helping Children with School Trauma
• Releasing 14 years of Grief and Trauma
• What to do when running out of time in your EFT session
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