Please remember that a Doctor is only giving you their opinion. It is not a fact. A Doctor’s opinion though is often interpreted with such power that if a Doctor says a patient only has 3 months to live, then they die exactly 3 months to the day of the diagnosis. We believe them so completely.

This recent article of successful cancer remission shows yet again that Doctor’s can be wrong. I know the Doctor’s have to tell you their diagnosis because they are bound by a duty of care but how many times do they have to be wrong before they stop stating their diagnosis as a fact? And how long before we stop believing their diagnosis as an absolute truth? I have previous written on how using EFT with a Doctor’s diagnosis can allow you to break it’s voodoo impact.

I truly admire the woman in the above article for her determination to break through the fears and challenges of both the cancer and it’s treatment. This story should be in the headlines on every newspaper and TV channel.Related Posts:

• Using EFT with a Doctor’s Diagnosis
• Why some clients do not tap even when they know EFT will help them
• Fear of EFT Working
• Progress with a Social Phobic
• What’s wrong with you?

“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:

• Why some clients do not tap even when they know EFT will help them
• Fear of what will other people will think of me?
• Get Started on Global Issues with a Brain Dump
• Release Christmas Gathering Stress
• 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
• The Origin of a Thought
• The Law of Attraction: An excuse for not taking action?

If you invest the time now to resolve their hurts, fears and rejections these disturbance in their energy systems won’t be buried deep and require several session in my practice in 20 years time to resolve.

As an adult, we sometimes underestimate the impact that a school incidence can have on our children. Our brain is always searching for meaning and will create all sorts of beliefs from the most trivial of looks or behaviour from others. A child does not yet have our adult ability to put things in perspective, so being snubbed in the playground can install a belief that something is wrong with me and I’m never going to be loved and everyone else is better than me.

So again I would ask parents now to work with your child to heal the wounds earlier rather than later. A simple way to do this is, as often as you can, ask your child about their day and as they tell you about it tap on yourself and have them tap on themselves.

Doing the exercise above, forget about the using the formal EFT “Even though I have this …., I completely love and accept myself”. Remember that the purpose of this affirmation is to keep us focused on the problem. When your child is telling you about their day they are already tuned into what is going on so just tap through the points as they talk.Related Posts:

• School Made Much Easier – Online Resource Library
• What’s wrong with you?
• Using EFT with a Doctor’s Diagnosis
• Tappy Bear: A Teddy Bear Tapping Companion – Now available in Australia
• Tips on Finding the Root Cause of an Emotion

“Susan” came to me wanting help in figuring out why she had not been in a relationship for a long time. Susan was an attractive woman and desperately wanted a partner and children. In the first few minutes of our session, I asked how long it had been since she was in a relationship and she replied “14 years. I’ve been shut-down since my father’s death”. This was a pretty strong clue as to where to start. Susan had tried many other modalities of treatment around her father’s death and had thought that it was “handled”.

However, when I asked Susan to access the memory of the day her father died she could not even get the words out without breaking down into tears, even 14 years later. So we did a few rounds of tapping to handle the initial sadness and pain so that she could start to tell the story.

Susan’s father had died of a heart attack without warning. Susan had received a phone call at home from her mother and rushed across town to the scene where Ambulance (Paramedics) officers were attempting to revive her father. She was in hysterics on arrival and, at first, had been prevented from getting to her father by an Ambulance officer. Then she held his hand knowing that he had already moved on and she felt hopeless and frustrated knowing there was nothing she could do. Seeing her fathers body was a terrible shock since the body did not appear to be her father.

I explained about the movie technique to Susan and asked her to start running the movie in her mind and stop whenever intensity spiked. Although, I didn’t ask the length of the movie initially, over time I learned that there were several hours over which the traumatic events had taken place.

In our initial 3-hour session there were many points in the movie where Susan completely broke down and could not speak so I would tap for her. No words or scaling were needed because she was obviously at a 10 in intensity and fully tuned into the emotion.

When Susan was capable of telling me a little about the parts of the movie which were intense, there were many, many different aspects that came up, for example:

Even though my father was just lying there, …

Even though I couldn’t stand the sight of his eyes rolled up in his head,…

Even though the Ambulance Office tried to keep me from my father,…

Even though I was afraid to close my fathers eyes, I deeply love and forgive myself,…

Even though I was angry at the Ambulance officer for giving up, I forgive him.

Even though I watched my father being zipped into a black bag, …

Even though I felt so helpless that all I could do was hold his hand and pray, I accept that I was doing the best I could, and what I did was enough.

Even though I can’t accept that he is gone, I know he still loves me, is with me and I still love him.

Even though I’ve been beating my self up with this memory, …

Even though I’ve been fighting with myself to get over this memory, …

Many tears, tissues and deep sighs later, Susan could at least describe the order of events without breaking down.

Several times during our session, I asked if Susan wanted to take a break but she was insistent on wanting to get through this. This strength to continue was something that, later on, she was able to be grateful to her father for instilling in her.

Because of the intensity of the work we had covered in the initial 3 hours, I suggested Susan give herself time to integrate the changes and come and see me again a week or so later.

Before her return visit, I followed up with a phone call to see how she was doing. She mentioned that she had started introducing herself with a name she hadn’t used for many years. I explained that this indicated some identity shifts within her and to pay attention to what else was different.

At the start of our second visit, I asked her if we could test the movie to see if there was any further emotional intensity. I only asked her to run the movie mentally first and not try to speak about it. Again, more points came up which we tapped on. Susan said that she was very surprised about the amount of detail that she could now recall about the events.

As a final test, I asked her to narrate the events to me from before she had got the initial phone call right through to the end. There were only a few remaining intensities of 2 or 3 left in the whole scene. Susan was amazed that she could work through the whole movie, frame-by-frame, like a movie director witnessing each scene with high levels of detail.

The second session was about 2 hours and at the end Susan looked at peace, felt no tension in her body and looked 10 years younger. So in only 5 hours we have unburdened 14 years of grief and trauma. Incredible!

While Susan is not yet in a relationship, she believes we have now handled a major stumbling block towards this goal.

On a personal note, I have only recently begun working full time as an EFT practitioner and I was amazed, awed, grateful, and surprised at times during the whole process because of the depth of emotional intensity and the many, many aspects that came up and were cleared. The idea to just “keep tapping” was the core to freeing Susan to move on with her life.

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

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