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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Ratgeber
- Sprache: Englisch
A member of the Energy Therapies family - which includes, acupuncture, acupressure and shiatsu - Emotional Freedom Technique is a simple and increasingly popular self- development therapy used to treat a wide range of physical and emotional issues. Popularised by figures including Paul McKenna, EFT is based on the theory that negative emotions are caused by disturbances in the body's energy. Often referred to as acupuncture without needles, EFT involves locating and tapping on meridian points in the body while thinking of a negative emotion and using positive suggestion and thoughts to alter the body's energy flow, restore balance and reprogram thought processes. This no-nonsense guide introduces readers to the theories and methods behind the technique and shows them how to use it to reduce the physical and emotional impact of a wide range of issues including, depression, fears, phobias, anger, addictions, sleeplessness and pain. It's simple, safe, anyone can practice it at home and with EFT For Dummies readers can banish bad habits for good. Includes information on: * The path to emotional freedom - explaining EFT * Understanding your emotions * Basic EFT tapping routines * Improving emotional health with EFT * Practising EFT on yourself and others Helena Fone is a registered EFT practitioner and trainer and an advanced hypnotherapist. She has a diploma in advanced holistic hypnotherapy and practices CBT and NLP. Find out more about Helena at href="http://www.eftregister.com/">www.EFTRegister.com
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Emotional Freedom Technique For Dummies®
Table of Contents
Emotional Freedom Technique For Dummies®
by Helena Fone
Emotional Freedom Technique For Dummies®
Published byJohn Wiley & Sons, LtdThe AtriumSouthern GateChichesterWest SussexPO19 8SQEngland
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About the Author
Helena Fone is an Advanced EFT Practitioner, presenter, Level 3 trainer and supervisor. She is also an Advanced Holistic Hypnotherapist, has trained in Neuro-linguistic programming, studied Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, and runs a busy private practice, Therapy4me, in the UK and in Gozo. She is founder of the Cheshire EFT Association, also founder of the only UK EFT Register solely for Energy Therapists, www.EFTRegister.com, a support group for like-minded therapists. Over the years she has helped hundreds of people eliminate issues arising from emotional and physical traumas, anxiety attacks, addictions, inhibitions, low self esteem, fertility issues, and bereavement. You can find more information at www.therapy4me.co.uk or www.tappingtherapy.net.
Helena delivers training in EFT to a diverse range of people including psychologists, counsellors, therapists, housewives, teachers, nurses, and sales executives. She has given several presentations on EFT to large groups and has a regular interview slot on her local radio station. Helena divides her time between her practice and her voluntary work with local hospices and cancer support centres. She has also been a local voluntary magistrate for 13 years. Her specialty in EFT is working with cancer patients, and she is currently delivering EFT to schools in Cheshire where there is great scope for helping children improve both academically and emotionally. Helena has used EFT successfully to free herself from her own past issues and improve her own physical problems.
Dedication
I would like to dedicate this book to my family: My best friend and husband Peter who has been my driving force, my PA, and kept me supplied with the odd glass of wine! Also to my daughters Nicola and Leanne for their faith and admiration; plus my lovely cat Fudge, who gave me his good company when I needed it. I mustn’t forget my Dad who lead me to EFT all those years ago and my lovely step-mum Betty.
Author’s Acknowledgments
My appreciation also goes to my clients, trainees and therapy buddies, who taught me more than they’ll ever know.
A special tribute must go to Gary Craig who brought EFT into the world and who has generously shared it willingly among everyone. My thanks also go to Ananga Sivyer; Carol Look; David Lake, and Tam Llewellyn for their help and generosity, and to other pioneers of EFT. Your enthusiasm knows no bounds!
Last but by no means least, to Samantha Spickernell at Wiley for turning my dreams into a reality, and the rest of the For Dummies team, including Development Editor Simon Bell, for their highly professional help and support.
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Introduction
Welcome to Emotional Freedom Technique For Dummies, written to empower you (whoever you are) to create and facilitate positive changes to your emotional and physical health. EFT, as it’s better known, is fast becoming one of the leading energy therapies used by highly respected clinicians, psychologists, and psychiatrists. Counsellors, teachers, health workers, parents, athletes, cancer support workers, children, and addiction groups also use the technique.
EFT can reduce physical and emotional pains remarkably fast a very high percentage of the time, without the use of drugs or needles. You can also use it to release limiting beliefs and habitual mental patterns. EFT usually works when nothing else will, you can use it anywhere at any time, and the results are often long lasting. The most exciting part of EFT is that it puts you in control.
Different psychotherapies deal with the mind, but energy therapies such as reiki, reflexology, acupuncture, and shiatsu deal with the body. EFT works as a mind–body connection to remove unwanted negative emotions from the mind and, at the same time, improve the body. Many therapists of both mind and body incorporate EFT in their work with great effect. What started out almost ten years ago as a handful of EFT practitioners now runs into thousands as EFT rapidly spreads around the world as a new self-healing tool.
About This Book
This book has absolutely everything you need if you’re looking to improve your own or other’s emotional and physical health with EFT. It covers not just the basics, but the more advanced stuff on EFT – and almost everything else in between.
Whether you’ve never heard of EFT or you’re an experienced practitioner, the book has something for you. Whatever your level of knowledge or experience, I’ve written this book as a useful source of reference and as a road map for your journey to self-healing.
I keep any scientific references and jargon to a minimum, and explain what I do use. Where I use the terms ‘practitioner’ or ‘therapist’, they refer to the leading person, and the ‘client’ may be your friend, child, spouse, or anyone you want to help with EFT.
I can’t cover everything in this book, so I focus on:
Introducing you to the background to EFT.
Helping you understand what emotional health is and why it’s as important as your physical health.
Illustrating EFT’s technique and how you can perform it on yourself and others for physical, psychological, and physiological issues.
Providing you with some suggested phrases to get the most out of EFT.
Making it easier to recognise what can interfere with EFT working.
Offering some exercises so you can practise and experiment.
Conventions Used in This Book
To help you navigate through this book, I’ve set up a few conventions:
Italics are used for emphasis and to highlight new words or terms that are defined.
Monofontis used for web addresses.
Bold faced textis used to indicate the action part of numbered steps.
What You Don’t Need to Read
The sidebars (the grey shaded boxes dotted throughout the text) contain bonus bits of info not crucial to the topic at hand. They’re fun, and they can round out your knowledge, but skip them if you like.
Foolish Assumptions
I have assumed, rightly or wrongly, that by reading this book you’re intrigued by EFT and want to enhance your wellbeing. I’ve also assumed that you either have little or no knowledge of EFT or are familiar with EFT but want to expand on what you already know. Like many new discoveries, EFT spawns many a debate as to its scientific validity. The information in this book introduces you to the concept of EFT and you can judge for yourself. If you can answer ‘yes’ to any of the following, then this book is for you:
Are you looking to improve your life?
Would you like to know whether EFT may be useful in your work or practice?
Do you already practise EFT but want to know more?
Are you curious as to how EFT can help you and others?
How This Book Is Organised
I’ve divided this book into five parts, and broken each part into chapters. The table of contents gives you more detail on each chapter. I’ve added some exercises for you to experiment on yourself and others and keep you amused.
Part I: The Path to Emotional Freedom
The best way to understand EFT is to try it for yourself and see how it works. So, if you don’t read anything else in this book, I recommend that you read Part I. Basically, this part not only explains the background to EFT but it also defines what emotions are and how the mind and body are connected. More importantly, though, it gives you detailed instruction on how to carry out the basic EFT technique that you use throughout the rest of the book.
Part II: Venturing Further with EFT
In this part you can become more adventurous with your technique as you widen your experience and understanding of EFT. You develop the confidence to try EFT out on yourself and others who may just get in the way of your enthusiasm.
I realise that all problems aren’t going to be as easy as ABC and sometimes people can’t even talk about their problem. Don’t panic: some techniques have exercises for you to practise that help you, such as ‘Sneaking Up on the Problem’ and the ‘Movie Technique’. If you need to prompt those emotions, you’ll find ways to do this as well.
Sometimes you find that you can’t figure out why something isn’t working, so I include some hints and tips for when EFT doesn’t seem to work.
Part III: Finding Your Way to Inner Happiness
Everyone wants love in their life and to be free from fears, phobias, and stresses. I can’t promise that by reading this part you’ll achieve all that. What I can promise, though, is that you’ll develop a deeper understanding of the importance of loving yourself. I can also promise that you’ll have a therapeutic tool to control your fears and phobias.
This part also covers how to use EFT to release the deep-seated emotions attached to trauma, and how to deal with anger, grief, and relationship issues.
Part IV: Applying EFT to Physical Issues
I begin this part by zooming in on your bad habits, cravings, and addictions. I explain why you do the things you do and how you can get out of your bad habits if you want to.
I then move on to healing the body and touch on ailments from eyesight to infertility and even the more serious disease of cancer. EFT doesn’t claim to cure cancer or other serious diseases, but what it can do is help manage the symptoms. The evidence shows that, by removing emotional problems, physical symptoms either improve or disappear altogether.
I end this part with helping you get a good night’s sleep . . . aaaahh.
Part V: Exploring Other Avenues
This part takes you through what can get in the way of you getting what you want in life – apart from winning the lottery, unless you just happen to be lucky. Words can be very powerful, as you get to find out.
If you’re considering contacting an EFT practitioner, I talk you through what to expect from an EFT session and what qualities to look for in a practitioner. You’ll find this helpful if you’re considering training as a practitioner yourself. If you want to work with children, you’ll find some very useful information here.
Part VI: The Part of Tens
Contained here are those frequently asked questions that save you from searching through the book. If you want to contact a practitioner or train as one, there’s some good reference material as well.
Icons Used in This Book
The icons in this book help you find particular kinds of information that may be of use to you:
Real-life experiences I’ve had when using EFT to help myself and others.
An opportunity to have a go for yourself with guided instruction.
Technical language for a fuller explanation of what’s going on in EFT – skip it if you want.
This is the stuff you really need to hang on to. Be sure you understand it.
As it says. Steer clear of anything this icon tells you is a bad idea.
This icon flags up practical advice to help you along the way.
Where to Go from Here
You don’t have to read this book from cover to cover. You can simply look up your topic of interest in the index or table of contents, flip to that page, and start reading.
If you’re a beginner with EFT, you may start by familiarising yourself with the basic EFT technique in Chapters 3 and 4 before you jump ahead in the book and read the warning icons along the way. That way you’re more likely to understand the exercises and get results. After you’re familiar with the technique then you can go to whatever topic that takes your interest. If you decide you’d like to consult an EFT practitioner or if you’re interested in training as a practitioner, you can find details in Chapter 17. Attending workshops is an ideal way to see EFT in action. A search on the Internet or a call to your local practitioner guides you in the right direction.
Most of all, I wish you a safe and peaceful journey on the road to emotional freedom.
Part I
The Path to Emotional Freedom
In this part . . .
This part introduces you to the key concepts in EFT, defining what emotions are and how the mind and body are connected. More importantly, though, it gives you detailed instruction on how to carry out the basic EFT routines that you use throughout the rest of the book.
Chapter 1
Explaining EFT
In This Chapter
Becoming acquainted with EFT
Knowing what EFT can help with
Deciding whether to seek help
Emotional Freedom Technique (or EFT as it is referred to in this book) is a simple healing technique that you can use by yourself or with a therapist/practitioner. You can combine it effectively with some other therapies, or use it as a standalone technique. In this chapter, you discover how EFT evolved, how it works, and how you can benefit from using it on yourself and others. You also find out a small sample of the problems EFT can help with and, if using EFT on yourself, when you may want to find outside help from a therapist.
Meeting the EFT Family
Although you may not have heard of EFT, you may well be familiar with the therapies of acupuncture, acupressure, shiatsu, and kinesiology. All are part of the energy therapies family tree, shown in Figure 1-1. Broadly speaking, energy therapies are techniques that work on rebalancing the flow of energy that gets disrupted as it travels through channels in your body known as meridians. This bit is important to maintaining good emotional and physical health, and I talk more about this later in this chapter. There’s also a bit of psychology thrown in here, which is why you also hear people referring to EFT as an energy therapy, energy psychology, or meridian therapy. I explain the most popular of the other energy therapies – and you can use them with EFT – in Chapter 18.
EFT is what you may call a modern-day version of these energy therapies, some of which go back more than 2,500 years. Other theorists say that EFT taps into a part of the brain that stores and processes information, used in neuro-physiology. No one exactly knows but, after all, do you need to know exactly how something works if it’s doing you no harm, only good? Because many people use EFT to great effect, the best advice is to continue to use it until scientists come up with their own theory.
Figure 1-1: The energy therapies family tree.
Discovering EFT in Action
Every day you encounter a multitude of experiences. You store specific experiences as memories into a filing cabinet in your brain, but because your brain can’t store every single memory, it deletes what’s irrelevant and stores the most important. With the memory, your brain stores any emotion that goes with it. Next time you need to remember a name or location, for instance, your brain searches around the filing cabinet and brings some or all the information back, together with any emotion. When you see someone you love your brain accesses that information and brings with it good feelings. What information your brain can’t find readily it makes up as best it can, which is why you sometimes get names mixed up, for instance.
Alphabet soup: EF T and TF T
EFT’s roots are in Thought Field Therapy (TFT), which was discovered by Dr Roger Callahan, a cognitive psychologist and hypnotherapist who specialised in phobias. In the 1980s, Dr Callahan had been studying the Chinese meridians and their effect on emotions when you tap on certain meridians. A patient, Mary, came to see him. Mary had an intense phobia of water and, up to that time, Dr Callahan hadn’t had much luck in curing her with his conventional therapies. During this particular session, however, Mary complained of feeling sick in her stomach at the mere thought of being near water, and Dr Callahan asked her to think about her phobia while tapping several times under her eye, which is the stomach meridian. After several minutes of tapping, to Dr Callahan’s amazement, Mary suddenly jumped up and announced that her phobia had gone. She went over to Dr Callahan’s pool (this was, of course, California), feeling no anxiety or sickness in her stomach, and even splashed water on her face.
Apart from the fact that her phobia disappeared so quickly, what was also interesting about this experiment was that, although Mary’s phobia to water had disappeared, she said she had no intention of jumping into the pool because she couldn’t swim.
Gary Craig, a Stanford engineer and ordained minister, trained with Dr Callahan in TFT and applied this method to his clients. Over the years, he simplified the method and found that it wasn’t necessary to tap in sequence or on so many meridians. Others tried also to adapt the method but it was Gary’s that was the simplest and most effective of all, and so Emotional Freedom Technique was born in the early 1990s.
Whether it’s to protect you from future life-threatening events is unclear, but unfortunately bad or negative memories are easier to remember and recall than good or positive memories.
The cause of all negative emotions is a disruption in the body’s energy system. In EFT this statement is known as the discovery statement. It was once thought that bad memories caused negative emotions, but we now know that the disruption in your body’s energy system actually causes the negative emotions and responses. This disruption causes a blockage in your energy system, and can be triggered again either consciously or unconsciously. For example, say you were locked in a cleaning cupboard as a very small child and you were scared. Whether you remember the incident or not, as an adult you may not like being in dark places, a small room or even the smell of certain cleaning materials.
Each time something triggers a negative memory, your brain also brings with it the negative emotion such as fear, anger, or hurt. These bad memories send an alert message to your brain and at the same time create a negative emotion. Because these type of messages to your brain are like electrical impulses, they act like a bolt of lightning that short-circuits your body’s energy system, causing a blockage or an imbalance. It’s this disruption that causes emotional and physical problems. You can find out more on emotions and the brain in Chapter 2.
Unless you release these blockages, they can remain locked in your body’s energy system for years or even a lifetime and are only evident when you start suffering from symptoms such as anger, fear, low self-esteem, addiction, and anxiety, for example. This endless re-triggering reinforces the belief that you can’t remove the problem, which is why you often hear someone say ‘I’ve always had this fear’, or ‘I can’t change the way I feel (or behave); it’s the way I am’.
What causes this energy disruption in some people and not in others depends upon:
The way you were brought up or conditioned to respond to negative events.
If you were affected by a psychological or emotional trauma.
A birth defect.
An emotional incident whether past or present.
Possibly geopathic stress – a name given to natural or man-made energies emanating from the earth which are detrimental to our health.
Memories can also be triggered by any or all of your senses – sight, smell, touch, taste, sound – reactivating the energy disruption and resulting negative emotion.
Table 1-1 demonstrates how a person’s energy system is disrupted on seeing a spider they believe will harm them. Notice how the negative disruption affects thoughts, feelings, and behaviour. The negative thought or memory triggers a disruption in the body’s energy system, experienced as psychological, physical, or emotional pain.
Table 1-1 Disruption in the Body’s Energy System
Thought
Spiders are deadly; they’re dangerous; must send message to brain
Emotion
Fear
Physical feeling
Paralysis, heart racing, sweaty palms
Behaviour
Run, hit out, cower
Travelling the meridian highway
Physicists have changed people’s understanding of energy by proposing that all ‘solid’ objects, including your body, are made up of energy. You know this because doctors can measure them when you have an electroencephalography (EEG) or a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan. This energy that flows through your body can’t be seen by the naked eye but if you were able to picture your body as a three-dimensional roadmap, you’d see a whole network of invisible pathways interconnecting with each other, acting like electrical circuits. These electrical circuits are known as meridians and they connect to the tissues, organs, and every atom, cell, bone, and tendon in your body. The meridians interact with each other and transmit information faster than the speed of light, sending signals to alter body temperature or to regulate emotion, and also to signal you when you need to release water, for instance. Chinese medicine refers to this as a life-force called ‘chi’ (pronounced ‘chee’).
As long as you’re in pretty good emotional health, these meridians maintain a constant balance and flow.
The figure shows you what the meridian highway looks like.
Table 1-2 shows some further examples of how you can react to an memory or emotion that has been triggered.
Table 1-2 Reaction to a Trigger
Area Affected
Results in . . .
Emotion
Anger, shame, jealousy, fear
Behaviour
Hitting the bottle, hitting someone, running away
Physiology
Heart racing, sweating, feeling agitated
Belief
Can’t achieve, mustn’t do, not good enough
Soothing the negative
During an EFT session you’re tapping on various meridian points around your body while concentrating on the problem. This sends vibrations along your energy path, and these vibrations get to work by unblocking, or in other words, rebalancing the energy system. This process removes the excess or irrational reaction but leaves the rational and normal reaction. If all this sounds like magic, it is.
Now before I get carried away, I must say that EFT isn’t a universal remedy for everything and it can’t claim to cure every ailment known to man or woman for that matter – nor can it give you longer eyelashes or whiter teeth. However, it’s a therapy that has the potential to develop into a revolutionary new way of healing. With EFT, the philosophy is to try it on everything and see.
Practising EFT
You can apply EFT on anyone. Anyone? Well, yes actually. As long as you have a modicum of common sense, there’s no reason why not. EFT enhances any other healing or self-help modality, whether it be counselling, hypnotherapy, reiki, reflexology, neurolinguistic programming, cognitive behaviour therapy, play therapy, and many more therapies besides.
Many ideas throughout this book enhance your techniques with EFT but here are three helpful tips you may like to remember before you begin:
Openness: I can appreciate that you may still be a little sceptical even up to this point and, I have to admit, I was the same when I first heard about EFT. I had to see it work with my own eyes before I could truly believe. If you can leave your scepticism to one side while reading this book and carrying out the exercises, I’d greatly appreciate it. If you’re willing to do this, I can promise you an amazing experience. Although you don’t have to believe in EFT for it to work, it enhances your experience.
Humour: Obviously, there’s a time and place to use humour, especially when you’re working on someone else. It helps not to take yourself too seriously. By injecting some humour when you’re working with someone else you’ll find that you achieve a greater rapport with them. In Chapter 5, I share with you some enlightening techniques and phrases I use with clients that can help break down the barriers.
Creativity: Try thinking of EFT as more of an art than a science and you’ll find that being creative with your approach is one way of getting good results. Time and time again people ask me what phrases they should use. I always say this comes with time and practice, but throughout the book I give suggestions to help you along the way. Meanwhile, let your creativity flow.
You use EFT on a problem like this:
1. Tune into your problem or issue and measure its intensity on a scale between zero and 10, with 10 being the highest.
For example, say that you’re afraid of flying. You travel a lot for work. So perhaps you’d rate this problem as an 8.
2. Start tapping on certain parts of the body while saying a phrase acknowledging the problem and accepting yourself.
For example, perhaps you tap on the back of your hand while humming a song, counting from 1 to 5 out loud, and rolling your eyes, humming, and tapping again. You no doubt think that doing all this sounds wacky or like voodoo, but I assure you, it absolutely works.
One of EFT’s many attractive qualities is that it’s portable enough to be used on someone over the telephone and I work with a lot of my clients this way. If you want to know more, Chapter 17 takes you through the pros and cons and explains how this works in practice.
Remarkably, this healing tool works virtually without negative side effects so there’s:
No surgery.
No needles.
No medication.
No months or years of therapy.
No need to remove clothing.
No need for you to revisit or remember all the traumatic event.
Certainly no brainwashing.
I can’t think of any other therapy that’s as quick, safe, gentle, non-invasive, suitable for adults and babies, and even suitable for use on animals and pets. What’s more, it’s a therapy that you can self-apply.
Finding Help with EFT
It’s difficult to measure, but it’s estimated that practitioners have used EFT on millions of people for a variety of reasons. Here’s a small example of what you can use EFT on:
Phobias
Fears
Insomnia
Panic attacks
Addictions (smoking, alcohol, food, for example)
Cravings
Grief
Stress
Anxiety
Pain
Trauma and abuse
Relationship issues
Lack of motivation
Blushing
Effects of chemotherapy
Performance
Public speaking
Shyness
Enuresis (bedwetting)
Habits (nail-biting, hair-pulling, for instance)
Anger
Do tell your GP if you’re experiencing an improvement in your symptoms as a consequence of EFT. The technique does deserve some credit, after all. The more reports the medical profession receive that EFT works, the more likely they are to either use it on patients or refer them to a qualified practitioner.
No matter how well it works for you, don’t use EFT to replace any medication your GP prescribes.
Seeking a Therapist
As with any other therapies, you need to recognise when to seek professional help or advice. This section gives you some guidance in this respect.
Compared to other techniques, EFT is usually quite gentle and you can often achieve substantial relief with little or no pain. Some people’s issues, however, are so intense that the mere mention of them causes emotional or physical pain. Although truly serious instances of a severe reaction to a memory such as a panic attack are most likely to occur in seriously emotionally damaged people (approximately less than 1 per cent of the population), beginners of EFT need to employ sensible precautions in this regard and not go where not qualified. I discuss how to handle such reactions in more detail in Chapter 4.
Although EFT produces remarkable clinical results, it’s still in the experimental stage and practitioners and the public must take complete responsibility for their use of it. If you want to discuss the use of EFT for a specific emotional or physical problem with a professional in the mental health field, then you need to enquire where these practices are listed. Where appropriate, consult a qualified doctor.
Other occasions when you may need to seek the help or advice of an EFT practitioner are:
Overwhelming emotions.
Insufficiently trained.
Lack of progress.
Getting stuck.
Childhood abuse cases.
Intense trauma.
Mental health issues.
If in doubt, seek guidance from a qualified practitioner.
Chapter 2
Understanding Emotions
In This Chapter
Explaining emotions
Focusing on emotional health
Figuring out what lies beneath
The medical profession has come to realise that negative emotions play havoc with your physical and mental health, individual development, and human relations. If you’re emotionally healthy, you have the confidence and drive to achieve in life. You also have better physical health.
Still not sure that negative emotions link to your physical health? Ask yourself, when did your physical symptoms begin, and then try to think back to what was going on in your life around that time. More often that not, you find a link with the physical symptoms and the emotional event. Maybe the link is with an emotional event that happened some time ago but has been reawakened somehow. For instance, you may have found yourself crying at the funeral of someone you vaguely knew, and were surprised that you reacted so emotionally when you hadn’t grieved as fully for the earlier loss of a parent.
In this chapter, I explain what it means to be emotionally healthy and how your brain reacts to emotional events. I encourage you to explore any buried emotions you may have and to discover how Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) can help with these, without exposing yourself to any unpleasant memories. The more you know about your feelings and how you can deal with them, the better you feel about yourself.
As an emotional healing tool, EFT is very simple in its application and provides a range of approaches to clear emotional issues. At the same time EFT restores your emotional health and has a profound effect on improving your physical health.
Understanding the Basics of Emotions
Scientists and theorists still continue to debate on whether a connection exists between the way in which you behave and your emotions. The subject is complex so I won’t even try to compete with scientists on this one. What experts do know is that emotional states aren’t something that happen to you; rather, you create them based on how you view the world.
Your emotions are a series of electrical and chemical signals that your brain interprets to produce a particular feeling. This emotion then drives a series of decisions about what to do next.
Ask two people about memories of their last holiday and you may get two very different responses. Person A’s holiday may have been fantastic because he had good weather, a fabulous hotel, and no flight delays. Person B’s holiday may have been terrible because the hotel wasn’t as the brochure described, the food was so bad she had food poisoning, and the travel company won’t compensate her. If I ask Person A and Person B to visualise the experience of their holiday and to note what emotion they feel you can imagine they won’t be the same. Person B may never go back to that destination again because she firmly believes that if she does she’ll have a negative experience.
This simple demonstration shows how your emotions are split between psychological (what you think) and biological (what you feel). It also demonstrates how negative emotions can affect your behaviours and beliefs. Regardless of whether they’re positive or negative, your brain responds to your thoughts and memories by releasing hormones and chemicals that send you into a state of arousal, causing you to feel an emotion. Arousal happens due to a ‘trigger’ and you may respond either positively and form an attachment, or negatively where you develop an aversion that you express as anger or hatred. Table 2-1 gives some examples of how your five senses can trigger an emotion, either positive or negative.
Table 2-1 Senses and Potential Triggers
Sense
Trigger
Sight
Visiting a particular place
Smell
The distinct smell of flowers, perfume, or smoke
Hearing
The sound of someone’s voice or a certain noise
Touch
A particular touch or caress
Taste
Your first meal in a highly recommended restaurant
The negative emotions are the ones that cause the disruption to your body’s energy system. Next time a scene in a film makes you cry or your partner makes you angry, take note where in your body you’re feeling your emotion; perhaps you feel anxiety in your stomach or sadness in your heart.
Naming your emotions
An emotion is a type of feeling, and verbalising or naming your emotions can help to tame them. Brain scans show that putting negative emotions into words calms the brain’s emotion centre. Although the words you use during an EFT session aren’t that important, you can find it very helpful to express those feelings in a more accurate manner. As a practitioner, it’s useful to recognise the many different meanings that people attach to emotions.
If you express yourself as feeling sad, this may actually mean you feel rejected, yet to someone else it may mean they feel heartbroken. Table 2-2 shows some common emotions and the different meanings they can contain.
Table 2-2 Emotions and Their Other Meanings
Emotion
Other meanings
Anger
Resentful, bitter, unjust, stubborn, unforgiving, hateful, fearful, offended, disgusted, shameful, disappointed, guilty, humiliated
Sadness
Unhappy, grief-stricken, lonely, abandoned, rejected, blamed, heartbroken, miserable, let down
Fear
Uneasy, terrified, anxious, petrified, worried, threatened, agitated, exposed, mistrusting, cautious, embarrassed
Build up a vocabulary of your negative emotions and their effect on you. Do you avoid certain people, for instance, because you feel inferior? Do you clench your teeth during meetings? Keep a note of all these occurrences of negative emotions in a diary and After you become skilled at recognising your emotions. After you get to grips with the EFT routine I describe in Chapters 3 and 4, you’re better prepared to deal with those negative emotions. Remember, EFT works no matter how long you’ve had the problem.
Keeping a lid on emotions
You experience all kinds of emotional upsets during your lifetime and generally you deal with them in the proper manner. Regulating your emotions is important if you want to successfully interact with other people. For example, you may feel frustrated at not finding your shoe size in the shop, but you wouldn’t scream and shout at the assistant!
When words can’t describe
Alexithymia means literally ‘no words for feelings’. It’s a common condition, particularly among people who have experienced traumatic or deprived childhoods. Without words for feelings, it becomes impossible to deal with those feelings. When using EFT, you may find it easier to describe your emotions as a shape and/or colour instead. So, for example, you may describe ‘anger’ as a red ball, ‘sadness’ as a black bowling ball weighing 5 kilograms, ‘abandonment’ as an empty box, and so on.
How you respond to emotional experiences usually lies with your parents, teachers, upbringing, gender, or culture. In Iranian culture, for example, expressing negative emotions in a direct way isn’t acceptable and Americans think that expressing anger rather than suppressing it is healthy. If your parents told you ‘boys don’t cry’, ‘put it to the back of your mind’, or ‘keep a stiff upper lip’ then these beliefs become buried in your subconscious.
By the time you’ve reached adulthood you may be as good at burying your emotions as you are at letting them go. As the character in a Woody Allen movie cheerfully put it, ‘I never get angry; I grow a tumour instead.’
It’s well known that suppressed emotions can lead to depressed behaviour, though be reassured here that no matter how long you’ve modelled this behaviour, you can change.
Consciously suppressing emotions can happen because:
You may not know how to react emotionally because you’ve not been in that situation before so you internalise the situation until you have accessed the facts.
You may want to protect others: you witness someone being injured and go to help her, yet despite your own shock and upset, you can’t let your feelings show while you’re helping her.
You may want to protect yourself: you may have been ridiculed for expressing your emotions at some time in your life or been hurt either physically or emotionally over a period of time. Either way, you make a decision never to allow yourself to show your feelings.
Examples like these show how you can easily suppress emotions.
Negative emotions stop you from thinking and behaving rationally, and seeing situations in their true perspective. When negative emotions take you over, you tend to see only what you want to see and remember only what you want to remember. This situation only prolongs the anger or grief and prevents you from enjoying life. The longer this situation goes on, the more entrenched the problem becomes.
Dealing with negative emotions inappropriately can also be harmful – for example, expressing anger with violence. Releasing your emotions acts like the valve on a pressure cooker, relieving your inner tensions. In a relationship, holding on to or disguising emotions can lead your partner to believe you lack feeling or even misinterpret your feelings. Chapter 8 explores relationships in more detail.
Holding back the tears?
Tears of joy and sadness relieve stress and stimulate healing. Dr William Frey made an interesting discovery. He revealed that emotional tears – such as when you’re happy, upset, or stressed – contain different chemicals to the ones you produce when you, say, cut up onions. The emotional tears contain more protein-based hormones, which act as natural painkillers – which probably explains why you usually feel better after a good cry. So next time you feel like crying, go ahead, safe in the knowledge that you’re doing your body a favour.
Few people cry for no reason but if you find yourself crying a lot in response to criticism take a look at Chapter 7. Many people find that they’ve forgotten all about these hidden emotions that they’ve stored away in their subconscious.
George arrives home from work and his wife casually asks if he’s remembered to phone the electrician. George explodes and accuses his wife of not trusting him and shouts, ‘Why do you treat me like a child?’ George’s wife is taken aback, as is George. What his wife didn’t know, and what George hadn’t realised, was that a subconscious reaction triggered his outburst. When George was younger, his father often blamed him when things went wrong and frequently told George that he couldn’t be trusted to do anything.
You’ve probably surprised yourself at times by reacting out of character when you were least expecting it. Ask yourself if your behaviour may have stemmed from a past experience and make a note to treat it with EFT as I explain in Chapters 3 and 4.
How you deal with suppressed emotions depends on you. Maybe you go off to the gym and take it out on the squash court, or let off steam at anyone who gets in your way on the road. Perhaps you go down to the pub and tranquilise your negative emotions at the bar. Other ways that may help you to cope with your negative emotions include:
Trying not to exaggerate things by going over and over them again in your mind.
When negative thoughts enter your head, not trying to prevent them intruding. You’re in control, so allow them to come in and allow them to go out.
Working out how to relax with activities such as playing your favourite music, having a warm bath, or watching a funny movie.
Accepting that the past is just that and letting it go.
Exercising to release endorphins, which make you feel better.
Industries such as gambling, alcohol, drugs, fashion, and retail are just a few that profit very nicely out of providing people with temporary tranquilisers. Try stepping back and noticing what you resort to in times of emotional upset.
Pinpointing Emotional Health
Being emotionally healthy doesn’t necessarily mean being happy all the time. Happiness comes and goes very quickly, and nobody’s happy all the time: life throws things at you when you least expect it to.
If you’re not emotionally healthy you may not have a sense of wellbeing and you probably find that coping with life’s events is difficult. As a result, your emotions can manifest themselves as physical symptoms. (See the section ‘Reaping the Rewards of Emotional Health,’ later in this chapter.)
Emotional health means possessing:
A sense of wellbeing and contentment in mind, body, and spirit.
Self-realisation – taking part in life to the fullest, through meaningful activities and positive relationships.
The ability to deal with stress in life and bounce back from misfortune.
The ability to change, grow, and experience a range of feelings as life’s circumstances change.
The ability to enjoy life and have fun.
A sense of balance in one’s life – between solitude and sociability, work and play, sleep and wakefulness, rest and exercise, and so on.
The ability to care for oneself and for others.
Self-confidence and self-esteem.
Using EFT daily on each of your problems or just to start the day greatly improves your overall emotional health.
The World Health Organization Declaration
In 2005, 52 national health ministers of the World Health Organization signed a Mental Health Declaration for Europe, declaring, amongst other things, a commitment to promoting emotional wellbeing amongst children and young adults in education. This declaration demonstrates the growing awareness and importance of emotional health.
Reaping the Rewards of Emotional Health
Generally, people like to think they have good emotional heath without knowing exactly what it is. Poor emotional health generally arises from suppressing your emotions, which then affect your physical health. Recently, the medical profession has begun to recognise the importance of taking care of emotional health and the relationship between emotions and disease. Applying EFT on your suppressed emotions can restore both your emotional and, ultimately, your physical health.
While you’re going through an emotionally stressful time you may recognise that you don’t take care of your health as well as you should: you may not feel like exercising, eating nutritious foods, or taking medicine that your doctor prescribes. You may even increase your intake of alcohol, tobacco, or other drugs. All these are signs of poor emotional health. Physical symptoms can include:
Back pain
Bowel problems
Chest pain
Diabetes
Insomnia
High blood pressure
Headaches
Migraines
Sexual problems
Shortness of breath
Skin disorders
Psychological symptoms may manifest themselves in:
Addictions
Avoidance behaviours
Irritability
Lack of confidence
Low self-esteem
Mood swings
Relationship issues
Unrealistic fears
Weight problems
This advice may sound obvious, but try paying close attention to your body and question whether any of the symptoms in these lists may be symptomatic of some underlying emotional disturbance. To put it another way, what is your body trying to tell you?
Introducing the Three Brains and EFT
Your brain and your emotions are intrinsically linked. Different areas of the brain have specific functions, but the brain is basically divided into three parts: the reptilian brain, the limbic brain, and the cerebral cortex. Figure 2-1 shows you how they are positioned.
Reptilian brain
In evolutionary terms, your oldest brain is called the reptilian brain. This brain keeps your circulation, respiration, and digestion going even when you’re asleep. Its primary focus is on self-preservation and survival, but it’s also where aggression stems from. Your very first experiences as a child are strongly imprinted in the reptilian brain because it’s the only part of the brain that’s really active at the time.
Figure 2-1:The three brains.
Limbic brain
Wrapped around the reptilian brain is the limbic brain, where you process emotions – both positive and negative – and reactions to certain words. This brain is where your nurturing, loving, and caring feelings come from, and it also regulates emotions and transmits them along neural pathways to the cortex. The reptilian and limbic brains then influence the hypo-thalamus, which transmits a message that triggers appropriate physical responses. Pleasure may link to chemical signals produced by the release of noradrenalin, and pain is associated with many neurotransmitters. Mood appears to link to serotonin and dopamine.
