Social Anxiety: I´ll make you STRONG E-Book

Christa Graves

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Deutsch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Are you shy? Do you find yourself being held back by worrying thoughts of what others might think or say to you? This book will give you the tools and techniques required to confront your fears and uproot their original causes. You will feel in control of your life again and become calmer then ever before.Just follow the instructions contained within and notice your fears melt away. EFT – Emotional Freedom Techniques is a variation of Energy Psychology and it lends itself particularly well to a “Do It Yourself” approach to self development. By simply tapping a few key acupuncture points, while simultaneously repeating certain phrases the body starts releasing the blockages that have stopped you from living your full potential.

Leseprobe

Christa Graves

Social Anxiety: I´ll make you STRONG

Tap away unwanted negative emotions with EFT

BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 München

What is Social Anxiety?

Social Anxiety sometimes also called Social Phobia is the term used when someone becomes anxious just by the sheer thought of going to places, or to meet new people, going shopping, meeting figures of authority, or making a telephone call. In short it is an illness where someone has a tremendous fear of making a fool of themselves or they are overly concerned of what other people might think of them. This fear becomes so debilitating that this person will be unable to go out at all or will only be able to go out by being accompanied by somebody. People with this kind of illness suffer often in silence and their life revolves around the support they get from friends and family. They also feel that everyone is watching, staring, and judging them, even though rationally they know, that this is not true. They simply can´t relax or enjoy themselves in public. They always believe that other people are critical of their appearance and their behavior. They know that most people don´t do this openly, but they nevertheless still feel self-conscious. Eventually the anxiety and fear becomes so painful that it is easier to just stay out of social situations and away from meeting other people completely. Sometimes a person with social anxiety prefers to be alone and the door shut behind them, including from familiar people, as a person with social anxiety may feel overwhelmed, as they feel being watched and being critiqued by others all the time. One of the worst circumstances, though, is meeting people who are "authority figures". Especially people such as bosses and supervisors at work, but including almost anyone who is seen as being "better" than they are in some respect. People with social anxiety may get a lump in their throat and their facial muscles may freeze up when they meet this person. The anxiety level is very high and they're so focused on "not failing" and "giving themselves away" that they don't even remember what was said in the conversation. But later on, they're sure they must have said the wrong thing.....because they always do. Therefore, to go to a job interview can be pure torture for them, as they fear that their excessive anxiety is going to give them away. They are afraid to blush and of not finding the right words to answer questions coherently. They are so convinced that they are getting it wrong which becomes even more frustrating, as they also know they could do the job well, if only they could get past this terrifying and intimidating interview. Social anxiety is the third largest psychological problem in the World today. This type of anxiety affects 15 million Americans in any given year. Unlike some other psychological problem, social anxiety is not well understood by the general public or by the medical establishment at large and therefore often times people with this condition get often misdiagnosed, labeled manic-depressive, clinically depressed or panic or personality disordered and are being prescribed with strong medication unnecessarily. Whether you are reading this book to help a friend or whether you are reading this book to help yourself, this method with which I will make you familiar with can make a world of difference.

How you can make the best use of this book?

This book is largely in three parts. The first part is taken up by familiarizing yourself with the method used and also its history, the second part contains some sample tapping routines whereas the third part provides you with extra information of how you can further use this method to free yourself from your condition entirely. If you can hardly wait to give this method a go and if you have a particular problem that fits the topic offered than you can use the tapping routines right away without further ado. All that is required is that you familiarize yourself with the location of the tapping points and that, before starting the routine, you tune into the problem you would like to work on.

Mary´s intense fear of water

Mary couldn´t take a bath with more than one inch of water. If she did she would get headaches for the rest of the day. She could not go around lakes, near oceans, swimming pools or take a shower without having really intense reactions. Mary had this problem for as long as she could remember. At the time she had come to Dr. Callahan she was 40 years old and had been from one therapist to another in search of relieve for her problem without making any headway at all. She had been with Dr. Callahan for approximately 1 ½ years without making headway. The best they could achieve was for Mary to let her feet dangle into the water of his swimming pool. She always resisted doing that because she would always end up having a headache for the rest of the day, but this was the best they had achieved thus far. One day she says to Dr. Callahan , "I get this feeling in the pit of my stomach every time I do this." Hm, Dr. Callahan thought to himself, considering his knowledge of acupuncture, there is something I need to do with her stomach meridian. He knew that the stomach meridian goes from the head, under the eyes and back through the stomach down to the toes. However, instead of using needles, he did something else, he used both of his fingertips and started tapping underneath her eyes. He did this for a short while when she suddenly said: "It is gone?" What is gone? he says: "The knot in my stomach and so is my fear of water". So, he said: "Oh yeah. Let´s go down to the pool to try it out." And before he could say another word she was out of the room on her way to the swimming pool. He became rather concerned, was she going to delve into the swimming pool? She can´t swim. So he went after her trying to stop her, but she simply replied: "It´s ok. Dr. Callahan, I know I can´t swim." …. What EFT does, it only takes away the excess fear but not normal caution. She went into the pool and started to splash herself with water. Her fear was gone and even 12 years later when she was asked during a TV show she confirmed that her fear of water had never returned. Dr. Callahan became famous for being able to cure a phobia within minutes and he named his method TFT - Thought Field Therapy. It was through a friend that Gary Craig became interested in this methodology who was on the lookout for ways to improve his game of golf. Gary contacted Dr. Callahan to find out more about this and as they say, the rest is history.

What is EFT - Emotional Freedom Techniques?

Emotional Freedom Techniques is a version of Energy Psychology, a method devised by Gary Craig, a Stanford trained Engineer and an ordained Minister by the Universal Church of God of South California, who had a passion for personal-improvement psychology since the age of thirteen. As the story goes in the early 1990 Gary heard of a clinical psychologist by the name of Dr. Roger Callahan, who was known to heal a phobia within minutes. Interested to find out more, Gary contacted Dr. Callahan and went on to learn the core of his methodology, which is TFT (Thought Field Therapy). Soon however, it became apparent to Gary, that a different approach could deliver similar results to TFT, and thus was born Gary´s own method which he called EFT - Emotional Freedom Techniques. The principal of EFT is based on the ancient knowledge of acupuncture which is based on the knowledge that the body consists of many energy pathways similar to our blood system, but even though we cannot see this energy it nevertheless is there and can be measured with a certain type of equipment. The difference of EFT to acupuncture is that one does not require any needles, instead we use the finger tips of one hand to gently tap certain key acupuncture points, while focussing mentally and verbally on the problem in hand. The discovery of EFT is that the cause of all negative emotions is a disruption in the body´s energy system.

When we are verbally and mentally focussing in on the problem while simultaneously tapping certain key acupuncture points, the problem and the resulting negative emotion tends to subside, not only in the short term but usually for good. EFT found its way quickly into many therapy rooms, but its ease of application combined with the fact that to this day no negative side effects have been reported, lends itself particularly well to a "Do It Yourself" approach to personal self development. EFT can be applied by many ailments emotionally as well as physically, and it was found by addressing emotional problems, that often physical symptoms subside as well without being particularly worked on. Gary´s simple statement is: Try it on everything.

The Technique

So how do you apply EFT to your own set of circumstances? The method I am going to recommend to you is a shortened version of EFT, which is successful in most cases when working on yourself. For further and in-depth study, I would recommend reading the EFT manual written by Gary Craig. However, if you can´t wait to try out what EFT can do for you, you can go straight to the sample tapping routines, which you can use as is without needing to learn EFT first. The idea behind these sample tapping routines is the principal of "Borrowing Benefits", a phenomenon noted by attendees of Gary´s training classes, who tended to successfully tap along on themselves while Gary was working with a client on stage, but not only attendees noticed this phenomenon, therapists did too, who tapped along with their clients on different issues, but noticed later that somehow miraculously, their own issues had suddenly cleared without even being worked on. The method consists of two parts, the setup

, a sentence which names the problem while simultaneously accepting it and the sequence

- a shortened version of the setup phrase To start of with, please make a list of the issues to work on. This could be anything that has happened in your life that made you feel like you were not good enough, where you were made to feel ashamed, where you did not get the desired attention, in summary anything that to this day is still bothering you. Go as far back as you can remember, and when you have your list, take one incident a day, or a week, and work it through with EFT. If you don´t want to go through writing out your own setup and sequence statements, just use the tapping routine "Removing Blockages"

and tap along with it. You will know that you have been successful in neutralizing the incident, when you can write or talk about it without having any negative feelings, or without getting upset about it. Here is a sample set up statement: Let's assume, that a teacher made you feel ashamed in front of the class, while you were standing up at the black board explaining something, your set up statement would then look something like this:Even though

Mrs. Smith made me really feel ashamed when I was at the black board,

I deeply and completely love and accept myself

. Your setup phrase should always start with the text highlighted in black, and end with the text in black. When you fill in the phrase in the middle, be as specific as you can. This setup phrase is repeated three times, while at the same time you will be tapping the karate chop point. After we repeated the setup phrase three times, you would then go on to tap on the remaining body points, the location of which you can look up in the picture provided at the end of the book. The points are: AE - above the eye SE - side of the eye UE - under the eye UN - under the nose CP - chin point CB - collarbone UArm - under the arm While we tap approximately seven times on each of the remaining body points, we repeat a shortened version of the setup phrase, i.e. the sequence. To repeat the entire setup phrase on the remaining body points is not necessary, because our subconscious knows already our intention and it would be rather cumbersome to repeat such a long statement, therefore we use a shortened version which could be something like

feeling ashamed while at the black board

These statements can be repeated out loud, or quietly in your mind. However, sometimes it can make a difference to success or failure, if you say the statements out loud and with emphasis, rather than repeating them as matter of fact. You can do the tapping with your left or with your right hand, even both hands if you like, but that does not provide any additional benefit. What is important is being focused on the problem at hand, and being specific in addressing it. One thing before you start, is that you may want to rate your intensity level while thinking about the incident, so that you have a means by which you can assess how well you are doing. For this purpose, we use a scale from 0 to 10, where ten is you are out of your wits, and where one is you would have hardly any negative emotion. After you have completed your first round of tapping with the assumed setup and sequence phrase, you would tune into yourself once again to take another measure of how you feel, and compare it with your result from the beginning. Let's say you started off with an intensity of eight, and after your first round you might be down to a six or even a five, but you are most likely not down to zero. What you do then is to take your shortened statement of the sequence phrase, and you simply acknowledge the fact that you are still a bit ashamed and amend your phrase to read as follows:

remaining feeling of being ashamed while at the black board

to even further

remaining feeling of being ashamed