EFT is an amazingly useful and versatile therapy process. Sometimes when we tap we don’t have to speak set-up phrases such as ‘Even though I am anxious, I still love myself etc..’ We can instead ask the client to focus on an object and tap, and this is great for phobias, addictions and specific problems.
So if you are addicted to cigarettes, you could just put a cigarette on a table and then as you look at it, you go through the EFT Mindful Protocol. It focuses on how we feel in our body, they way we think about our problems, how we remember them and how we are reacting to it.
You don’t even need an object, you could have a picture of it or a photo, or just what it is written on a piece of paper. Maybe even a tune or song. Whatever we need to remind us of this problem.
One example of this was a client who had been having a tough time in his relationship with his wife. They had ‘fallen out of love’, and he was desperate to rekindle the flame, but didn’t know how.
So he got a photo of his wife from years back when they had been courting. It was a holiday snap of a pretty young lady smiling on the beach. He put it on the table and started to tap. With a small amount of prompting from me, he started to recall all those happy memories and especially how they made him feel.
He had been quite tearful when he started, but it wasn’t long before he started smiling broadly as all those happy memories flooded back, and as they did so, they started to wash away some of the negative emotions that he had been feeling. He began to feel much more positive and hopeful that things could be resolved. He was also recalling not just how he felt, but how she had been reacting to him.
Sometimes, as a therapist you just go with the flow and trust your instincts. So at this point I asked him if there was a song on the radio that was playing a lot at the time the photo was taken. He said ‘Baker Street’ by Gerry Rafferty. So I got out my MP3 player, found it, and played it as he tapped. Now I got tears, but this time they were cleansing and happy tears.
Now if this was Hollywood, I would say that he went home and they had passionate sex all day. Which didn’t happen. But what he found was that when he went home, instead of seeing the wife he had attached a whole load of negative emotions to, he saw her differently, his earlier emotions had returned. Not as strong as they used to be, but returned nonetheless. So they are now cuddling and kissing, and talking more. The rest will happen, no reason why it shouldn’t.
So EFT can help relationships even without speaking, just by tapping and focusing on special objects.