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One of the many wonderful things about EFT is the setup statement, which automatically helps us to deal with any resistance we have to healing the issues we are working on. In most cases, the standard setup is all we need. As Gary shows in the DVDs, sometimes it also helps to really emphasise the setup statement to help get past resistance. While I’ve found that in most cases this is all that is required, in a few cases where the issue is quite complex in nature, some other approaches also help. This seems to be particularly so when dealing with depression and auto-immune illnesses. This article contains ideas that I use when working with people who have been tapping on their own, or with practitioners, and who are finding that their issues are not clearing permanently.
As Gary points out on the Palace of Possibilities DVD series, affirmations are very powerful, and so are the tail enders that can come with them. If you are unaware of this concept, I highly recommend reading about them in the Palace of Possibilities writing or watching the DVDs. EFT is such an effective tool, that I know that if someone has been tapping without really clearing issues, that there must be a block in the way of the EFT working. One of the most common blocks I’ve found in the few instances where this happens, is the tail enders that come up, without the person realising it, while tapping the standard setup.
To deal with this, I’ve taken an approach that Stephen Daniels suggests on his presentation on Using EFT for Chronic Illnesses, on the Specialty Series 2 DVD set, and added other ideas to it. I’ve seen some powerful turnarounds for people using this method, including people who have been using EFT for some time without the sorts of results we are so used to seeing. If you are working with someone, or on your own, and finding that issues aren’t clearing permanently, you might like to try this approach and see what happens.
1. Have the person make the following statement out loud, and rate on the scale of 0 – not true, 10 – totally true, how true it feels to them emotionally. We are looking for the immediate emotional response, rather than a reasoned logical one (if the logical mind had all the answers, we wouldn’t need EFT!). The statement is:
I accept myself as I am.
In most cases where the problems haven’t been budging, the rating is towards the low end on this scale. In a few cases the person rates this quite high, and in these cases you can still benefit from carrying on with the process, as you may find that their self acceptance is conditional on something.
2. The next step is to have the person complete the following sentence, with whatever immediately comes to mind (again, we are looking for the emotional, gut response, rather than a logical one):
In order to accept myself I need to ___________
3. Take whatever comes up as a tapping statement, using a modified setup as follows:
Even though I need to ______ in order to accept myself, I accept that is how I feel right now, and I open myself to the possibility of this one day changing. (The modified second part of the statement is to avoid the tail enders that could be present using the standard setup statement.)
4. Proceed to tap on whatever comes up as a result of tapping this statement. For example, a common response to complete the sentence is:
In order to accept myself, I need to be perfect.
In this case, you would look for early memories of times when the person felt they needed to be perfect in order to be acceptable to someone.
5. Re-rate “I accept myself as I am” periodically to check progress, and whenever nothing more is forthcoming with the tapping, re-visit the statement “In order to accept myself I need to ____” until a major shift has been felt.
6. Ask the person if there any things in their life that cause them to feel guilty when they think about them now. Tap until each one is collapsed to 0.
I have been amazed to see the results of this sort of tapping. People have uncovered beliefs, and things they have felt guilty about for years and years, that are standing in the way of them accepting themselves, and once dealt with, no longer block the use of the standard EFT setup statement. This simple idea can really move mountains, and enable EFT to work in the powerful way it is designed to.
Another block that I have found is quite common when working with people suffering from depression or auto-immune symptoms is something I also learnt from the Stephen Daniels DVD. Underlying these issues is often a belief that the person is not safe in the world. This belief may be one they are consciously aware of, or as in my own case, might be something that we don’t consciously recognise at all, until some tapping has been done. I have yet to work with someone with auto-immune challenges who has not had trauma that resulted in them feeling unsafe in the world, and feel that this is a key part of resolving their issues. To do this, I use the same process as outlined above, but with the following statements in the place of the statements around self acceptance:
I am safe and protected.
In order for me to be safe and protected, I need to ______________
Ask them if they have any events in their early life that caused them to feel unsafe or unprotected.
While these two ideas can seem too simple to be very powerful, they have held the key to a number of cases I’ve worked on recently. Once we start becoming aware of the subconscious beliefs we have around self-acceptance and safety, our subconscious blocks to healing tend to dissolve before our eyes, and we start building a completely new relationship with ourself. The healing that unfolds is nothing short of magical.
Here is a summary of the process that you can use to be sure that you are able to follow it through and benefit optimally from it:
1. Start with working with the "I accept myself as I am" as detailed in steps 1 - 5.
2. Tap all the things that cause feelings of guilt down to 0, again using the modified setup statement.
3. Repeat the process with "I am safe and protected" for steps 1 - 5, substituting the safety words given for the acceptance words.
4. Tap all the events that cuased them to feel unsafe or protected down to 0.