The Energies of Love

by Donna Eden

  How do you know you have really overcome the problem in a way that will last? Does a SUD rating of zero ensure that the unwanted feeling will not return? There is one more step.

  Challenging Your Results

  Once you do get the subjective distress rating down to zero, a final step is to challenge it. Try to recall or visualize the situation in a manner that evokes the earlier sense of distress. Find a way to intensify the scene. If the disturbed energy pattern and neurological sequence have been corrected—that is, if the earlier memory, thought, or situation does not produce a disturbed response in your brain and energy system—you will not be able to activate your earlier feelings. The speed with which this can often be accomplished is among the most striking benefits of energy psychology. A difficult situation from your past will still be recognized for its inherent dangers, injuries, or injustices, but the stress response in your autonomic nervous system that had been paired with that memory will no longer be triggered.

  If you are unable to reproduce any trace of the initial emotional response, the probability is strong that your autonomic response to the memory has been deactivated. If you were working with an emotional trigger such as your wife’s tone of voice when she feels sad or a memory that intrudes into your current life, chances are that the internal changes will translate into new situations. If the internal changes do not translate into daily life, or if there is some slippage, you can do another round or two of tapping as the situation is occurring. This often is all that is needed to anchor the changes into your life. If in spite of this follow-up the desired changes still seem tenuous, it may mean that an aspect of the problem still needs attention, as discussed below.

  Claiming Victory Even if the SUD Did Not Get down to Zero

  We should mention that sometimes the rating will get down to a 2 or a 1 but will not go down any further. This is not necessarily a bad outcome. For some problems, you may not be able to conceive of the rating going down to zero, and a 1 or a 2 is essentially a “cure” in your subjective world. In some circumstances, such as taking a test, or giving a performance, a small measure of anxiety increases your ability to function. So while zero might be thought of as the ideal, and it is the outcome that is most frequently obtained, it is not always realistic or necessary.

  Overcoming Obstacles to Resolving the Problem

  If after three rounds the rating has not budged, you may need to shift your focus or wording, or you may have identified a problem where you need outside assistance. There are many possible reasons that improvement can become stalled. A small proportion of people do not respond to tapping on acupoints (if you suspect you are one of them, try massaging the points or simply touching each point while breathing deeply). Sometimes the problem needs to be formulated with more specific or altogether different wording.

  A more frequent reason the process may get stuck is that an aspect of the problem that has not been addressed requires your attention for progress to continue. Another is that internal conflict about resolving the problem may need greater exploration. A third is that the energy fields in your body may have become so disorganized that they need to be balanced before tapping on an emotional issue can be fully effective.

  Addressing Unresolved Aspects of the Problem

  In the hands of a relatively proficient newcomer, the Basic Recipe seems, in our experience, to produce effective results 70 to 80 percent of the time when applied to reducing the emotional charge on a specific negatively charged memory. The tapping sends signals that reduce arousal in the threat response centers of the brain. It is that simple. While by many standards this is an extremely favorable success rate, a better percentage is possible when you know how to handle potential blocks to progress.

  The most common reason the distress rating would not have gone down to zero or close to zero if you followed the instructions precisely is that another aspect of the problem is involved that was not focused upon during the energy tapping. In addition, the most frequent reason an apparently successful treatment, where the distress rating did go down to zero, won’t translate into the actual situation is that a new aspect of the problem came up in the real-life situation that wasn’t there when you were just thinking about the problem and wording your Reminder Phrase. While many problems are straightforward and do not have multiple aspects, some have a number of physical or psychological aspects that each require attention if the problem is to be fully resolved.

  Physical Aspects

  The physical aspects of a problem include the look, sound, smell, taste, or feel of the situation. A thirty-eight-year-old account executive emerged from a serious car accident with no physical injuries, but he subsequently felt extremely anxious whenever he drove. He was told it would go away, but after six months, it had only become worse. In his first energy psychology session, he tapped on the words “when my Volvo was totaled.” His zero-to-ten distress rating began as a 9 and fairly quickly went down to a 6, but it would not go down further. When asked what came into his mind when he was rating the scene, he said that what bothered him the most was recalling “the sound of the screeching tires followed by the loud crash.” After tapping on “the sound of the screeching tires” and “the loud crash,” his rating went down to a 3. Reflecting then on what kept it at a 3, he described the feeling of helplessness as the car went into a skid. After tapping on that, he was able to vividly recall the accident, scene by scene, with no stress reaction, and he was again able to drive without anxiety.

  Unresolved physical aspects of a problem are not always obvious, but you can usually identify them by noting what is prominent in your mind when you focus on the remaining distress you feel, or by examining how your experience in the actual situation differs from the scene you imagined during the tapping. Consider, for instance, a fear of spiders. Usually the energy disruptions that occur when someone with this fear is thinking about a spider are very similar to those that occur upon actually seeing a spider. After the response to the thought or image of a spider has been brought down to a zero, the response to seeing a real spider will usually be zero as well. But not always.

  Perhaps during the tapping, the person was thinking about a stationary spider. The imagined spider was not moving. If movement is an important aspect of the fear, and if it was not addressed in the original rounds of tapping, then a moving spider can still trigger fear. So you would apply the Basic Recipe to this additional aspect (“moving spider”) until the emotional response gets down to zero. Once all aspects have been resolved, the phobic response to spiders will have been eliminated. The person will be able to stay calm in the presence of a spider. The physical aspects of a traumatic event, such as an accident or an abusive situation (the taste of the mud in my mouth after I hit the ground, the smell of his breath, the look in her eyes) may remain in play until you recognize that they require attention. At that point, they can usually be neutralized quite readily by tapping while keeping them active in your mind.

  Psychological Aspects

  Many issues also carry psychological associations that go beyond the obvious stresses connected to the problem being addressed. If your fear of spiders started when your brother dropped a spider down the back of your blouse at the carnival when you were eight and you ran screaming through the crowds, simply tapping on the image of a spider to overcome your spider phobia isn’t likely to do it. The terror, shock, embarrassment, and sense of betrayal tracing to the earlier incident may all need tapping. Or if the account executive with the fear of driving had, as a child, witnessed a terrible automobile accident that had been repressed from his memory, the emotional residue from that experience may have been activated by the recent car crash and his anxiety may not be fully eradicated until the earlier trauma has been addressed. Early experiences of this nature may have been forgotten or totally repressed, but analogous experiences can reactivate them.

  Suppose, for instance, that you were bitten by a dog when you were seven. This memory ha
s long been forgotten. But then you hear of a neighbor receiving a dog bite and you instantly develop a fear of dogs, rated at 9 or 10. This level of fear and physiological arousal suggests more is at play than just having heard a report of a single incident. Applying the Basic Recipe to “fear of dogs” may reduce your fear a bit, but it is not likely to be effective until the childhood incident has been addressed. Having been bitten as a child is an important aspect of “fear of dogs,” and it probably will need attention before the fear of dogs that recently appeared can be successfully resolved. Fortunately, when you use tapping to reduce the charge on a recent event or current problem, earlier experiences that have become psychologically entangled with the current problem tend to reveal themselves and will also be responsive to tapping.

  Any recent trauma or loss can unearth a network of earlier unresolved traumas or losses. In focusing on the first memory that reveals itself, you may find that it also has a number of aspects. Neutralizing each physical and psychological aspect that emerges brings you deeper into the heart of long-standing emotional issues, like peeling the layers off an onion. Haunting physical aspects of the memory may be at the outer layers. You may vividly recall the feeling of your blood rolling down your leg or the icy terror in your chest when you saw the dog baring its teeth and about to attack. These may, in turn, tie into psychological aspects of the problem, such as other situations where you felt helpless. Your subconscious mind knows what you are working on and tends to present whatever requires attention. By neutralizing the emotional charge on such memories, you are not only making it possible to fully resolve the original problem, you are also healing early emotional wounds that were limiting you. That is why the most popular form of energy psychology is called Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT).

  When focusing on the aspects of a problem, be as specific as possible. Not just “fear of dogs,” but specific memories—recent or past—that feed that fear. Recall, rate (zero to ten), and work with them one at a time. This is a good guideline for addressing any problem, but it is particularly important for emotional responses that occur in multiple contexts, such as free-floating anxiety or incessant feelings of shame. In these instances, it is useful to work with your earliest memories of the feeling. For instance, rather than tapping on “this shame I feel,” you could focus on the earliest experiences of shame you can recall, tapping on each until it has been neutralized. Then, when you return to more recent incidents, the underlying sense of shame will have been cleared away and the current concern is likely to be resolved quite readily.

  It is not necessary, however, to clear related incidents in any particular chronological order; nor do you need to remember and treat every aspect that was involved with a problem in order to overcome it. This is particularly important to understand in working with a history of ongoing abuse, the aftermath of warfare, or when other kinds of traumas have been experienced repeatedly. Fortunately, a “generalization effect” kicks in. After you have resolved a few related incidents, the effects start to generalize to the broader issue. For instance, someone who has thirty traumatic memories of having been beaten will find that after neutralizing five or ten of them (this would be done in the context of psychotherapy), the others will begin to lose their emotional charge as well.

  In summary, our experiences working with a wide range of individuals suggest that when they patiently apply the Basic Recipe to neutralize the physical and psychological aspects of the problems they present, self-limiting psychological difficulties can often be fully and permanently resolved.

  “Psychological Reversals”: Internal Conflicts about Overcoming a Problem

  Another reason—besides an unrecognized aspect of the problem—that the SUD rating would not have gone down to zero or close to zero is that a “psychological reversal” is involved in the problem you are trying to resolve. In a psychological reversal, unconscious resistance is blocking the consciously desired outcome. A woman wanted to get over her phobia of being on airplanes, but when her distress while thinking about flying wouldn’t get below a 5, she explored what was in the way of further progress. She came to realize that if she did overcome her flying phobia, then she would have to “go on those dreadful business trips” with her husband.

  In a psychological reversal, a part of you seems to want the reverse of what you consciously desire. Or it simply plays out that you consistently do the reverse of what you intend. Remember the toy straw tubes where you place your forefingers into each end and when you try to pull them out, the tube tightens so you can’t free your fingers. That’s how a psychological reversal feels. The harder you try, the more powerful the resistance that emerges to counter you. Your efforts produce the opposite of the result you intend. All effective therapies address psychological reversals in one way or another, using a variety of terms, from unconscious resistance to self-sabotage. Until these are resolved, other therapeutic interventions are less likely to have a deep or lasting effect.

  When Roger Callahan was formulating Thought Field Therapy, he recognized an energetic dimension to such conflicts about a treatment goal. The psychological resistance was being compounded by a disruption in the body’s energy system whenever the person brought the goal to mind. Addressing a psychological reversal at the energetic level can cut through the need for the long, complex analysis that is typical for many therapeutic approaches.

  If the tapping is not decreasing your internal distress when bringing the problem to mind, and you have worked through all the aspects you can identify, looking inward for possible conflicts about overcoming the problem may show you where you are caught. Psychological reversals are often subconscious, but they will usually reveal themselves after a bit of reflection. For instance, you may at some level be concerned about certain possible consequences of overcoming the problem, such as, “If I truly learn to relax and not push myself so hard, I won’t achieve as much” or “If I get an A in math, boys will stay away from me.” The possibilities are endless. Keeping a problem may be a way of lowering people’s expectations about you. It may even be a way of punishing someone: “If I am no longer devastated about the affair, he gets off scot-free!” Another form of psychological reversal is when a person is deriving “secondary gains” for having an emotional problem—from gaining sympathy to receiving disability insurance.

  Some psychological reversals are specific to a particular aspect of the problem or goal. They may have to do with:

  conflicted desire about reaching the goal

  a sense of not deserving to reach the goal

  a feeling that it is not safe or not possible to reach the goal

  a feeling that reaching the goal is not compatible with the person’s identity

  For instance, a person who wants to lose weight may have no energy disruption with the thought, “I want to lose weight.” But an energy disruption may appear with the related thought, “I deserve to lose weight,” or “It is safe to lose weight,” or “It is possible for me to lose weight,” or “I will do what’s necessary to lose weight,” or “I would no longer be me if I lost weight,” or “If I lose weight, men will start hitting on me.” Useful themes to explore when identifying whether a psychological reversal is at play include:

  I want to [name the goal].

  I deserve to [name the goal].

  It is safe for me or my relationship if I [name the goal].

  It is possible for me to [name the goal].

  I will feel deprived if I [name the goal].

  I will do what’s necessary to [name the goal].

  I would still be me if I [name the goal].

  An approach to working with psychological reversals that we find effective is similar to the technique you have already learned of using an Acceptance Statement combined with the simple physical procedures of massaging points on your torso and placing your hands over your heart (here).

  In the Acceptance Statement, you formulated a p
hrase that acknowledges that the problem you want to change exists (e.g., “Even though I have this unwanted weight”) and at the same time affirms that you accept yourself even though you have that problem (e.g., “I deeply love and accept myself”). While making this statement, you work with points that move energy through your body (here). Recall the statement, “Even though I still carry humiliation about my pants having ripped during the play [rubbing sore spots on the chest], I deeply love and accept myself [with hands over center of chest].”

  Resistance to any psychological or behavioral problem or goal—from attempting to overcome a self-defeating habit to eliminating irrational anger toward your spouse—can be translated into this format. Once such inner conflicts are discovered, the same strategy applies. Find a statement that acknowledges the problem, such as “Even though I don’t deserve to lose weight,” and then, while doing the energy interventions, pair it with a statement of self-acceptance, such as “I deeply love and accept myself.” So if you were to discover that any of the above themes were at play, the wordings might be:

  Even though I don’t want to [name the goal], I deeply love and accept myself.

  Even though I don’t deserve to [name the goal], I deeply love and accept myself.

  Even though it’s not safe to [name the goal], I deeply love and accept myself.

  Even though it’s not possible for me to [name the goal], I deeply love and accept myself.

  Even though I will feel deprived if I [name the goal], I deeply love and accept myself.

  Even though I won’t do what’s necessary to [name the goal], I deeply love and accept myself.

  Even though I wouldn’t still be me if I [name the goal], I deeply love and accept myself.