by Donna Eden
Again, the points where your arms meet your torso are massaged during the first phrase (or other acupoints are stimulated, as discussed earlier) and your hands are held over your heart as you say “I deeply love and accept myself.”
The Choices Method
An alternative format for the second phrase in the Acceptance Statement, as well as for addressing psychological reversals, is called the Choices Method.17 It emphasizes choice and opportunity. “Even though I still obsess about my son’s grades, I choose to know that I deeply love and accept him” or “Even though I neglect my body, I choose to know that I deserve to have time for regular, enjoyable exercise.” Regardless of the wording, the strategy is to stimulate acupoints that help pair a negative self-evaluation with a positive thought or with the recognition of an opportunity. This causes the negative thought to become a trigger for a positive choice.
The Choices Method can be tailored to any situation, even those that are bleak or overwhelming. A depressed client in his first psychotherapy session developed the affirmation, “Even though my life is hopeless, I choose to find unexpected help in this therapy.” Writing to her colleagues the day after 9/11 on how to assist people dealing with the psychological aftermath of the attack, psychologist Patricia Carrington, who developed the Choices Method, suggested using it with phrasings such as, “Even though I am stunned and bewildered by this terrible happening, I choose to be a still point amid all the chaos,” or “Even though I am stunned and bewildered, I choose to learn something absolutely essential for my own life from this event,” or “Even though I am stunned and bewildered, I choose to have this dreadful event open my heart.” Additional examples:
Even though I was rejected, I choose to remember how many people love me.
Even though I feel deprived if I don’t have that extra helping, I choose to know my body is fully nourished.
Even though I’m completely driven by my work, I choose to know that my worth as a person is not about my accomplishments.
In summary, if tapping is not decreasing your emotional distress about the problem or increasing your confidence about overcoming it, be alert for the possibility of an inner conflict about your goal. If you identify such conflict, you can formulate an Acceptance Statement or use the Choices Method to resolve it.
• THE BASIC RECIPE IN A NUTSHELL •
Identify and Rate a Problem That Is Suitable for Energy Interventions
Identify an emotional response, physical reaction, thought pattern, or behavioral pattern you would like to change, state it as a Reminder Phrase, and rate it from zero to ten according to the amount of distress you feel when you bring it to mind (here).
Establish a Psychological Receptiveness for Change
Say the Acceptance Statement (here) three times in the format of: Even though I have this [Reminder Phrase], I deeply love and accept myself. Simultaneously rub your chest sore spots on the first statement and hold your hands over the center of your chest on the second.
Initial Round of Treatment (“The Sandwich”)
Tap the energy points shown in Figure 6-3 while stating the Reminder Phrase at each point.
The Integration Sequence (here): While tapping on the back of your hand (see Figure 5-3), close your eyes, open them, move them down to the right, move them down to the left, circle them clockwise, circle them counterclockwise, hum, count, hum.
Again tap the energy points shown in Figure 6-3.
Subsequent Rounds of the Sandwich
Add still and some to the Acceptance Statement; add remaining to the Reminder Phrase. Repeat until down to zero or adjust based on aspects, psychological reversals, or scrambled energies.
Challenge the Results
After the distress level is at zero or near zero, try to bring up the initial emotion. If you cannot, you are done. If you can, do another round of the Basic Recipe. If progress becomes stuck, identify and address any hidden aspects, psychological reversals, or scrambled energies.
“Scrambled” Energy
A third possible impediment to progress is that sometimes a person’s energies become so disorganized when bringing the problem to mind that tapping a set of acupuncture points is too subtle an intervention to be able to take hold amid all the static. In such cases, it is necessary to shift your focus to the energy disruptions. The methods presented in Part 2 of the Pact (here) can be extremely useful. Taking a few minutes to balance your body’s energies before bringing your attention back to the psychological issue may be an essential step.
In brief, if applying the Basic Recipe is not going as planned, an analysis almost always points to one of the following being active: hidden aspects of the problem, psychological reversals, or scrambled energies, as discussed earlier. A fourth possibility is an overwhelming emotional response. Emotional responses that become unsettling are addressed next.
If the Program Becomes Unsettling
A delicate issue in presenting the potent methods offered in this chapter is that any useful psychological tool can stir strong emotions or uncover dormant psychological problems. The methods you are learning here will not create new emotional problems, but it is possible that they may bring to the surface underlying emotional turmoil. One of our colleagues18 was doing a demonstration in front of a large group with a woman who wanted help regarding spells of extreme shyness and a tendency to go silent in certain social situations. Just standing in front of the group, her shoulders slumped, as if trying to make herself take up less space, and her voice became tiny. With the tapping treatment, her stress rating went from an initial 8 down to 6, but it stayed at 6 for the next two rounds. Then a childhood memory surfaced of her and her mother walking into their home while a burglary was in progress. Her mother started to scream and the intruder began to viciously beat her mother. The girl ran and hid behind some curtains. She was sure the burglar was searching for her and managed to silence her own tears and screams of terror. While she had totally repressed her memory of this incident (she was able to later confirm it with her mother, who had been reluctant to revive the memory), whenever she felt any stress in front of other people, she would have to fight against herself to be able to speak.
Now with the memory rushing back in vivid detail, she went through the same kinds of physiological reactions as when the incident occurred: shaking heavily, face blanched, heart pounding, hardly breathing. Of course at this point our colleague saw the symptoms but did not yet know the story. He offered reassuring words while unwaveringly instructing her to continue tapping. By the second trip through the tapping sequence, her breathing had returned to normal and she had stopped shaking. A couple more rounds of tapping (no Acceptance Statement, no Integration Sequence, just the emotional first aid of stimulating the acupoints involved with the stress response), and she was able to describe what had occurred. Then her work was able to proceed by focusing on various aspects of the memory, neutralizing them one by one. Finally, to test the degree to which she had overcome her shyness, she described her experience to the group in full-bodied posture and voice.
While tapping itself reduces rather than increases distress, touching into traumatic memories can be destabilizing. Activating a past trauma may make it feel like the problem is getting worse. Simply bringing to mind a difficult emotional issue or disturbing memory can shake one’s confidence, open an old wound, or stir up overwhelming feelings. Any potent experience can, in fact, bring to the surface underlying issues that have not been resolved. If repressed emotions are on the verge of breaking through one’s psychological defenses, a reaction might be triggered by seeing a powerful film, helping one’s child through a difficult time, having an argument with a loved one, experiencing a volley of criticism from a friend, entering psychotherapy, opening oneself to the deeper recesses of one’s psyche while working with one’s dreams, participating in an intensive “personal growth” workshop, or using techniques such a
s the ones presented in this book. The following pages offer steps you can take if working through this program becomes unsettling.
Before offering procedures that will calm and steady you if this happens, we want to emphasize that intense emotional reactions are not a setback. Critical, however, is that when they occur, you find the support and resources so you are able to resolve them and come out stronger rather than with an additional unresolved trauma that leaves you feeling more fragile or more defended. Energy work can, like any other psychological approach as well as many other life experiences, bring old emotional wounds to the surface. Although this may be challenging, emotional problems that lie beneath the surface often drain a person’s vitality and foster defensive thought and behavioral patterns. By bringing them into your awareness, doorways open for healing them. With that healing, the energies that had been defending against the old wound can be directed toward a more dynamic response to life.
We have made every effort to present the techniques in this book so you can adjust them to your own needs, readiness, and pace. If, however, you should feel disturbed or unsettled as you apply the procedures, and if those feelings persist after you have used the suggestions given next, we strongly encourage you to elicit support from family and friends or seek professional assistance.
For a first course of action if the program becomes upsetting, you can take any of the following “psychological first aid” measures. In most cases, one or more of these will suffice. But do not forget that prolonged upset can also be an opportunity, an opening for a highly beneficial course of healing and growth facilitated by focused effort, psychotherapy, a spiritual discipline, or other healing resource. Immediate steps you can take if you find yourself becoming upset include:
Tap on the Reaction You Are Having
Acupoint tapping is a powerful way to calm yourself. If focusing on your personal issues leads to emotional discomfort, take a step back and apply the tapping to the emotional discomfort itself. Since you are in the midst of the emotion, begin by simply doing the tapping sequence. It is not necessary to create a Reminder Phrase since you are already tuned into the feeling. With intense emotional reactions, you may need to go through several rounds of the tapping sequence. During the period that the feelings are intense, it is not necessary to stop for the Acceptance Statement or the Integration Sequence.
Do the Stress Release Hold
This procedure (here) can have a similar effect to tapping, relaxing your body and calming your emotions. A stress reaction sends blood away from your brain and into your arms, legs, chest, and other organs involved in the fight/flight/freeze response. Holding these points counters the stress reaction by directing blood back to your brain. Simply place the palm of one hand over your forehead and the palm of your other hand over the back of your head just above your neckline. Hold comfortably for two to three minutes, breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth. This can be done standing, sitting, or lying down.
BALANCE YOUR ENERGIES
Do an energy “emotional first aid” sequence consisting of some or all of the following: the Hook-Up (here), the Crossover Shoulder Pull (here), the Wayne Cook Posture (here), the Triple Warmer Smoothie (here), the Blow-Out (here), and Connecting Heaven and Earth (here).
SHIFT TO A CALMING ACTIVITY
Listen to music, work in your garden, phone a supportive friend, take a walk in nature, meditate, watch an entertaining video, do yoga or stretching exercises, breathe deeply.
REST YOUR BODY
Take a break. Take a bath. Take a nap. Take a vacation. Rest your body. Rest your spirit.
STIMULATE YOUR BODY
Involve yourself in an invigorating physical activity, such as swimming, running, dancing, jumping on a mini-trampoline, cleaning your house, or waxing your car. Regularly discharging pent-up or stagnant energies is an excellent form of emotional self-care.
USE YOUR IMAGINATION
Experiment with imagery that takes you to a protected, beautiful, sacred place—an old oak tree, a mountain stream, a childhood hideaway. Later, cultivate your ability to go there in your mind whenever you feel the need for safety, sustenance, or renewal.
REACH INTO YOUR INNER GUIDANCE
Archetypes are elements of your psyche that bridge to powerful forces beyond your conscious mind. An archetype that connects you to greater wisdom can be accessed by going inward and imagining an inner guide who is able to nurture and advise you. This inner guide may appear as a wise man or woman, a spiritual or religious figure, or someone you looked up to as a child. Imagine this person vividly, perhaps in the beautiful, sacred setting suggested above. Ask for the guidance you need. Listen carefully to the response. Cultivate a relationship with this inner guide.
FIND SUPPORT FROM ANOTHER PERSON
Share intimately with someone who cares about you. Use this person as a sounding board and a source of support.
BE PATIENT WITH YOURSELF
In applying energy psychology to your own life and issues, you are affirming your ability to change and evolve. Appreciate yourself for your intention and efforts, and use the Basic Recipe to counter your self-judgments and to increase your ability to accept yourself just the way you are.
DEVELOP A SELF-AFFIRMING PERSPECTIVE FOR YOUR TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS
When deep changes occur, old and familiar ways of perceiving, thinking, and behaving all transform. This by its nature is disorienting and can be destabilizing. Give yourself time and support for adjusting to new understanding and new ways of being. Use the Basic Recipe to foster optimism, welcome a new perspective, call on your creativity, and find the humor, ironies, and lessons in the process.
BRING IN NEW SOURCES OF INSPIRATION
From inspirational reading to great movies to sacred ceremonies to worship services to prayer to meditation, we are all fed by experiences that expand our understanding of the invisible patterns behind the visible world, that remind us of the courage and vastness of the human spirit, and that call us into a keener relationship with ourselves and our surroundings. Dedicate time to such activities.
Healing the Aftermath of a Catastrophe
While we have just been focusing on the possible hazards of self-guided exploration, we want to close with another story that demonstrates the powerful benefits that can result from working directly with the energies that are at the foundation of your habits, thoughts, and feelings. When June was twenty-four, her high school sweetheart and then-husband was killed in a traffic accident, the victim of a drunk driver. The loss was horrendous. She was depressed and almost inconsolable for the next two years. Eventually, however, she returned to school, started a new career, and was able to rebuild a meaningful life.
At age thirty-one, she met Ralph and, after dealing with her sense of being disloyal to her first husband, she allowed herself to fall deeply in love with him. They married and had two sons. June’s worry about their well-being became problematic. If Ralph was late coming home from work, she would be a bundle of frayed nerves by the time he arrived. It was very difficult for her to allow either of their sons to part from her sight, and their going to school was agony for her. She would ruminate about all the terrible things that might happen. Earlier in their relationship, Ralph had been very patient with June when her worry was primarily about him. He understood the loss she had suffered. But now her worry was stifling the boys as they became more independent, and he insisted that they attend therapy.
After a thorough history was taken in the first session, it became clear to David that while June had received grief counseling following her husband’s death and had healed in many important ways, the shock of learning of his death still reverberated within her in nightmarish proportions. As difficult as it might be, the treatment had to revisit that moment. Fortunately, with acupoint tapping, it is not necessary to vividly relive a trauma. A technique that our colleague Gary Craig calls “sneaking up on the problem” uses general
terms rather than the highly specific language that is usually suggested. When working with a devastating memory, you don’t need to relive it, only to activate it slightly. So June’s first round of tapping simply used the words “that horrible day.” Her SUD rating went from a 10 to a 7 after a few rounds, but then other losses came into her mind, specifically of her grandmother when she was eight and her dog, Smithers, when she was in her teens. We focused on each until the emotional charge had dissipated and the memory of the joys each had brought into her life could be fully experienced without intrusion by unprocessed pain about their subsequent loss.
In the next session, we returned to the moment June learned of her first husband’s death. It had come back up to a 9 and was quickly lowered to a 6 after a bit of tapping, again using the Reminder Phrase “that horrible day.” At this point, the approach was refined. First June was asked to describe what she was doing just prior to learning of her husband’s death and to tell the story of that day. She had already done enough work that she was able to manage this, not without tears, but without being overwhelmed. Then we took the account she had just presented in stages, using language that was more specific than had been used in the earlier tapping.
We began with her shopping in a grocery store prior to receiving the call on her cell phone. That was not hard to neutralize. Then hearing the cell phone ring and taking it out of her purse. She could recall exactly what aisle she was in. The distress triggered by this memory was neutralized within a couple of rounds of tapping. Then hearing the doctor identify himself and say the awful words, “I’m afraid your husband has been in an accident.” Everything that followed was addressed in segments, from the anxious drive to the hospital to learning he had died to insisting on seeing his disfigured body to the long and terrible night of being home alone after it was all over.