by Donna Eden
Can’t make them have to look for me.
I can’t be the cause of making them uncomfortable.
It’s dark after all. They’ve got to go home.
I understand.
Of course I’ll be left here in the dark.
I’ll be left here in the dark.
I hope the wolves will find me and raise me.
But I don’t see the wolves yet.
I can’t find the wolves.
I really don’t know where I am.
I wonder what’s going to happen to me.
I knew they had to abandon me because now I was trouble.
I broke the rules.
I became trouble.
I didn’t hold up my part of the bargain.
And now I’m all alone.
I’m only four.
I’m out in the wilderness.
The best I can hope for is that the wolves will now raise me.
I had my fantasy world. That made it less awful.
But deep down I knew they had to leave me because I had caused trouble.
My brother and sister caused enough trouble. I wasn’t going to create more.
Mama had just come home from the hospital, and I wasn’t going to create trouble for her.
But I got lost.
And I would have been trouble if they hadn’t gone on home.
But I see Daddy coming around a winding bend on the side of the mountain.
Daddy looked for me. Wow!
He saw me and he started laughing.
His arms opened wide running toward me.
It’s making me cry [crying].
I was so surprised!
They fooled me.
I was shocked that they would look for me.
Daddy found me!
Even though I was trouble, they looked for me.
I got back in the car and found out that Mama never said that.
She never said, “. . . it’s getting dark, so we have to leave.”
They never left.
They stayed for me.
Registering this very deeply now.
I was able to be trouble when I was four.
I got one chance.
Maybe it was okay to be trouble.
Of course, I got over that [laughter at David’s lampoon].
It didn’t change the contract.
I still had these rules that I couldn’t cause trouble.
I couldn’t be trouble.
There was already enough trouble.
I’m not gonna be trouble.
I’m gonna make it SO easy for them to have me around.
They won’t ever be sorry I’m there.
I won’t have any needs [crying].
I’ll just make it easy for them.
They’ll never know what my needs are.
They’ll never know if I get sick or unhappy.
That was my basic rule.
In all my relationships, no one would ever regret that I was around because I didn’t make trouble.
I didn’t make trouble.
It was okay for them to make trouble. They hadn’t grown to the place where they didn’t have to make trouble.
But I had.
Whatever people needed to make their lives easier, I would do for them.
They were vulnerable, so I didn’t make trouble.
The SUD rating at this point on Donna’s sadness in realizing what it really meant for that little girl that they were not coming back for her had gone down from an 8 to a 5. The next Acceptance Statement was, “Even though she didn’t realize that she was loved enough to be able to make trouble and to be inconvenient, I feel so much compassion and love for that little girl and feel such sympathy for her.” The next round of tapping included these wordings:
My role in life was to be easy for them.
If I added to the trouble, Mama would get sick again.
If I added to the trouble, Daddy would get all stressed.
They have so much to handle!
I can’t make more. I just can’t make trouble.
So I don’t experience my needs.
I go into fantasy.
The wolves were going to raise me.
Fantasy worked.
I got very good at not causing trouble.
I was happy.
Real happy!
So it worked.
It didn’t work all my life, but it worked in my family.
They appreciated it without realizing.
It was okay for me to not be seen.
I had a really wonderful fantasy life.
I came out smelling like a rose.
I didn’t cause trouble.
We were both surprised by the next SUD rating: “It’s up to a 9! I guess because I’m having to feel it. I’ve never felt it.” Sometimes coming out of denial is its own stressor. Donna observed, “I’ve always kind of laughed about it, how cute that was, but now I just feel sad.” This is not unusual for feelings that have been buried in order to support a coping style, and it is not the time to become discouraged or give up. On the contrary, you know you are on the trail of emotionally significant material. The next Acceptance Statement put what had occurred into a constructive context: “Even though I’m really in it and feeling it deeply now, I choose to know that this is how I will heal.” Wordings in the next round of tapping included:
That poor little girl.
She was only four.
I had to carry the burden of the family.
And not complain.
And not be trouble for anyone.
I was only four.
It’s really sad when I think about it.
But thank God for my rich imagination.
Thank God for my spirit feeding me so well.
Even though it’s really sad, I came out of it really well.
Ignorance is bliss.
Denial really served me well.
There’s a deep realization here.
It is very healing.
Even though I’m getting in touch with a lot of things, there’s a healing going on.
Even though it’s sad, I welcome this awareness.
That poor little girl wasn’t really so poor.
She had so much going for her that she was able to take this burden within her family.
And she pulled it off.
She came out of it fairly unscathed.
Of course her relationship skills sucked [laughter at another playful dig from David].
But beyond that, she came out of it pretty whole.
So while I’m feeling compassion for her, I’m also feeling some awe for her.
How richly resourced she was.
What a blessing.
She did so well carrying that burden for her family.
She did so well carrying everyone’s sadness and being the witness!
She did so well. She did her job well.
This brief round, examining the larger context of the situation with compassion for her four-year-old self, quickly brought Donna’s SUD rating down from a 9 to a 2. However, her focus now went to other situations from later in her life that had the same theme. She focused on one of them from her first marriage. She had a miscarriage and got an infection while in the hospital. But she signed herself out against doctor’s orders, left the hospital, and stayed with a girlfriend so that she wouldn’t cause a financial burden for her husband. When she did see him, although she was in deep grief, she gave no indication that she had signed herself out of the hospital against medical advice and was silently pleased about having spared him any inconvenience or expense. The Acceptance Statement she used for this new aspect of the theme was, “Even though I had that terrible loss
that I didn’t let him feel, I deeply love and accept myself.” She continued, tapping, using these wordings:
That pattern of not being trouble, which was so adaptive in my childhood, caused me to choose a partner who had no tolerance for trouble.
It was a perfect match [laughter].
He couldn’t tolerate trouble. I could hide all my needs.
So it played out, again and again and again, throughout that whole marriage.
I couldn’t show my needs. I couldn’t be trouble. And the pattern just got deeper and deeper.
I couldn’t be trouble.
The only thing I could do was to finally leave.
We were like pieces of a puzzle locked together.
He could not tolerate trouble. I couldn’t be trouble. That was our bond.
So even though I’m feeling really sad, I’m seeing the pattern.
Even though I’m feeling really sad, I’m having a really empowering insight.
Even though I’m feeling really sad, I choose to recognize that I’ve come a long way on this.
By this point, her SUD rating on her sadness for the little girl was down to zero, but it was still a 4 for the young woman in the hospital. In exploring what was keeping it at a 4, Donna realized she had a lot of shame about not speaking up. Her next Acceptance Statement was, “Even though I feel ashamed that I was willing to risk my life rather than inconvenience my husband, I deeply love and accept myself.” Wordings during the tapping included:
Feeling ashamed that I checked myself out of the hospital so I wouldn’t cause trouble for my husband.
I wouldn’t cause trouble.
Remembering that it was heroic when I was four to carry the family burden.
That four-year-old girl wanted to make everyone in the family happy.
She was able to muster the spirit to carry the family burden.
She played out what she learned when she was four to keep her mother healthy.
She just didn’t update the program.
She just kept playing out her family role.
And she found the right partner to do it with.
I was doing what I learned.
It’s really hard to see my part in his cruelty.
As her judgment toward the woman in the hospital receded, she was left with humiliation about having been such a doormat. See how the “layers of the onion” unfold? You simply work with whatever emerges. After resolving the humiliation, a few other incidents with the same theme, also from her adult life, were able to be resolved quite readily. The resolution of each specific issue builds on all that had been emotionally resolved before it. Complex as this sounds, the recording shows that the session lasted only forty-seven minutes. Nonetheless, Donna was exhausted. Exhausted but feeling triumphant!
5. Transform the Patterns That Grew Out of Early Emotional Wounds
Even after significant emotional healing, as illustrated in the above transcript, the patterns that become embedded in one’s lifestyle or relationships do not automatically shift. But they are ripe at that point for an intervention that does shift them. The theme that Donna wanted to change involved the way she would still hold back from exerting her will if it was going to disappoint or inconvenience someone. This often came up with David in work situations. Couples who work together face a unique set of challenges, and we are not exempt.
Donna selected a situation involving our organization where it was going to be difficult to get what she wanted, and she imagined herself expressing her intentions clearly and with strong resolve. Called the Outcome Projection Procedure,5 this technique is designed for establishing a new behavior or emotional response. It begins with envisioning a hoped-for outcome rather than a symptom or troubling situation. It also uses a zero-to-ten rating, but it rates the believability of the hoped-for outcome, with zero being that it is impossible and 10 being that it absolutely could happen. Except for these differences, it applies the same Basic Recipe you have been learning.
Because David is the CEO of our organization, he periodically finds himself standing with the other key administrators in enforcing a policy with which Donna disagrees, sometimes vehemently. This is not a recipe for family harmony. Donna not only feels outnumbered and powerless, she feels betrayed that her husband is siding with the others instead of her, even though the work they are promoting, Eden Energy Medicine, is her formulation and is in her name. David, on the other hand, feels compelled by considerations that are not even on Donna’s radar (state statutes, HR regulations, budgetary concerns, etc.) to keep the operation healthy and running smoothly, so when he digs in, he believes it is ultimately for Donna’s good even if she doesn’t recognize it.
In Donna’s hoped-for outcome, she saw herself standing firm against David and two of our top administrators in asking for an exception to standard procedures that would be quite troublesome for them to implement. It was a theme they had wrestled with innumerable times over the years. The job of David and our administrators is to build a structure that can accommodate the hundreds of people who are involved with the organization as teachers and practitioners and the tens of thousands they serve. But as things played out, people learned that if they wanted to be an exception to a rule, the way to get around the administration was to figure out how to get Donna’s ear and plead their case. Her heart would open and she would go to bat for them. This was driving the administration crazy, including her loyal husband, and she eventually became much more discerning about such requests. However, sometimes a case was so compelling that she would open another round of conflict with the people she’d been working with for years in order to advocate for someone she hardly knew.
In the situation that was the focus of the session, a student who had studied with Donna long ago wanted to get credit toward completing our certification program for courses taken years earlier. Our administration had allowed this during the first couple of years of our program, but as the program evolved and became more sophisticated, we recognized that training from a decade earlier was not equivalent to what we are teaching now. A firm rule was eventually made that giving credit for our early courses could no longer be done. Donna had agreed to this rule, but now she was faced with a person who so represented what she liked in an energy medicine practitioner that she decided to buck the system once more. Our administration is committed to maintaining high standards, and the complex and laborious job of evaluating whether the person had mastered the myriad of principles and procedures that certification represents was going to fall on their laps. Donna felt scared to request the exception, and her aversion to making trouble for others did not make this any easier. She visualized herself presenting the request with confidence and without guilt. On the zero-to-ten scale, with 10 being that it was totally believable that she could do this successfully, she gave it a rating of 4. It was somewhat plausible to her that she could make the request with confidence, but it did not feel very likely.
Her Acceptance Statement was, “Even though I’m not very confident that I can pull this off, I deeply love and accept myself.” On her tapping points, she also imagined herself in the situation presenting the request effortlessly as she tapped and used phrases including:
Feeling sure of myself and grounded.
This is the right thing to do.
And it will inconvenience them.
And I choose to have this happen.
This is for the greater good.
I’m so sorry it will inconvenience them.
One more time they’re going to see me as wishy-washy.
And as a pushover to anyone who brings their problem to me.
But I’m serving a higher truth.
That’s how it is.
And I’m going to make it their truth.
I’m sure of myself on this.
I’m using good judgment!
Here she did the Integration Se
quence and then returned to the tapping:
I can do this.
It’s correct that I do this.
It’s right. It’s smart. It’s ethical.
Even if it makes me feel guilty.
Even if it makes me feel like I’m being unreasonable.
Even if it makes me feel like it’s not fair that I am causing them so much extra work.
I see myself being so positive that they come over to my side.
I see them willingly go through the trouble!
I’m exuding the rightness of this.
I don’t have to cower and be afraid to talk with them.
I see them coming over to my side.
After all of this, Donna went back into the vision of successfully bringing her request to David and the two others and rated its believability: “It’s still a four; maybe it’s gone up just a bit, to a four and a half. It’s so hard not to feel guilty, and that’s where I get caught.” Her next Acceptance Statement was, “Even though I feel guilty about it, I deeply accept what I am trying to do.” Phrases she used in the next round of tapping included:
Exuding the rightness of what I am doing.
Feeling so confident and positive.
Feeling so confident and positive that my guilt just dissolves.
Even they are surprised that I’m not apologizing, saying, “I’m so sorry that I’m making trouble!”
This is the higher road.
I’m exuding the rightness of what I’m doing, and it’s contagious.
There they are, experiencing me in a new way.
I love standing there just doing what I’m feeling deep down. No apologies. No guilt.
After this round, her believability level that she could stand in front of the three administrators and gracefully hold her position had gone up to a 7. She reported, “I feel much more confident and empowered and excited about not apologizing. I still don’t feel like I can pull it off, but I’m feeling confidence.” For her next Acceptance Statement, David suggested, “Even though I still don’t believe I can pull this off, I choose to recognize that I can approach this with new confidence.” After trying this, Donna said, “But it gets complicated because my husband is standing there with them, and I want him to choose me over the business.” So the Acceptance Statement became, “Even though it feels like David is siding with them against me, I choose to know that if I stand firm and feel positive and exude that positive feeling, I am moving toward a positive outcome.” She then returned to the vision of standing in this positive space in front of the others and tapped using statements that included: