by Donna Eden
No guilt.
I’m seeing myself being very effective.
I’m standing so firm that all four of us are harmonizing.
I’m one of them! They’ve never seen me as one of them.
I have some power here.
I have some positive power here.
I’m standing up for what is right.
I’m moving the organization in a positive direction.
I’m seeing myself do this.
I’m seeing myself being very effective.
Her believability score had now gone up “from a shaky seven to a very solid eight—feels like a big jump.” She reported, “I’m believing the vision that I’m one of them. It isn’t me against them or them against me. We’re together as long as I stand firm; I don’t have to grovel and cry.” Even though additional rounds of tapping are not usually necessary once the believability score reaches 8—the vision will usually translate into the person’s life quite readily—Donna didn’t want to stop there. She explained, “I think the most important thing I’ve gotten is that I have finally resigned myself to the idea that the needs of the administration trump what I think is important for the program. You guys run the show, and I don’t, and that’s all there is to it. Because my name is on the program, you’ll sometimes go along with what I want, but you guys represent the business side of things and feel it’s your job to convince me I’m wrong. When I stood in that place of holding firm, then it became very different. That’s what I want to keep feeling. So I want to take this all the way.” Donna’s next Acceptance Statement was, “Even though they haven’t respected my opinion on these administrative decisions, I’m taking a stance that they will respect.” Returning to the tapping, her statements included:
My perspective matters.
I don’t have to grovel.
It feels really, really good to hold my space.
I am taking a stand.
I have my voice. I have my truth.
I am respecting my truth, my stance, my equality with them, and my harmony with them. This feels so positive!
I’m taking this stance.
I am really pulling this off.
I am holding firm.
They know it and I know it.
Even though I’m not an administrator, I carry the spirit of the organization.
I carry the name of the organization. My spirit must be heard. My values must be heard.
I own that and I carry that.
Donna then commented, “What is making it hard for me to get above eight is that I am still looking at you, David. That group is a block of people. You are my husband, yet you will be part of the block against me. I’m looking at you, and I’m hungering for you not to dismiss me.” This led to the Acceptance Statement, “Even though David is with the other administrators facing me and it feels like a betrayal and a dismissal, regardless of what David does, I’m standing firm. Regardless of what David does, I’m standing firm.” Tapping statements included:
I am exuding the truth of this situation.
I’ve found my voice.
I am standing tall and firm.
And if David doesn’t get it, it’s his loss.
If he can’t connect with me here, it’s his loss.
Because I’m exuding the truth of the situation, I see him coming over to my side.
We’re all equals here.
And we all respect one another.
At this point Donna rated the believability of the scene and it was a tad over 9. She reflected that while it seemed very plausible, “It also feels too good to be true. I’m going to have to really practice getting to that state. It’s not my default. But I love having done this.” Over the next few days, she did raise the issue, she was met with strong resistance, she did hold firm, and over the course of about a week she moved the administrative team to the point where they, with some enthusiasm, took on the challenge of creating a special arrangement for the student in question.
6. Complete Any Other “Unfinished Business” in Your Emotional Life, Including “Baggage” from Earlier Relationships or from an Earlier Time in Your Current Relationship
In the sessions described above, you have seen how a conflict with David was a springboard for Donna to use tapping to:
resolve the immediate issue
identify how her side of the conflict was part of a broader theme that traced to her childhood
heal some of the emotional wounds that kept that theme active in her life
build a new and more effective way of responding in current situations that call forth the same theme
We will now allow Donna to return from this naked display of her emotional conflicts, necessary when being used as a demonstration case, to the relative privacy of being an author.
Unhealed emotional wounds from an earlier time in your current relationship or from a previous relationship may be an invisible force that is keeping your marriage from moving forward. This chapter opened by describing the way Jeremy and Melissa’s marriage took a downhill turn involving Jeremy’s irrational anger and jealousy toward Melissa’s ex-husband. After Jeremy completed his work, Melissa was the next one to be on the hot seat. The progression, or should we say regression, from their initial marital happiness to the tense, volatile atmosphere in the home had been a nightmare for Melissa. Her first marriage had gone through a similar trajectory and she was questioning whether she was capable of sustaining a satisfying marriage.
The last third of the two-hour initial session focused on her shock about what had occurred with Jeremy and her concern that this was simply what happens for her in a marriage. Watching the transformation in Jeremy during the first part of the session was certainly reassuring. But she had still gone through the nightmarish experience of having what seemed so good become so bad. Acceptance Statements such as “Even though I was shocked by Jeremy’s jealousy and wondered if the marriage was over . . .” and “Even though I was deeply wounded by the disaster of my first marriage . . .” led to tapping rounds that worked through the emotional residue of both experiences and oriented her to a recognition that the pattern did not have to repeat itself. At the two-week follow-up session, Melissa and Jeremy both reported that their intimacy was stronger than it had ever been. This is not to suggest that single-session “cures” are typical for most marital problems, but it does illustrate how isolated issues that are interfering in a relationship can readily be resolved.
In any case, it is good to know that painful experiences from earlier relationships or from an earlier time in your current relationship can be processed so that old wounds don’t continue to fester or limit the possibilities for your future together. While such wounds are a source of vulnerability if they are not adequately addressed, they can become a source of greater strength and resilience after being processed and healed. Energy psychology is a powerful tool for healing them. In situations where abuse, betrayal, affairs, the death of a partner, or other severe shocks were involved, the assistance of a counselor who is adept in energy psychology can be invaluable and the payoff immense.
7. Establish a Strong Mental Vision of How You Want Yourself or Your Relationship to Change and Rewire Your Brain to Support that Vision
Matt and Jessica had met twenty-two years earlier and married after four years of a stormy courtship. It was the first marriage for each of them. Matt, who was largely an introvert and a loner, was uneasy about committing himself to Jessica. The one context where a more exuberant side of him would come out was in the pursuit of a new woman, and he agreed to Jessica’s pleas that they marry, but only under Matt’s condition that they have an “open relationship.” Open relationships, involving sexual dalliances outside the marriage, were in style when they met in the late 1960s, and Jessica reluctantly agreed, feeling sure in her heart that Matt would settle down and focus solely on her. He did, but it took
another decade during which she suffered immeasurable anguish.
THE BACKGROUND
Matt was a workaholic. Before he met Jessica, his pattern was to work intensively for sixty to seventy hours per week and then, every month or so, to take off for three or four days with whomever he was dating at the time for a wild fling. His stored passion from the weeks of intense work would release in a euphoric orgy of sex, food, wine, deep conversation, and other intimate pleasures. Then back to work, with the woman usually wondering why he disappeared after one of the most intensely intimate encounters she’d ever had.
Early in their relationship, this met Jessica’s needs quite nicely. They didn’t see one another as often as she would have liked between their odysseys, but the intense times together were so fulfilling that they held her over during the times between. About six months after Matt and Jessica started dating, Jessica’s roommate moved, so Jessica needed to find a new roommate or give up her apartment. Instead, she persuaded Matt to let her move in with him. His terms were stern but clear. He could still see other women, though he wouldn’t bring them to their home. His uncertainty about committing to her was playing out in this ambivalent arrangement. Jessica was happy for the chance to get to see Matt every day and capitulated to his demand. Over time, however, the long weekends were increasingly with other women while the duller routines of daily life were shared with her. Matt started to blame Jessica for not being much fun anymore. All this got old very quickly, and when Matt would return from his trysts, Jessica would be furious, they would fight and then eventually make up, and things would seem smooth until the next time. Meanwhile, about two years into the relationship now, Matt was growing more deeply bonded to Jessica despite the other women and the emotionally heated battles he would periodically have with her. On her side, Jessica believed that they had a “soul connection” and that if they got married, the public/spiritual ritual would seal their deeper bond.
It didn’t. After the marriage, the push-pull of Matt becoming closer and then undoing the growing intimacy by going off with another woman did not change. As a result, once their daughter was born, parenting and special projects became Jessica’s primary areas of focus, with Matt’s cordial but marginal involvement. While Matt’s intense, brief affairs became less frequent over the years, Jessica reached a point where she told Matt she would leave him if he had another one. He felt she was reneging on the agreement that got him to marry her in the first place and defiantly made a point of being away at an undisclosed location the following weekend. Jessica had taken their daughter and moved out before he returned home. The only place she was willing to continue to see Matt was in the office of a therapist.
Matt was very confused. He had grown to love Jessica far more deeply than he had ever loved anyone before, but his trysts were the place he would truly feel free, excited, fully alive. Over time, however, even his excursions into new romance were losing their thrill. It was also harder to keep them from getting complicated—in part because the eighties didn’t support the sexual freedom of the sixties—but also in part because as he evolved, he wasn’t able to be intimate with new women without engaging them at a deeper level. He wasn’t able to compartmentalize so wantonly. So by now, he was more ready to hear Jessica’s complaints and to consider changing their arrangement. As he registered the amount of pain he had caused Jessica, his whole take on what he was up to shifted. In the past, he had been able to discount her pain since he was only doing what they had agreed on. As he let himself feel how deeply he was hurting this woman whom he had come to love, he found himself agreeing to stop seeing other women. True to his word, Matt didn’t have another fling from that day on.
ENTERING THERAPY TWENTY-TWO YEARS INTO THEIR RELATIONSHIP
Fast-forward eight years. Matt and Jessica are again seeking couple counseling. Matt had been the innocent victim of a gunshot during a robbery. He saw the gun point at him, felt the bullet enter his chest, and lay in his own blood, conscious but sure his life was ending. As it turned out, the bullet had entered and exited his body without damaging any organs. After prompt, competent medical attention, he was soon out of the hospital and back into his usual routines. But one thing was plaguing him: “I’ve just had my life spared. A bit to any side and I could well be dead. But I’m not. I’m alive and well. Why am I not feeling more joy?” Indeed, he was still the same serious, somber, digital kind of guy he had been before his encounter with mortality.
While he and Jessica had been carrying out a very amiable relationship after Jessica had moved back in more than two decades earlier, it had little passion. They rarely made love. Matt was more fully committed to his work than ever, and he was just too busy for much intimate time. His brush with death had brought into stark relief how gray his life had become since he stopped having his affairs. It was as if encountering a new woman had provided the context that brought out his passion, intense joy, and ability to have fun. Without that, he wasn’t able to find anything else that stimulated his spirit in that same delicious way. His marriage was comfortable and meant the world to him, but over the years he watched with quiet desperation the withering of his more spirited side.
After Matt’s recovery from the gunshot wound, he and Jessica had some of the most penetrating discussions of their relationship. Not only did Matt not feel joy about having survived, he realized that he rarely felt fully alive anymore. He no longer blamed this on Jessica, but he recognized that he had slowly closed his heart over the years. He joked about how the bullet had entered his chest “but fortunately there was nothing there.” Jessica was a spirited woman, but she had taken her fervor elsewhere—their daughter, other family, a project with orphaned infants—after years of trying to engage Matt at a more passionate level. Matt’s recognition and sadness about how much he had closed himself was welcome news for her, and this led to their decision to once more seek therapy. A friend referred them to David.
They came into therapy with Matt’s concerns as the primary focus and with Jessica there to support him. After a thorough history and several “cleanup” sessions where tapping was used to address unresolved issues from their marriage as well as from their childhoods, Matt and Jessica were feeling the closest to one another they had since the charm of their earliest days together. But Matt didn’t want to stop there. He wanted to recover the spirit he had once relegated to his trysts and had then lost altogether.
In a poignant session that started with a focus on how lost Matt felt in regard to moving forward with more joy, Jessica recognized at a deeper level than she ever had before the sacrifice Matt had made by stopping his flings. Their focus, going back to the previous therapy, had always been on her pain and his betrayal and blundering insensitivity. Matt had done a great deal to help Jessica heal back then, and he had been faithful now for the past eight years. In this particular session, Jessica had a reverie of appreciation and was able to feed Matt tapping statements such as “I turned away from freedom”; “I exchanged fun and excitement to stop hurting Jessica”; “I gave up my passion, just like my dad”; “I closed the door on the most direct route I had to joy.” Besides helping Matt begin to deal with the emptiness he felt, Jessica’s empathy for him had a profound effect. They were in this together, Matt’s lingering guilt about his flings stopped blocking his creativity about the situation, and he was more motivated than ever to bring his spirited side into their marriage.
While Matt pleaded for our understanding that “there are some limits to the degree to which a man can change his personality,” he spoke poignantly about how deeply he longed for a more joyful disposition. David was able to help him identify numerous influences in his life that reinforced his somber side and others that crushed his more joyful and spirited side. After some discussion of these influences, tapping was used to address and change the ways his somber side was being reinforced and his joyful side inhibited.
ESTABLISHING A MENTAL IMAGE OF THE CHANGE
By this p
oint in their work together, David felt that a way of supporting the type of global change Matt was hoping for was to have him create a vivid vision that symbolized his life with that change already having occurred and then to “tap it in.” Matt and Jessica’s long story is being presented in this section on the seventh way couples can use acupoint tapping to illustrate the approach Matt used at this juncture. It began with a simple instruction that you may want to experiment with as well:
Relax deeply. Feel how life will be once the inner change you hope for has been achieved. Allow a vision that symbolizes this change to emerge. Write it down or share it with your partner.
Again, the word vision is used very loosely. You may see images, but it may instead be a word description or simply an understanding. Your vision may be concrete or more symbolic. It could, for instance, be a mental picture of yourself tending a rose garden or it could be a deer running through a meadow. It might be highly detailed or a mere glimpse of a distant scene.
If you are working the exercises as you read the book, choose a personal goal that is important to you and construct a mental image of how your life will be when it is in place. If you are focusing on your relationship, you might, for instance, see yourself and your partner in ecstasy or having just triumphed together during a challenging task. Play with this image. Refine it until it is a vision you are strongly drawn to pursue. If nothing emerges that stirs you, wait until a goal that really matters is up for you. Matt had long recognized that one of the reasons his spirit gets squeezed out of him was the pace he was keeping. The image that came to him was a calendar. His first thought was, “Hey, I can find something more inspiring than a calendar! How about leaning against a redwood and listening to the wind in an old-growth forest? Or seeing myself with Jessica climbing the Eiffel Tower?” But his mind kept returning to the damn calendar, so we decided to go with it.