Question:
Hello All
This is the first time I have posted to any forum but yours looks so helpful and kind I thought i'd give it a go.
I've been doing EFT for a couple of weeks and have experiencd a general benefit from it.
So far so good.The thing is,I have what might be called a multi-layered problem.
Hated and scapegoated by my father from day 1,I have all the usual unworthiness and lack of confidence you might expect from such treatment,ie scared to do anything in case its wrong,creatively blocked,etc.
I am now in my forties and my particular problems have taken a new and scary turn.
It,s sort of like,when you are in your youth and early adulthood people are quite tolerant of your insecurities and problems but later in life they are markedly less so,as if these kind of insecurities"should have been dealt with by now"..
The result of this is that my act (coping mechanism) has lost its power to get around situations and I am now in trouble in terms of for example not being able to hold on to a job for very long because the problems I have"should have been dealt with by now".
This means that I now need to do a great deal of work in healing my many ,still smarting, wounds.
This I am happy to do ,which brings me to my question.How do I get specific in my setups?
Do I start with more recent wounds or try to go right back?
Can anyone suggest a battle plan?
I feel that EFT can Work for me but I feel I need to get things in the right order to tackle them
Thanks in advance
Minku
PS I hope this is not too much for a first posting but I would really be grateful for some help on this.
Hi Minku,
At the moment you sound a little overwhelmed by all the issues you have to deal with. You've found something that will help you and it's as if your subconscious starts pusing all the issues that you have successfully squashed over the years to the foreground as they all want to be dealt with.
Write down every issue that is bothering you as a list. Everything that comes to mind. Work with the assumption that if your subconscious brings something up no matter how seemingly insignificant it is that you need to deal with it on some level. You will probably find you end up with a very long list!
Now you can either work your way down this list taking each item in turn. If one thing on it's own is too big then you can break that down into smaller bits. Or you can start working with the earliest thing that bothers you and keep moving forward till the present day. This has the advantage of being able to collapse other emotional issues that are stacked up on it. Please don't get too hung up on doing things in the right order. The thing to do is start. Start with what ever is the most intense, the most pressing, or the earliest memory of that type. If you think you will get overwhelmed get a friend to be there with you or work with a practitioner.
As you work on each thing, try to get that as close to zero as you can. As you take the intensity off one thing, 100 others may crowd up to be dealt with! Write them down and tell yourself you will deal with them later and carry on getting the thing you are working on down to zero. This stops you daisy-chaining from one issue to the next and will help you collapse issues quicker.
The thing to look for when you are creating specific set up statements is that second of emotional intensity. There may be several such moments for each story on your list. You could also book a session with a practitioner as this would help you get used to creating specific set up statements.
Start with your earliest memory of your father scapegoating you. Rate it from 0 to 10. Start to tell the story e.g. (I'm making this up by the way). "I had just got home from school and I was in the kitchen. (intensity 0), I looked up and my father was glaring at me" (intensity 8). Tap here using something like. 'Even though he was glaring at me, I completely accept myself.' 'Even though I didn't know what I had done wrong. ...' etc until you get down to a 0 on 'my father glaring at me.' go back to the beginning and tell the story again from the start until you get then next moment of intensity. Tap that down to zero. This is where working with someone can help as they will notice changes in you voice and manner that indicate upset and will keep you on the same point till you get to zero.
I wish you the best of luck with your journey. With complex issues there is often a lot of tapping to do. Just keep going! If you have any more questions then this is the place to come. Keep us posted with your progress.
shooting star x
Hello Shooting Star
Thank you for your kind reply.The points you have made are are,in many ways right on the button.I have only recently come to dealing with things on an emotional level,having tried for years to 'think my way out'of things.
As you say,I have 'successfully squashed' my emotions down for all my life and tried to understand it instead (It nearly worked,honestly).
The thing is I dont know if I have yet managed to actually tap out anything specific.My experience of EFT is that although I havent experienced any direct release of any issue, it has taken a lot of edge off how I feel generally and caused the way I think about things to change for the better,which is an improvement to me.Reducing my general level of intensity , is blessing enough.Especially for those around me.Because I am still at this stage, SUDS is something I dont feel I understand yet.However I am happy to tap away until that makes itself clearer to me.
Thanks again Shooting Star.
Kind Regards
Minku
Hi Minku,
You have made a great start. As you have said you are getting general relief and that is a huge step forward. Often with complex issues a practitioner will work just to take the edge of all the mixed up feelings at first before diving into the specifics. You are on the right path and you will discover a lot about yourself on your journey.
With Suds - the S stands for 'subjective' so it simply means what YOU rate the issue at. You might have an overall rating for the whole problem then ratings for each aspect within the problem.
e.g. your concern about holding down a job might have an overall rating of say 8. (Again I'm making all of these examples up).
Whereas say a specific incident within that overall concern - e.g. your boss saying, 'You are no longer required.' might have an intensity of 10.
Fear of filling in application form might have an intensity of 6 and might start of a chain of thoughts such as 'They won't want me,' 'I'm not good enough for this type of work,' ' I won't fit in' . Each of those thoughts would have their own rating.
All of these would make excellent set up statements:
Even though he said, 'You are no longer required.', I completely accept myself.
Even though they won't want me , I completely accept myself.
Even though 'I'm not good enough for this type of work, I completely accept myself.
Even though ' I won't fit in', I completely accept myself.
These are just examples, you will have your own issues and set up statements, I'm just using them to demonstrate how to break things down.
The SUDs scale is just to know if you have made progress and how much. Some people would rate the same feeling differently. e.g. what one person calls a 4, another might call a 6. The thing is to have your own scale. For me, tears indicate a 10. For me, difficulty speaking about something indicates 8 or 9. Also note where in your body you feel tension about a particular issue. Different emotions are stored in stomach, chest, back, hands etc.
The reason we do ratings is if you tap from say a 9 to a 2 - the relief is so huge that you might think you don't need to do any more. However after a while that remaining bit will still be there bothering you and affecting you although less, it is still there. Alternatively if you tap from an 8 to a 7 the difference might be so slight that you don't notice the improvement and conclude that it's not working. It's a gauge rather than set in stone number to get exactly right. Gary Craig says to guess if your not sure what the right number is.
If you are bothered about getting it right you can tap on that:
'Even though I don't know what the right SUDs level is, ...'
'Even though I have to get everything right, ....'
From what you have said I feel that you are doing amazingly well tackling the issues. I find that I make progress in fits and starts, huge leaps forward then plateau for a bit, then another huge leap forward then creep forward for a bit. It would be nice to tap one day and have all of life's issues resolved in a one-minute wonder, but it doesn't always work like that :). It is a process and your body will only allow you to progress at a rate that is safe for you.
I might not be around for the next couple of weeks but there are lots of experienced people on here that will be able to answer your questions.
warmly
shooting star
Hi Shooting Star
Thanks for your reply which clarifies a lot for me.
Can you or anyone recommend a practitioner in the merseyside area who has experience in deeper issues?
Kind Regards
Minku
If you look on the EFT website for the practitioner listing http://www.emofree.com/Practitioners/referralMain.asp and do a search by location on UK you'll get an alphabetical (by location) list of uk practitioners (those registered with the main EFT site). I can't see a Merseyside entry on there but have a look for areas that are local to you.
Hi Energylz
Thank you for your reply.
What I am looking for is a personal reccomendation for someone who can actually help me deal with these deep issues,even if it is only over the phone.
Kind Regards
Minku
Will PM you.
This is the first time I have posted to any forum but yours looks so helpful and kind I thought i'd give it a go.
I've been doing EFT for a couple of weeks and have experiencd a general benefit from it.
So far so good.The thing is,I have what might be called a multi-layered problem.
Hated and scapegoated by my father from day 1,I have all the usual unworthiness and lack of confidence you might expect from such treatment,ie scared to do anything in case its wrong,creatively blocked,etc.
I am now in my forties and my particular problems have taken a new and scary turn.
It,s sort of like,when you are in your youth and early adulthood people are quite tolerant of your insecurities and problems but later in life they are markedly less so,as if these kind of insecurities"should have been dealt with by now"..
The result of this is that my act (coping mechanism) has lost its power to get around situations and I am now in trouble in terms of for example not being able to hold on to a job for very long because the problems I have"should have been dealt with by now".
This means that I now need to do a great deal of work in healing my many ,still smarting, wounds.
This I am happy to do ,which brings me to my question.How do I get specific in my setups?
Do I start with more recent wounds or try to go right back?
Can anyone suggest a battle plan?
I feel that EFT can Work for me but I feel I need to get things in the right order to tackle them
Thanks in advance
Minku
PS I hope this is not too much for a first posting but I would really be grateful for some help on this.
Answers:
Hi Minku,
At the moment you sound a little overwhelmed by all the issues you have to deal with. You've found something that will help you and it's as if your subconscious starts pusing all the issues that you have successfully squashed over the years to the foreground as they all want to be dealt with.
Write down every issue that is bothering you as a list. Everything that comes to mind. Work with the assumption that if your subconscious brings something up no matter how seemingly insignificant it is that you need to deal with it on some level. You will probably find you end up with a very long list!
Now you can either work your way down this list taking each item in turn. If one thing on it's own is too big then you can break that down into smaller bits. Or you can start working with the earliest thing that bothers you and keep moving forward till the present day. This has the advantage of being able to collapse other emotional issues that are stacked up on it. Please don't get too hung up on doing things in the right order. The thing to do is start. Start with what ever is the most intense, the most pressing, or the earliest memory of that type. If you think you will get overwhelmed get a friend to be there with you or work with a practitioner.
As you work on each thing, try to get that as close to zero as you can. As you take the intensity off one thing, 100 others may crowd up to be dealt with! Write them down and tell yourself you will deal with them later and carry on getting the thing you are working on down to zero. This stops you daisy-chaining from one issue to the next and will help you collapse issues quicker.
The thing to look for when you are creating specific set up statements is that second of emotional intensity. There may be several such moments for each story on your list. You could also book a session with a practitioner as this would help you get used to creating specific set up statements.
Start with your earliest memory of your father scapegoating you. Rate it from 0 to 10. Start to tell the story e.g. (I'm making this up by the way). "I had just got home from school and I was in the kitchen. (intensity 0), I looked up and my father was glaring at me" (intensity 8). Tap here using something like. 'Even though he was glaring at me, I completely accept myself.' 'Even though I didn't know what I had done wrong. ...' etc until you get down to a 0 on 'my father glaring at me.' go back to the beginning and tell the story again from the start until you get then next moment of intensity. Tap that down to zero. This is where working with someone can help as they will notice changes in you voice and manner that indicate upset and will keep you on the same point till you get to zero.
I wish you the best of luck with your journey. With complex issues there is often a lot of tapping to do. Just keep going! If you have any more questions then this is the place to come. Keep us posted with your progress.
shooting star x
Answers:
Hello Shooting Star
Thank you for your kind reply.The points you have made are are,in many ways right on the button.I have only recently come to dealing with things on an emotional level,having tried for years to 'think my way out'of things.
As you say,I have 'successfully squashed' my emotions down for all my life and tried to understand it instead (It nearly worked,honestly).
The thing is I dont know if I have yet managed to actually tap out anything specific.My experience of EFT is that although I havent experienced any direct release of any issue, it has taken a lot of edge off how I feel generally and caused the way I think about things to change for the better,which is an improvement to me.Reducing my general level of intensity , is blessing enough.Especially for those around me.Because I am still at this stage, SUDS is something I dont feel I understand yet.However I am happy to tap away until that makes itself clearer to me.
Thanks again Shooting Star.
Kind Regards
Minku
Answers:
Hi Minku,
You have made a great start. As you have said you are getting general relief and that is a huge step forward. Often with complex issues a practitioner will work just to take the edge of all the mixed up feelings at first before diving into the specifics. You are on the right path and you will discover a lot about yourself on your journey.
With Suds - the S stands for 'subjective' so it simply means what YOU rate the issue at. You might have an overall rating for the whole problem then ratings for each aspect within the problem.
e.g. your concern about holding down a job might have an overall rating of say 8. (Again I'm making all of these examples up).
Whereas say a specific incident within that overall concern - e.g. your boss saying, 'You are no longer required.' might have an intensity of 10.
Fear of filling in application form might have an intensity of 6 and might start of a chain of thoughts such as 'They won't want me,' 'I'm not good enough for this type of work,' ' I won't fit in' . Each of those thoughts would have their own rating.
All of these would make excellent set up statements:
Even though he said, 'You are no longer required.', I completely accept myself.
Even though they won't want me , I completely accept myself.
Even though 'I'm not good enough for this type of work, I completely accept myself.
Even though ' I won't fit in', I completely accept myself.
These are just examples, you will have your own issues and set up statements, I'm just using them to demonstrate how to break things down.
The SUDs scale is just to know if you have made progress and how much. Some people would rate the same feeling differently. e.g. what one person calls a 4, another might call a 6. The thing is to have your own scale. For me, tears indicate a 10. For me, difficulty speaking about something indicates 8 or 9. Also note where in your body you feel tension about a particular issue. Different emotions are stored in stomach, chest, back, hands etc.
The reason we do ratings is if you tap from say a 9 to a 2 - the relief is so huge that you might think you don't need to do any more. However after a while that remaining bit will still be there bothering you and affecting you although less, it is still there. Alternatively if you tap from an 8 to a 7 the difference might be so slight that you don't notice the improvement and conclude that it's not working. It's a gauge rather than set in stone number to get exactly right. Gary Craig says to guess if your not sure what the right number is.
If you are bothered about getting it right you can tap on that:
'Even though I don't know what the right SUDs level is, ...'
'Even though I have to get everything right, ....'
From what you have said I feel that you are doing amazingly well tackling the issues. I find that I make progress in fits and starts, huge leaps forward then plateau for a bit, then another huge leap forward then creep forward for a bit. It would be nice to tap one day and have all of life's issues resolved in a one-minute wonder, but it doesn't always work like that :). It is a process and your body will only allow you to progress at a rate that is safe for you.
I might not be around for the next couple of weeks but there are lots of experienced people on here that will be able to answer your questions.
warmly
shooting star
Answers:
Hi Shooting Star
Thanks for your reply which clarifies a lot for me.
Can you or anyone recommend a practitioner in the merseyside area who has experience in deeper issues?
Kind Regards
Minku
Answers:
If you look on the EFT website for the practitioner listing http://www.emofree.com/Practitioners/referralMain.asp and do a search by location on UK you'll get an alphabetical (by location) list of uk practitioners (those registered with the main EFT site). I can't see a Merseyside entry on there but have a look for areas that are local to you.
Answers:
Hi Energylz
Thank you for your reply.
What I am looking for is a personal reccomendation for someone who can actually help me deal with these deep issues,even if it is only over the phone.
Kind Regards
Minku
Answers:
Will PM you.
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