Can you imagine what it would be like not to sleep all night for 30 years due to nightmares and painful flashbacks from trauma stuck in your system? I viewed training videos of aging Viet Nam Vets in their 50’s and 60’s who were finally able to sleep without sleep aides, freed from war nightmares. Other people were claiming they no longer had chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, chronic back pain, headaches or years of grief over loss of a loved one, and even addictions were helped.
We were all touched on some level following Robin Williams’ suicide, however, twenty-two vets commit suicide every day. My initial response to both of these facts was, “You’ve got to be kidding!” I was very skeptical and personally had a whole set of beliefs and a paradigm shift I had to sort through. The more I studied, the more excited I became about using EFT techniques with clients. I couldn’t argue with the results!
EFT or “Emotional Freedom Technique”, is like acupuncture but without needles. Theory is that all negative emotion is caused by an imbalance in the body’s energy balance. EFT works on balancing both sides of the brain. The “right” side of the brain is where we store emotions, and the “left” side is our logical processing side. Say you have a trauma such as a car wreck. This event can get stuck in the right lobe making you hyper vigilant and anxious. The EFT process seems to bring the anxiety down so you can access the logical side more easily.
I decided to test my new theory and see if it could help me with a thirty year “stuck emotion”. As a twenty-one year old college sophomore, my eighteen month old sister, Laurie Ann, that I loved as my own died after a brief illness. I became angry, bitter and resentful that my mother or the doctor wouldn’t listen to me when I tried to explain that Laura was sick enough to die. They just dismissed me as neurotic over this baby. There was no way I could begin to express how angry I was. My words then could have caused deep wounds in my family, and it wouldn’t bring her back. So, I never talked about it to anyone.
So for thirty years I carried the guilt and anger of her death. I also developed anxiety any time one of my daughter’s got a stomach virus or ran a fever. I would immediately take them to the doctor even though I didn’t trust doctors anymore.
After my first EFT session, the pain, anger and guilt was gone to my utter surprise! Strangely, my perspective changed also and I could see things in a totally different light. The deep grief was released. Needless to say this got my attention…big time! My clients started benefitting from all that I had learned as I gradually integrated the practice of EFT.
We don’t have to look far to see what’s happening to health in our country. Have you noticed how many clinics and hospitals have opened in Austin in the last ten years? Dr. Bruce Lipton, Stanford University graduate of cellular biology says, “Stress is the cause of at least 95% of illness and disease. The remaining 5% is genetic and caused by stress somewhere in the ancestry of person.” The US Government CDC’s website says,”Ninety percent of disease is related to stress”. Harvard Medical School website says, “Chronic stress is linked to heart disease, stroke and may influence cancer and chronic respiratory disease.”
We have a choice of how we respond to negative thoughts and situations. Negative attitudes create more chronic stress than anything else. Brain chemicals like endorphins which are required for good or happy feelings are depleted. We start overproducing cortisol, a stress hormone and that is what starts tearing down our immune system, that’s usually when the weakest area of our body is affected.
Difficulty is Part of Life
Difficulty is just a part of life. Are you holding on to bitterness and un-forgiveness toward someone today? Did someone do something that hurt you that you need to forgive? Un-forgiveness is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies. It’s as toxic as drinking dirty water from Mexico…it will make you sick!
If you’re at a place in life that needs healing, this may be the new beginning you’ve been looking for to deal with emotional stress.