When I was working with the person who taught me EFT, it worked great. Now that I’m working on my own, I don’t know what phrases to use. Do you have any suggestions?

This is a very common question. Remember, the words are simply intended to help us pull whatever we are working on into the thought field. Often clients get worked up because they feel like they are going to use the wrong words.

Remember there is no penalty for getting it “wrong”. The worst outcome with Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) is wasting 90 seconds of your life. Be easy about the words. Trust your intuition. What matters is your focus on the problem, not the words.

Over the next few weeks, I will address this with a number of suggestions on what to do when you can’t think of what to say.

Here is my first…
“Christi,” an EFT phone client, was having a very hard time getting out of bed in the morning to go to the gym. We had been doing a lot of work about all the “penalties” for going to gym:

Everyone will see she is so out of shape … She doesn’t like the way she looks in exercise clothing … She is so out of shape it’s hopeless … She will fail again.

We were making great progress around these issues, but it was still a great struggle for her to get out of bed in the morning.

I had read an article from the “EFT Insights Newsletter” on Future Tapping for dealing with things we fear for the future, the thought being if we make statements about what we would like to have happen, all of the issues that prevent this from happening will arise, even if we don’t name them or even know what they are (much like the Hero Technique). I thought future tapping might work for Christi.

So I had Christi rate the truth of the statement, “I am going to jump out of bed tomorrow morning, energetically, and ready to go to the
gym.” She rated this as a 4 on a scale of 0 to 10. So we tapped…

I am going to climb into bed and be relaxed….My body is going to peacefully and naturally drift to sleep….I am going to get a good night’s sleep….The sleep will be restful….I will wake up energized and ready for the day….I am going to be ready to go to the gym….I am going have a great workout….I am going to be happy with my progress….I’m going to leave the gym full of energy for the rest of the day. [How to use these tapping phrases]

We then tested the truth of the statement, “I am going to jump out of bed tomorrow morning, energetically, and ready to go to the gym.” It had become an 8 out of 10. I then asked what part of the statement didn’t feel true. We dealt with whatever residual issues there were (which I can’t remember right now). Christi has reported back that this has made it easier to get up in the morning to go to the gym. In fact, it was so effective, she now uses the technique to set up her whole day.

I have found this is a great technique for EFT beginners to use by themselves. Many of my clients don’t feel like they know what they are supposed to say or what to focus on when they are tapping on their own. All they need to do is state exactly what they want. The protocol is very simple:

1. State what you would like to see happen in the future. (e.g., I am going to spring out of bed tomorrow. I am going to be calm when I confront my boss. I am going to be at peace when I visit my mother in the hospital.)
2. Rate how true you think the statement is.
3. Keep tapping and state how everything is going to unfold in a perfect world.
4. Re-rate the original statement. If it is not fully true, repeat the process.