 photo by Kerr Photography |
A recent conversation with my client went like this…
Client: I am really sad because I am never going to get to see him again.
Me: Good!
Client: What do you mean good?
Me: It is good that you are mourning the loss of the friendship. It is important to mourn that loss. It’s healthy to recognize that the relationship was important to you, recognize the positive things it gave you, and acknowledge you are going to be missing something.
Client: I didn’t know it was OK to feel this way.
If you search the internet you will find thousands of articles and videos on how to get rid of emotions. When we are working on a negative emotion our the goal is often to get that emotion down to a zero on the SUD scale.
Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) is a great tool to use in responding to emotions.
BUT our goal with tapping is not to be emotionless!
Our emotions serve us. They give us information about how we are responding to what is going on around us.
When we feel angry it is because we perceive that we are under attack. When we feel frustrated it is because we feel like we want or need better. When we feel sad we are recognizing that we are missing something that is important to us.
The emotions themselves are not the problem. Emotions are only a problem when they spring from misinformation, or are disproportionate to the circumstance.
An example of a misinformed emotion would be when we get really mad at someone for not showing up to dinner when we didn’t know they were involved in an accident on the way.
An example of a disproportionate emotion would be pulling over and crying for 45 minutes after we were cut off by another driver.
In both examples we experience the emotion because it is trying to convey information about our experience. The anger is there because we feel attacked because we were stood up. The overwhelm on the road came because there was a part of us that feared for our life. In both cases the emotion went too far and was too big.
We don’t tap to get rid of our emotions, but instead to achieve balance and have them respond accurately and in proportion to our experience.
Many times when we tap we do release emotion completely because it has done its job and passed along the information needed.
At other times we will not get the emotion all the way to a zero and that is perfect because there are emotions we need to feel.
What are your thoughts on tapping for emotions and getting them all the way to a zero? I would love to hear about your experiences below.
Hi Gene: This is a great topic. Since learning EFT, I have watched many a Gary Craig video. In one of them, he talks about how even at a funeral, if the wife of the deceased were distraught, he would approach her about tapping. He claimed that tapping doesn’t make us emotionless, and doesn’t make us forget, but it DOES relieve excess emotions, leaving the appropriate ones for us to feel. That was so profound for me. It’s like how we can tap out the negative and tap in the positive. The way Craig described it is “our unconscious mind knows the difference.”
I think that is why we say “Try it on everything.”
I will admit I could be misquoting him, but I know that was the gist of what he said.
Helen
Gene,
I’m so glad you wrote about this theme. I am a practitioner of several modalities for well being, some including verbal support and exploration for challenges, which of course includes EFT. Discernmnet and quality of relationship to an emotion/feeling is so crucial for a balanced relatiionship with them. Sometimes it can be an interesting dance, with awkward steps, in being true to ourselves and discovering that balance. As human beings we have a tendency to fluxuate emotionally [part of the mysterious gift of their nature] between potential extremes of aversion [that feels lousy and so I don’t want to feel it] and grasping [oh the joy, the rapture, the deliciousness of this feeling and I want to keep it forever and ever]. I’ve also read posts elsewhere about actually tapping in the moments of feeling wonderful about something as a way to encode positive vibrations in the body mind system for the future. I’ve done this, I think it’s a great tool to utilize. AND I’ve also considered how the human mind and body can be addicted in many ways, obvious and subtle, as it ventures forth into the ongoing territory of its personal evolution [consciously and unconsciously]. I’m basically observing the existence of addiction to feeling ‘good’. Spiritual teachings even warn us of this possibility of getting fixated, stuck on the positive curve of the wave. In the process of human growth development [what is often referred to as evolution] there are stages. Many people, lay and professional, would concur that aspects of this evolution seem to be escalating at an amazing rate at this time in our history. Sometimes the rate may seem overwhelming because of the physical and cultural dynamics that are also affected . . . meaning challenges and change. This ups the anti emotionally. The ‘self-development’ field can focus so much attention on the ‘how to be happy,’ ‘how to live from your true purpose,’ ‘how to attract your soul mate,’ ‘how to attract the perfect this or that,’ ‘how to follow your bliss,’ that it can assume the mantle, indeed promote it, that we are ment to only be happy and blissful, because there is the thought, the idea, the assumption? that enlightment is only feeling good [bliss]. So the intimate value of what a feeling or emotion might hold for us in our moment by moment process of living and growth can become shamed and judged by our avoidance, denial or refusal to keep it company, listen to its message, hold compassionate space for it [which does not mean indulgence], so the hidden gold that it may possess gets ignored in our efforts to maintain control at any cost.
My invitation for working with emotion and EFT as a support resource, is to support the feeling’s existence and your capacity to be with it; to be open to what it may need or want from you to just feel safe. What is this feeling not wanting to happen? What is it wanting to happen? Is there an earlier occurance in my life that this feeling or kind of feeling is related to? If I just keep it company and say “hello I know you’re there” how does it respond to my presence? It can be amazing the information that can come forth by giving this kind of attention to those feeling states that so often we have been conditioned against.
Blessings
Michael!
I just read what you wrote and found it to be very true for me as well. I often have my clients breathe into the emotion, honor it, thank it for being there and asking what it is here to teach me. I find that giving purpose and importance to feelings and emotions is the best way to move beyond them. We must feel it to heal it, right? Gene, what a great post. I am really enjoying learning from you. I am one of Brittany’s Mastermind students and am thankful she told us about your work. Thanks for enlightening all of us on how to use eft effectively. I’m learning a lot.
Maria