Tapping Q & A with Gene Monterastelli - Get the most out of tapping and EFT

Emotions and Physical Pain – AKA:Can Pain Be Our Friend?

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I have heard a lot of talk about how pain can have emotional issues.  Is this true?  If so can I use the pain to discover and work on the emotional issues tied to the pain?

[Note from Gene: I asked Pennsylvania-based EFT practitioner Chip Engelmann to answer this question. Chip does a great job explaining the reasons for pain and how we can use it to identify some of the emotional roots. Make sure you check out Chip's website, ChipEFT.com for many great articles, ebooks, and recordings of past teleseminars.]


photo by santacrewsgirl

First, we have to assume that pain has a purpose beyond creating misery. Surely we understand that the pain we feel when we put our hand into a flame is what stimulates us to move our hand out of the flame. In that case, pain is a stimulus to take action to avoid harm.

Now, if we move our hand two feet above the flame and leave it there, eventually that becomes painful too, and we remove our hand. But the stimulus for removing our hand was more about addressing the pain and less about the possible damage. In fact, the further we are from the cause of a pain, the less likely we will see the actual cause of the pain, and the more likely we will react only to the pain rather than to its cause. A headache may develop in response to an emotion triggered hours before. Arthritis pain may stem from an emotional reaction that began decades ago. It is easy to see how the cause of a pain can be overlooked.

And more often than not, we do overlook it. Frankly, stopping the pain is as far as we care to go. For the purpose of healing, however, addressing only the pain is about as effective as covering the oil light on your car with duct tape when it starts to flash. Maybe you won’t be annoyed by the light anymore, but you also won’t stop your engine from seizing and totaling your car. But for better or for worse, pain usually won’t go away permanently until we get the message that it is trying to tell us.

Luckily, we’re not alone in our search for the emotional causes of physical pain and illness. Research has established certain physiological connections between emotion and illness. Anger has been shown to affect the liver. When we are angry, we create toxins that our body must deal with. In fact, a single breath of an angry man produces enough toxins to kill a Guinea pig. The organ that is responsible for clearing toxins from the body is the liver. The drug of choice for an angry person is alcohol. Long-term exposure to alcohol or anger puts excess stress on the liver.

Sad people tend to crave carbohydrates, especially sweets. Long-term exposure to a high-carbohydrate diet results in insulin resistance and diabetes. Sadness is known to affect the pancreas, which produces insulin.

Another approach we can use to detect the emotional causes of pain is to look at the symbolism of the different parts of the body. The hands grip, so a pain in the hand is generally a problem with holding onto something. Likewise, the intestines are the part of the body that eliminates waste. So if we have a problem with the intestines, it too is usually a problem of holding onto an emotion. However, the intestines are deeper in the body than the hand, so they would represent holding onto a deeper emotion. For another example, our feet are used to move us through our world, so a pain in the foot would be associated with a fear of moving forward.

Lastly, we can look for clues about the body in sayings from the past. “That really galls me,” is an expression revealing that slow-burning anger affects the gall bladder. “You expect me to swallow that?” is a reaction toward someone you feel is “feeding you” a lie, which affects the throat. A person who is constantly criticizing is “riding you.” If they do it enough, you get angry and yell, “Get off my back!” That anger is stored in the upper back. A person who doesn’t get what you are trying to tell them is a “pain in the neck.”

What we are seeing here is that the location of a pain can tell us a lot about the emotional circumstance that caused the pain in the first place.

Perhaps the best roadmap to the emotional roots of physical pain and illness is a book by Louise Hay, Heal Your Body.  I constantly use this seven-dollar book as a springboard to solve emotional puzzles. Louise Hay looks at all the body parts and a variety of major diseases, and gives us the emotional counterpart to each. Her insights may not cover every situation, but I’ve always found them to be in the ballpark.

So you ask, “How can I figure out what’s behind my pain?” The first step is to use Louise Hay’s book and look up the location of the pain. Now look at which side of the body it is located on. Typically, a pain on the left side of the body will have to do with a relationship, and pain on the right side of the body has to do with finances, career, etc. I say typically, because it’s flipped in a very small percentage of people: the right side will represent relationships and the left side financial matters.

Sometimes pain is located in more than one part of the body. The two pains may not be related, but more often they are related.

One woman I know complained of a pain in her left hand. Louise Hay would say that this pain represents holding onto an issue. Since it is on the left side, we can assume it has to do with a relationship. She also complained of a pain that starts in her neck (Hay says: failure to see the other side of an issue), and moves to her jaw (anger) and throat (anger). I also saw this woman rubbing her left knee (stubbornness and inflexibility).

Let’s consult the old sayings. Remember, the throat is about swallowing a lie, and you clench your jaw to resolutely move forward.

Now let’s put it all together. What we are looking at is a breach of trust in a relationship where the partner did something to break that trust – something pretty bad. The woman stubbornly refuses to hear the other side of the story because there simply is no excuse for what happened. Any excuse, therefore, would be something she could not swallow. She holds onto this anger, and it is triggered on a regular basis.

Since her emotion is manifesting in several locations, we might assume that the emotions behind the  event or series of events are pretty powerful. This description could represent something that happened in a past relationship, like infidelity. Or it could be a childhood trauma. Sexual assault is a possibility.

A medical diagnosis is often helpful. If a pain is due to arthritis, we can add the emotion of resentment to the mix. Arthritis in the knee would indicate an incident in which the person was both resentful and stubborn. Inflammation would add anger to the mix. If your hand was swollen with arthritis, you might be holding onto an incident that makes you angry and resentful.

Cancer would indicate that something was eating away at you. Often cancer is associated with anger, but it can also stem from grief, as in the loss of a loved one. The location of the cancer is a good clue. Pancreatic cancer might indicate grief, while liver cancer might point to anger. However, pancreatic cancer could also indicate anger associated with sadness, as in the case where a best friend ran off with a spouse.

While it is possible to come pretty close to detecting an emotional cause just by analyzing physical symptoms, listening to what people say and noticing how they say it is invaluable. People will express the emotion that they are resonating with. You will hear it in their voice and see it in their face and body language.

Last but not least, trust your intuition. When you start looking for the source of a physical pain, check with your intuition to see if the direction you are going “feels right.” If not, take another tack.

It’s a good idea to work with a partner or practitioner who might have insight in this area. As with all things emotional, it is often easier to read someone else than yourself, and for someone else to read you than for you to figure out yourself.

EFT can be used throughout this process. If you don’t know the cause of a pain, tap on the image of that pain and you’ll probably get a measure of relief. If you can guess at emotional causes, tap on those. But keep your intuition open, because a memory may stir, or a feeling that reminds you of an incident, and these are your true leads. Tap on them, and be specific and thorough. Once the anger is gone, you’ll find hurt. Once the hurt is gone, you’ll find guilt, and so on. You can see why, as a rule of thumb, traumatic events and “core issues” should be handled with the help of an EFT professional.

The truth is, people don’t really come to me for help with a past trauma. They don’t think about that trauma. That trauma is packed away tightly in their back closet so they can function today. Clients come to me with problems and pains that have manifested in their lives today. And as we open the closet to make a repair, the trauma falls out, ready to finally be resolved.

So can pain be your friend? When your pain reveals your emotions, it allows you to take care of yourself on a deeper level. After all, what are friends for?

I Feel Tired After Tapping

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Has anyone mentioned to you that they feel REALLY fatigued after an EFT session? I have had about three sessions with clients where some really amazing core issues moved. At the end of the session the clients felt quite tired after. Is this normal?


photo by Brian Barnett

It is important to remember when we using Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) we are changing the energy system of the body, energy that is used to power all of the body’s systems and functions.

Whenever we do anything that expels a great deal of energy, especially something we don’t normally do, we need to rest so the body can rebuild the energy it just used up to perform the task. This is true for physical (after a workout when we haven’t worked out in a while) and emotional (after a long cry) circumstances.

A couple of things are at play when we do EFT for especially emotional core issues.

First, making changes at the core level for very profound issues use a great deal of energy. EFT is a simple process to and doesn’t take much time or effort, but we are still using a great deal of energy to make that change.

Second, deep core issues almost invariably involve dysfunction in the physical body or our emotional state because something is blocking the flow of energy. At the point of the block there is a build up of energy because the energy can’t move in the way it would like.

A good way to think of this is to imagine a clogged pipe. At the point of the blockage pressure builds up over time. When the blockage is originally removed there will be a great rush as the pressures is released all at once. When we clear an energy blockage with EFT the same thing happens. The build-up of energy at the point of the blockage is released, leaving the person feeling a deficiency of energy.

When an EFT session clears a partial blockage we feel energized and ready to take on the world. We can see the change in ourselves, we can see a brighter future, and we sense our energy flowing better in the body. But there are also going to be times when doing EFT work is going to leave us very tired. In my experience the feeling of being tired is going to happen most often after working on very deep core issues, but that is not always the case. When we do any sort of energy work it can leave us tired.

When I am working with clients, I check in with them every ten or fifteen minutes to see how they feel energetically. I have also found that certain clients get tired in different ways. Some never get tired, some tire slowly over time, and still others seem to go from high energy to no energy in a moment.

Whenever I have a client end a session very tired I recommend that they pay special attention to drink a lot of water for the next eight hours and that they shouldn’t do anything too strenuous until they feel more energized.

Physical Therapy/Range of Motion

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After an accident I have had physical therapy and I’m doing better. As part of my therapy I am supposed to do sit-ups/leg raises, but the strain on my lower back is too much and the next day I can barely stand up or bend over. I know as I do more therapy it will get better, but I was wondering if I could use EFT to do the sit-ups/leg raises to build my muscles?


photo by Matthew Fang

Here is a similar experience I had with a client which I think will shed light on what you’re doing. I was working with a dancer who had a hip injury and was having trouble doing a turning dance move.

I had her visualize herself doing the move. I then asked her how much of the move she was doing. 100% was the move at full speed and flawless. Anything less than full speed or full movement was rated less than that. We then tapped on the aspect of the trouble she was having. These ranged from feeling too stiff in the visualization to worrying that the move was too fast and she was going to fall. We tapped on whatever was short of 100%. Then she visualized herself doing the move again. We repeated the process until she got to 100%.

She was then able to repeat the process on her own, but she didn’t need to do this many times as the hip issues went away very quickly after we started doing this work.

I would have you do a similar visualization. Imagine you are doing the sit-ups/leg raises. Tune in to how easy or hard it is for you. What are the worries you have about doing the exercise? Is it going to hurt, take too long, or ache in the morning? Then tap on these issues.

[Note: This question came in a few weeks ago.  I answered the question directly and this is part of the e-mail received back.

After a week of tapping and visualizations I am able to reach to my knees — which is more than I've been able to do in almost one year. My stretches aren't painful and (oddly or not) the soreness that should be there due to inactivity is far far less. Say a 5 on a scale of 1-10, ten being I'm not moving out of this bed, heating pad or not. Thanks again!]

How long to tap, how many session to tap, getting 100% clear

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How long should I use EFT on an issue? Is it important that I tap on an issue until it is 100% clear? How many sessions should I work on the same issue?

There are a number of things to consider when approaching these questions. Let’s take these questions one at a time.

How Much Work In One Session?

When it comes to how long to tap in one session it is good let our bodies be our guide. When tapping we are doing energy work. We’re clearing energetic blocks, causing energy to move around and through the body. This can be draining. Typically people can tap for about an hour before they need to take a break, but if you’re working on something very emotional, you might need to tap for less time to avoid a state of exhaustion.

Each person is going to react to EFT in a different way. I have clients who will have lots of energy one minute and the next minute they are completely exhausted. Other clients will slowly become more and more tired. Listen to your body. It will tell you when you need to stop.

As a side note, if you do find yourself particularly tired after a tapping session, make sure that you keep your system hydrated. When your body is tired you know you’ve moved a lot of energy, and water is essential for your body to re-energizing.

Do I need to get 100% clear?

The amount of time you should spend tapping on an issue is going to depend on your purpose. Let’s look at the examples of killing a craving and getting over the fear of public speaking to examine the different objectives we can have with tapping.

When I deal with a craving my goal is not necessarily to be completely free of the craving, but to be free to make a good choice. My comfort food is Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. I often crave them at about 9:30 p.m. as I’m getting ready for bed. The craving peaks at about an 8 on the SUDs scale. My goal is to be sure I can make good choices about what I eat. Just one or two rounds of tapping reduces my craving to a 1 or 2. The craving still exists, but I won’t give in to a craving that weak.

Again, my goal was not to eat the candy. Therefore I’ve reached that goal. Because I am going to easily make the choice I want to make, I don’t need to do any more tapping.

In comparison, when I’ll be speaking in public my goal is to be anxiety-free when I speak so I can do my absolute best. It is 10 minutes before I am to step to the microphone and my level of anxiety is at an 8 on the SUDs scale. After a few round of tapping my anxiety is down to a 2, but it’s still there. Since my goal is to be completely free of anxiety and I am still at a 2, I’ll keep tapping until I’m at 0.

Ultimately, the goal of EFT is to feel or act differently. Sometimes this will require us to be completely 100% clear to make that change. There are going to be other times where we don’t need a 100% clearance to change our state or choices.

I’ve been working on pain management with a client. For her it’s enough to get the chronic headache that is a 7 or 8 down to a 2 or 3. At that level it’s a manageable amount of pain because she no longer feels it all the time.

How many sessions do I need to tap on one issue?

Again, this is going to depend on the issue and your goal for that issue.

The rule of thumb I use is, “Keep coming back until you know it’s gone.”

The issue we’re working on can have varied and deep roots. Just because we feel clear on an issue after one session doesn’t mean it’s gone for good. Instead we may have just cleared enough for this moment. When it comes to working on big issues (self-esteem, trauma, chronic pain) it will normally take a number of sessions.

Any issue worth spending time on is also worth coming back to until you’re sure it’s gone. This is one of the reasons I encourage my clients to take notes when they tap. When you have notes on the issues you’ve worked on and the phrases you’ve used, you know you can come back to it and be sure it’s cleared.

I would keep revisiting an issue until you can revisit three separate times with no reaction at all.

Summary

Remember, there are no cut and dried rules for how much and how long you should tap on a specific issue. The most important thing to understand is why you want to clear the issue. When you know why you are doing the work, then you can more accurately gauge when you’re ready to move on to something else.

Facts of the Situation v. Emotions We Feel – AKA – I don’t know what to say (Part 5)

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I’m very effective at using EFT for physical pain and small frustrations, but when it comes to the big emotional issues, I just don’t know where to start. I tap on all of the issues and emotions I can think of, but it doesn’t feel like I’m making any progress. Is there a way that I can break down an issue so it’s more manageable?

One of the reasons I love Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) so much is because it is very effective at dealing with the emotions we feel, right as we are feeling them. However, when we are feeling an unpleasant emotion deeply, we are less likely to have the presence of mind to do EFT. If we do have the presence of mind to tap, we are so emotionally wrapped up in those feelings, we struggle to see clearly what is happening.

One of the main reasons we take our problems to friends, family members, therapists, and counselors is to gain some objective perspective. Someone who is not as emotionally involved as we are will be able to help us see the forest from the trees. They are able to help us see past our emotional blind spots.

Unfortunately, we don’t always have an external sounding board to help us gain perspective. When I’m in this situation I take the following steps.

First, I gain a little space and distance form the emotions I’m feeling. Emotions are very like a snowball rolling down a hill. The more we engage and feel the emotions, the more the emotions tend to build. I close my eyes and take a few deep breaths to gain a little space. Sometimes I do a round or two of tapping where I tune into nothing more than what I feel in my body. I notice any strain or pain. I tap this away. I find that when I relax my physical body, I also relax my emotional state, giving me a clearer head to assess what I’m dealing with.

The second step is the most difficult. In this step I separate the facts as I perceive them from the assumptions I am making in light of these facts, and the emotions I feel about these facts. This is very difficult because of the way we process information. The genius of our brain is its ability to take a small number of facts and fill in the rest of the picture. Because of this we are able to quickly assess new situations and respond to them. To do this we make assumptions. This can be problematic if we make wrong assumptions or if we treat our assumptions as facts. Here is an example, to make this easier to understand.

One of my clients, “Linda”, has a very trying relationship with her father. For the first time in months he e-mailed her out of the blue. The e-mail was eighteen words long, asking how she was doing. As Linda described the e-mail she said, “When my father sent me an e-mail attacking me I felt…” Nowhere in the e-mail was there an attack, but Linda had read the e-mail as, “You’re only asking me how I’m doing because you think I’m doing poorly and I need your help. I told you that you couldn’t do this on your own.” In Linda’s mind it was a fact that the e-mail was an attack.

It is very possible in this case that Linda’s assumptions are 100% true. It is possible that Linda’s father had sent her this e-mail in a very passive-aggressive fashion. But we don’t know that for sure.

In this case the only thing we can treat as fact is that her father sent her an e-mail eighteen words long, asking how she is. Everything else is an assumption.

When we take the time to break down a circumstance like this we find that in most cases our emotional response is to the assumptions we’ve made. We are not responding to the facts; we are instead responding to our assumptions about the motivations of the actors who created the facts.

Remember, our minds are built to fill in the gaps to make the circumstance easier to understand. As we can see, this can create problems. To gain clarity we need to separate the facts from the assumptions. As hard as this step is, there is a very simple way to do this.
The assumptions we make when it comes to others are generally about motivation. We take the facts of another’s actions, i.e., sending an e-mail, and we try to read the other person’s mind to assign a motivation as to why they took a certain action.

We get ourselves into emotional trouble when we start assigning motivations to other people’s actions. We have feelings such as hurt, anger and suspicion to protect us. They motivate us to stand up for ourselves or leave. But these emotions take a toll when we have them at times that we don’t need to have them. This happens most often when we assign motivation for other’s actions.

The third step is to start clearing the emotions that have arisen because of the assumptions and motivations we’ve assigned to the circumstance. Here is another example to help illustrate.

Let’s suppose that a husband spends hours cooking a special dinner for his wife. Three hours after their appointed meeting time she is still not home. She hasn’t called and isn’t answering her cell phone. As each moment passes he gets more and more angry because once again she has chosen her career over time for them to be together.

Now it is possible that she had a flat tire on the way home and her cell phone isn’t working. It is also possible that she really does value her career over time together. But it does him no good to get into a lather until he knows the facts. If he can take a few breaths and separate the facts from the assumptions he’s making, he’s more likely to have better emotional balance. He will be able to tap his anger away by looking at multiple points of view.

The common struggle my clients have at a time like this is coming up with the phrases to say. There is a very easy formula.

1) Tap on all of the self-talk that is going on in your head.
As your emotions build, there is a running commentary of what you’re thinking. Tap and say these thoughts out loud.

2) What would you say to the person if they were standing before you right now?
What would you accuse them of? Are they selfish, mean, inconsiderate, using you? Tap on the phrase, “They are so [insert adjective] and it makes me feel [your emotion]”

3) As hard as it is, give them the benefit of the doubt.
Tap on all of the possible reasons that things are happening as they are. Tap on the best possible reason why this is happening. This is called reframing. Assume the best for now. If the facts prove otherwise then you can take the appropriate action, but save your emotional energy until that time. It might look something like this:

I am really angry she didn’t show up on time…I worked really hard on this meal…My work isn’t appreciated…Whenever I do something nice it turns out like this…Her career always comes first…She is so selfish, and it makes me feel worthless…She only cares about herself, and it makes me feel like I’m wasting my time…But I choose to recognize that I don’t know why she’s late…There might be a problem I don’t know about…If she is choosing her career over time together I have the right to be mad and we will need to talk about that…But I give myself permission not to be mad until I know the facts of the circumstance…I love my wife. and I’m going to give her the benefit of the doubt until I know the facts.

In summary the process is very simple:

  • Take a deep breath, literally and figuratively. Take a step back to get a clear head. It’s going to be very hard to tap on any emotion when you’re so engaged in that emotion it’s all you can think of. Don’t stop counting at ten, count to one hundred or one thousand.
  • Once you have created a little space, assess what is really going on. Name the facts of the situation, and identify the assumptions you ‘ve made that you are treating as facts. Look especially for the assumed motivations. We get ourselves in the most trouble when we create motivations for others.
  • Tap on how you feel, why you feel that way, and on the other possible reasons and motivations for what’s going on.