![]() 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.