Fear of Fear

I have a really big emotional issue I need to deal with, but I am afraid. In the past when I have tried to do work on the issue it was too painful and I am afraid to even think about the issue now. Is there some way I can get over my fear of the emotions that might come up?

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
-Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933)

I have noticed an interesting trend in my practice. Recently, I have had a number of clients who have come in for a session, but then spend the first twenty minutes talking about the newly painted office, the weather, and just about anything else to stall for time.

A perfect example would be "Jane," a client whom I had worked with for a number of months. She contacted my after mother had been raped. She postponed the appointment two times before she finally made it in.

Once she was in my office she was anything but focused on the task at hand. Finally after 15 minutes I asked her, "Do you want to do this or not?" She said she didn't know. She explained, "I know this is going to be very emotional and the feelings are so raw. I don't want to go into that pain."

I thanked her for here honesty. Then I asked her to show me with her hands how big all the emotions are.

[note: With my hypnosis background I am a huge fan of using imagery and visualization to find information about issues. The subconscious is a very powerful creative tool that is willing to give us information in lot of ways. I personally love watching clients come up with imagery that even surprise themselves.]

I specifically asked her to show me how big all of the emotions were (the emotions she felt about the situation and the emotions she felt about dealing with the situation). I know from experience that the more specific we get the better EFT is going to work, but in this case I didn't think there was going to be anyway that Jane was going to be able to separate the various emotions out.

She responded to my question by outline something about the size of a egg shaped beach ball. And so we started tapping:

This is such a scary time.

My heart is broken.

I know this has hurt me.

I am afraid to dive into to these emotions because it is going to hurt.

It is easier to just not think about this and burry it.

But I know I need to heal.

I need to move on.

I have used EFT in the past and it has worked for other things.

I know it will work for this.

I have worked with Gene in the past and he won't allow me to be harmed.

I trust the process.

I then asked her how much of the total emotion was left. She held her hands to the size of a softball. We then proceeded to work on the emotions that were surrounding the reason she had come in.

There a few thoughts I took away from this experience (and a number of similar experiences):

1) Often times the biggest hurdle to healing is our willingness to make the step towards healing. Part of ourselves prevent us from seeking the help we need because we assume it has to be painful. The body is just trying to protect us from the pain of the past, but it doesn't understand how much it is holding us back in the present.

Now, when I am working with someone who is dealing with a particularly emotional issue, I will check in on their feelings of working on the issue. If we need to clean up any emotional aspects about facing the problem, we can do that before we starting the work on the core issues they are seeking help for.

2) In the case documented it would appear that more than 70% of the issue was just the fear of dealing with the issues. I don't know if this is the case. It is very possible that we were also cleaning up aspects of the main issue while we were dealing with the fear of dealing with the issue. But it is very clear that the way that we interrupt the event can be as powerful, if not more powerful, than the event itself.

I have seen instances where clients can't seem to remember traumatic events from the past after they have cleaned up the emotional response. It is as if 70% of the memory is there emotional response to the memory.


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