I am doing it all WRONG!

It is hard for me to get motivated to do EFT because I am afraid I am going to do it wrong. What can I do?

Trying new things is always hard. We are use to being able to do things wells. Most of us, as adults, don't have to learn many new skills. Because of this, when we are faced with learning a new skill it is uncomfortable.

To learn a new skill it means we have to admit we don't know something.

To learn a new skill it means we are going to fail on some level because we are not going to get it right the first time.

When we were small children learning to walk, we failed lots of times. Each time we failed there was the consequence of falling down. And we did this a lot.

Not only that, we learned to walk in front of our family, who saw us fail time and again, but we could finally take a few wobbly steps on our own.

Luckily we weren't self conscious at that point in our life. Failure did not deter us. Having others see us fail did not deter us. We simply wanted to walk and we were going to do what ever it took to do it.

As adult, it is not as easy. We don't like the feeling of failure. We don't like knowing we are not very good at something. We REALLY DON"T LIKE having others see us struggle at something.

Because of these feelings there is a part of us which will try (and often succeed) in talking us out of trying new things. This part of ourselves is trying to protect us from the feelings of failure and embarrassment of looking bad in front of others.

These feeling are fine to have, but if we let them control us we will never try anything new and we won't grow.

It is no surprise that people have a hard time doing EFT on their own at first.

First, EFT it self is so mysterious. It is a modality that is outside of our normal experience of the world. (What do you mean tapping me face will help my fear?) Because it is so foreign to our experience, it must be something that is very hard to master.

Second, typically when someone learns EFT, they learn from an experienced EFTer. This person seems to come up with just the right phrase at the just the right time. It appears that picking the right phrase is a difficult skill to be mastered.

Speaking as someone who has done EFT for a long time, when I am working with clients I am often guessing right along with the client as to what phase to use next. With experience I have gotten better at figuring out what path to head down. But I don't always know what I am doing.

The reason I am able to do this, is because EFT is so forgiving. There is no way that you can do EFT wrong. If you do a round of tapping, getting no progress, the round it not a failure. Instead the round has given you information.

You now know you might need some water in your system, that you are psychologically reversed, or you need more specific phrases. You are one step closer to success because you have more information.

It also didn't cost you very much to get this new information. It only cost your 45 to 60 seconds. With this new information, you can then start a new round of tapping.

If you struggle with feeling you are going to fail when you do EFT here are some phrase you can use to start your session.


I know EFT is a powerful tool.

I have seen it work in my own life.

I have felt it in my own body.

I have heard amazing stories of all that it can do.

But I worry that I am not going to do it right.

It is still something I don't understand.

It work get when I was working Gene.

He is really go at EFT.

But I am not as good as he is.

But I choose to know I can't do this wrong.

Even if I use the wrong words.

Even if I tap the wrong points.

There is not penalty for doing this.

I only waste a few second of my life.

Each time I do a round of tapping I get more information.

Making the next round of tapping more successful.

I give myself permission for the next 20 minutes to make mistakes.

Because making mistakes is the only way I am going to learn

I am not very good at EFT right now.

But the only way I am going to get better is if I try and make mistakes.

This is how I learned to walk, and talk, and drive a car.

At the beginning those things were really hard to do.

But with practice I got better.

I am going to do the same thing with EFT.

I am going to try, because it is in the trying that I am going to learn.


Learn EFT | Submit a question

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.


Learn EFT | Submit a question