Increasing your effectiveness with EFT, part 15.
Have you ever felt like your attention (or your client’s) was divided into too many things while doing each tapping round? I’d like to share with you the “mental TV” analogy that might help with that.
Have you ever heard the term “the mind’s eye”? As in: “what are you focusing on now with your mind’s eye?”. Or, in other words, “What mental image, phrase or sensation is your mind focusing on now?”. I’d like to share with you the “mental TV” analogy as another way to think about the “mind’s eye”. But first, let’s consider the following:
At the most basic level, EFT consists of tapping on certain acupoints while using the following structure: “When I think about… I feel…(an unpleasant feeling, sensation or emotion)”. The aim of EFT is to diminish and/or release the unpleasant emotional intensity attached to whatever it is you were thinking about.
We also know that EFT works best when we are specific. And an easy way to be specific is to come up with “specific events” (memories or future anticipated situations we imagine might happen) to tap on. At the same time, it’s very common that after each round your mind (or your client’s) is now focusing on one or more different aspects of the problem. This is known as “shifting aspects”.
So maybe it’s now focusing on a different part of the event, or a different event altogether. And when thinking about this new aspect, the emotion/sensation/feeling (and it’s body location, if any) you feel when thinking about it now might be different as well, or it might be the same as the previous round. Either way, you acknowledge what it is, and you tap on it.
Ok, so let’s get back to the “mental TV” analogy. If you were to imagine that your mind’s eye is like a TV, a TV can have many different channels we can select to watch at any given time. In this analogy, the channels are basically what you could focus on while tapping. So they can be a specific event, a mental image, a phrase, etcetera. It’s as if we were saying: “When I think about this TV channel in my mind’s eye, I feel… (insert whatever unpleasant feeling/sensation/emotion you are feeling in response to that)”.
Now, why am I introducing this analogy? It’s simply to say that, while it’s common for our minds to change the channel during or after each tapping round, because the initial unpleasant emotional intensity attached to them has decreased enough that now this other channel/aspect has become more noticeable and is asking for attention, try not to change channels too rapidly.
Because if during a tapping round you are changing the TV channels too rapidly, as in “channel-zapping”, you are not giving EFT enough time to clear or diminish the unpleasant emotional intensity you want to release. Chances are that, at the end of that round, all those channels you went through will still have the same emotional intensity as before.
Therefore, see if you can stay with only one channel per round, or if you are going to change channels in the middle of the round (which sometimes happens), try not to change channels more than once per round.
So then after each round you can ask yourself: “What am I focusing on now in the TV of my mind’s eye?”. This way you can make sure that you are staying specific with your tapping and that, even if you are tapping on an emotionally charged “global statement” such as “I’ll never be happy”, you aren’t thinking about all of the times you weren’t happy in the past. Instead, you are just staying with that phrase alone and/or a mental image that represents it.
It’s ok to tap sometimes using global statements, but just make sure you aren’t channel-zapping while doing it.
So, to recap, EFT needs at least a little bit of time to clear or diminish the intensity of whatever aspect we are focusing on while tapping. Therefore, if we imagine that our mind’s eye was like a TV, it’s better not to be “channel-zapping” too much during an EFT round. Otherwise, chances are that all of those channels will continue to have the same emotional intensity as before.
So, try to stay tuned to the same channel until the round is over, or in any case, if your mind went ahead and changed the channel in the middle of the round, try to stay on this new channel until you are done with that round. And only then reassess what channel is your mind focusing on now, so you can come up with an appropriate setup and reminder phrases for the next round. In other words, it’s completely normal and expected to “change channels” several times during an EFT session (this is what “shifting aspects” is all about), but try not to do it in a “channel-zapping” way while in the middle of an EFT round.
That’s it for today. I hope this article was helpful to you. My name is Bruno Sade, and I’m a certified EFT practitioner with a mental health background as a clinical psychologist licensed in Argentina. I use EFT as a tool to help people (who speak English or Spanish) change their negative emotional reactions.
And, I’d love to know: does this point of view make sense to you? I’d love to hear your feedback in the comments below.