Increasing your effectiveness with EFT, part 34.
When I use EFT to work on a physical pain, whether acute or chronic, as I learned from Alina Frank and Craig Weiner, I like to think in terms of “tapping on the possible underlying emotional and energetic factors”. If we can be successful in diminishing or releasing some of those stressful emotional components, it gives our body a better chance at recovery.
There can be many underlying emotional factors at play, but today I’ll talk about only one of them: what we think caused the pain, and how we feel about it.
But first let me just say that, when working with clients on their physical pain, remember to first ask them if they’ve seen a medical doctor.
Anyway, back to: what we think caused the pain, and how we feel about it. I’m fortunate enough that I haven’t had to deal with chronic physical pain myself, but when it comes to, for example, minor acute physical pain, such as when hitting my little toe on a piece of furniture, I’ve found it helpful to tap on any anger and blame that comes up.
For example, it might be anger at the piece of furniture, or at “whoever moved it around, making me hit it” or “at myself, for being so darn clumsy”. Whenever I’ve tapped on these feelings, I’ve noticed that the pain tends to diminish or go away faster.
If we think about it in “nervous system terms”, we could say that hitting our toe on a piece of furniture usually sends us into a sympathetic nervous system activation of fight or flight, where the body tenses up. However, if we are able to diminish or release the blame and the anger, our nervous system might then go into the more relaxed state of “ventral vagal”, where our immune system and regeneration abilities can function at its best.
So I recommend you try this approach the next time you get a minor pain such as that. An important caveat though is that, if what you think caused the pain is a traumatic incident, such as a car accident, a sports injury, a surgical procedure gone wrong, etcetera, then it’s best to work on this type of events with the help of a certified EFT practitioner, rather than trying to work on them by yourself. This is because these events are usually “too hot to touch” to work on by ourselves, even if they seem to be “no big deal” right now.
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: What are some ways that you tap on physical pain? Do you have any questions or comments about what I wrote? Is there any particular topic you’d like me to write about? I’d love to know in the comments below.