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Hi All,

Glad to be a part of this forum.

I have known about EFT for about a year (although only been using it really for about 4 months) and have recently started studying the DVDs – about 2 months ago.

Since then, I have had one success story which would like to share. I had to do a presentation at work. About a day before the presentation (the evening before actually) I started getting a little nervous.  I also knew that about an hour before the presentation I would range somewhere between 6 and 8 intensity. Now while I never started EFT  for improving my public speaking skill, I thought I might as well tap on that and I realised that it may uncover issues related to my real issue (more on this later). Anyway, I must have tapped for about two hour or more on various aspects. These were:

1)      Having lots of ppl focus on me for up to an hour (this was the major one and I spent about 50% of my tapping time on this)

2)      A feeling that I might go blank and just stand there not knowing what to say (I never had a past experience like this but I had the fear for some reason)

3)      The feeling like my throat was blocked and that I wouldn’t get words out.

4)      Tension in my stomach

It took about two hour but I got the anxiety down to about a 2 and it got to at most a 3 the next day and during the presentation.  The presentation went very well – one of my best ever. Maybe something that others could use – in order to get my anxiety up so that I could tap it way - I didn’t use visualizations as they don’t work too well for me. Instead I stood in one corner of my room and with my eyes open I would think “okay in about 12 hours there will be 5 ppl standing in front of you”, “they will stare a you and expect you to talk for an hour” and I placed them mentally where they would be tomorrow (with eyes open). This worked for me quite well and I managed to get the anxiety up this way before tapping.

I was pretty happy about this and it was nice to get some success.

So now to my question –

The reason I started EFT was really to get over some social anxiety problems I have. I get nervous when I go out or when I meet new people. My intensity varies between 4 and 10 depending on the situation. Why this happened? I don’t really know. I was a very sensitive kid. When I was younger I got bullied and I never defended myself. There are other aspects as well but I would guess that that’s the main contributor.

So to my question (im getting there slowly J ) –

While studying Garys DVDs I noticed that what he repeatedly did was take an problem/movie and get it down to zero, then move to a new problem/movie and get that down to zero and so on...

My problem is, I can never get a specific event down to zero. Here’s what happens:

I take a specific event, such as a time when I was at school and a kid came and called me a moron. I recount the situation out loud and I tap. I get this down to zero quite easily. Then a new aspect comes up...what happens is that I find that I don’t really get intense about the past. Instead I am angry an anxious now about the present. Im angry/anxious because:

1)      I feel like if had to go to a shopping centre tomorrow and bump into one if these “kids” (of course they are older now but in my mind they are still kids) and they had to call me a moron again I do not feel like I would be strong enough to defend myself

2)      I feel like if I was shot back in time to that moment I still would be strong enough to fight back.

3)       I feel like if I met a new person who was rude to me now I wouldn’t be able to defend myself.

4)      I feel like if I let this issue go then that means that I should be able to do certain things right now this very second (like go out right now and not feel anxiety) and the thought of doing it right now makes me feel anxious again and I don’t want to go out even more.

This is where I get stuck. I can tap on these four aspects forever, but I never feel like if I had to go out tomorrow and someone tried to hurt me that I would be strong enough to fight back. I’ve tapped on this repeatedly for a whole stack of aspects including specific past events and current events. I have tried to use the movie technique as well and decompose one of these aspects into sub aspects.  But always if I test and ask myself “Okay, so if right now that person had to come into the room and insult you, would you stand up for yourself?” my response varies between “no I wouldn’t” and “I don’t think I would”.

What do I do about this? Has anyone with EFT experience ever experienced something like this anf if so, how did you resolve this? Do I just need to be persistent and keep at it. When I see Gary in the DVDs he always seems to take an aspect and collapse it to zero before moving on to a new aspect. But I do not seem to be able to do that here. I get stuck on one of the four and it’s like hitting a brick wall. I then don’t know if I should look deeper or move to another aspect or what? Any advice most appreciated.

Thanks,

Jason

Hi Jason,

Rate how intense you feel saying "When I was younger I got bullied and I never defended myself."

What did you think of yourself when you didn't stand up for yourself? What conclusions did you come to about yourself? It's like you freeze when this happens or when you imagine it happening again and you go back to being a frightened young boy. What would have been the consequences if you had defended yourself then? Would you have said something or done something?

What's the worst thing someone could call you, think about you or do to you if you didn't defend yourself now? Pick the thing that has the most charge like say for example the word 'wimp' or 'moron' and tap on it.

Imagine seeing those people again (tap if there's intensity here, looks on faces, your bodily sensations of fear etc) and not saying anything if you did bump into those people again now? How does that make you feel? 

It seems to me it's how you feel about yourself as a young boy and now and 'not being able to speak up or defend yourself' that will really help you shift this. Tap on all the answers that come up.

Hope this helps

Noreen.

Jason, there is a technique that I just learned of that you might find useful for your problem.  It is called S.L.O.W EFT, you could just  click it into a search engine, and I'm sure it will give you the link.  EFT is a great tool isn't it?  :)  Arum

Namaste and arum,

thanks for the replies.

arum, thanks for the suggestion. I had a read on it and I will def try it out.

Namaste thanks also for the suggestions. You opened a new door of thought for me. I think before I was always focusing on the anxiety and the things that caused it. I think that it may be worthwile to also focus on myself and the beliefs I have about myself.

Can I ask: I have seen a few times people using EFT with positive affirmations.Sometimes I find it easier to express what I am feeling by using these.What I do is come up with a posotive affirmation, then ask myself how true it feels on a scale of 1-10. I have found it towork quite well.

Has anyone on theis forum used these with success and if so is there any advice I can get to maximise using this technique.

warm regards,

Jason

Jason, there's also the "Choice" method.   (do a search) This is where you use the negative and positive both.  I think positive affirmations are good, but first it's necessary to clear out the bad stuff.  I find this works best in my case.  :) Arum