The Kinesiology process of Tapping has been around for over 25 years when Roger Callahan created Thought Field Therapy, TFT. Soon after, his colleague, Gary Craig added tapping on specific Meridian points that released blocked trauma held within the cellular memory of the body. This became Emotional Freedom Technique, EFT. These breakthroughs created a new form of Energy Medicine.
EFT was shown to be able to help many stressed people quickly feel calmer and happier within themselves. The most profound examples of EFT was in its ability to calm the minds of Gulf War veterans and enable them to sleep again. These men suffered from memories of battle trauma and severe Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD.
I read Gary Craig's EFT Manual in early 2003. At the time, I was working as a Psychic conducting readings from my shop in Brisbane, Australia. I already possessed a great ability to connect with my clients, and by adding tapping I could help my clients to quickly feel calmer and function better in their life.
I began to evolve the process by writing specifically worded tapping statements that reflected my clients' issues. Now, almost 20 years on, I have worked on more than 2000 people and have a bank of over 200 statements to select from.
Targeted EFT Energy Focused Tapping, was born out of this need to offer a more effective therapy process. It works by locating where the hurtful memories and negative beliefs are stored in a person's mind. Then by using the prepared statements in a specific sequence, the EFT tapping process would quickly reduce the amount of stress and tension associated with the topics.
This is a Key Point of Difference with Targeted EFT, it is a therapy based process. The tapping statements can be used to help a person by targeting a single topic or a wide range of issues that could be impacting them.
The statements cover normal life challenges and issues including rejection, abandonment, relationships, divorce, trust, speaking up, boundary issues, exploitation, abuse, bullying, victimization, rape and sexual abuse, PTSD, depression, anxiety, guilt, blame, shame, isolation etc, and any combination of these.
The Mind's Reaction to Stress, Threat and Trauma
One of the fascinating things with people is how differently they can react to stress, pressure, threats and trauma. Often it can reflect the type of role models they had in their early years or just how they grew up to be.
In my opinion, most people would have some issues from across their life, from childhood to now, that they could benefit from with tapping.
In our early years our mind had to quickly adapt to the family situation we lived in. Some homes were safe and stable, and others noisy, with a range of stress, personal outbursts, divorce and instability. Even if the person believed they were well loved and supported by their parents. There will be times when for whatever reason their mind believed it wasn't true and that things were not fair or they were hard-done by, especially if they had siblings.
Our young mind did not have the ability, clarity or maturity to understand, and work through these challenging and confusing situations. Sometimes arguments, yelling and screaming could scare the child and have them feeling anxious and afraid. Fearful times like this can cause panic attacks, breathing disorders, headaches as well as a range of stress related physical issues that could affect them all their life.
The survival aspect of the child's mind would create beliefs and stories about how it wanted and needed us to see and believe how those issues were for us. When these beliefs were positive, it would attach happy feelings. But when they were negative it would generate negative feeling responses like fear, sadness, grief, despair, depression etc.
From our earliest time, I believe our mind has been attempting to ensure our survival. It needed to do this to influence, control and steer our choices, actions and direction. To achieve this it had to internalise maybe thousands of these negative beliefs that it hoped it could influence us with.
These stressful thoughts can keep us feeling tense, stuck, confused and afraid to risk, change our job, partner, situation and life etc. Our mind craves security in whatever form it needs it to be. For some people it might be the long-term stability of work, buying a home and having a retirement fund. For another it might be owning a motorbike and working as a seasonal fruit picker.
Some women consider security for them is being married and for another that is the last thing they want, as they feel it brings them pressure, expectation and no freedom of expression.
Your own mind will present and prioritise the view of life it wants you to believe is true. It stores all your old thoughts, fears and hurts, and sometimes it will make up stories, in the hope that you will believe them as well, and make you easier for it to influence and control. It does this by generating anxiety to ensure you do not forget about the issue, so you do not repeat it.
A negative side effect from this high level of anxiety can create feelings of despair, stuckness, depression and overwhelm, and sometimes it might even lead to suicidal thoughts.
When the more serious issues of shock or trauma are experienced, like the loss of a job, relationship, a death, or an abuse / violation issue, our mind locks away every detail including the emotional hurt and pain felt at the time.
As a therapist, my view and understanding, is that our mind's highest priority is for our survival. And it considers that the reviewing, processing and resolving of any of these stored hurts, threats and traumas to be a secondary and, therefore to it, a non-essential concern.
This is one of those 'did you read the fine print' moments in life. To be clear its goal for you is to ensure you survive. It will assist you to do this and does not really care whether you survive at a level of poverty or opulence. Survival is survival.
It may contribute to you feeling better by allowing you to access the help it considers worthy and convenient at the time. For some people it might be full medical and psychiatric support, and for others alcohol or your recreational drug of choice, or any distraction including gambling, sex, food etc.
This is an important detail to realise as the stressed, survival focused mind can keep a person stuck, numb but still appear to be functioning well in their life.
Some people might even say they "feel fine". And others might say they do not feel OK within themselves and struggle to feel happy or content, and may consider themselves to be depressed.
This can create challenging situations for the person and the people who love them. Often this stress and pressure could lead to bigger problems for them, including a relationship breakdown.
Targeted EFT Tapping Therapy
For some people at this point they may begin on their own journey of self discovery, to seek and experience effective therapy to help them. I too, was on this journey and in my twenties and thirties spent thousands of dollars seeking help and looking for answers. I tried many different modalities that made claims that suggested they could help, yet provided limit benefits.
My own issues and the path I took to help myself to know, understand, process and benefit from, has created the platform I use now to help my own clients. I know and have developed Targeted EFT to be a potent modality for positive change for people. I have used it in one-to-one sessions as well as in group tapping sessions at Mens Festivals and other events in my region.
An important aspect to this is that experiencing a Targeted EFT session can 'reduce' the level of stress, anxiety and pressure from unaddressed issues for most people. I consider saying that it can ‘reduce' the stress levels to be a more honest and realistic claim.
I would never say the tapping process will 'clear' the person's issues. As this implies that the issue will not or cannot return. In many cases these apparent negative, undesirable feelings and issues could well be an important part of the person's learning process in this lifetime.
Anxiety, anger, stress and frustration could be early warning signals for the person that a personal space or boundary violation issue is at hand. The person is alerted to the possible threat. The healthy expression of anger is needed to ensure a person functions with self-love, self-respect, clarity and authenticity in their life. We have been trained to consider anger and similar, so called negative emotional expressions, as wrong. But these are an important part of a healthy persons range of responses and reactions.
This is where Targeted EFT can reset and restore a person's perspective, range of emotional responses and reactions and ability to speak up from a healthy place in the present moment, rather than reacting from painful experiences from the past.
For any healing process to be effective the person needs to be willing, honest and engaged in the process.
I have sat through a few sessions when the person, usually a husband or partner was very defensive, and just going through the motions because they were sent by their partner or wife. As you might expect their own resistance ensured they did not receive the benefits that they could have received by being open to the process. Their resistance to change could say a lot as to why their partner wanted them to see me for a session.
Where to from here for You?
At times, most people will find themselves impacted by a range of these intense issues listed below. Sometimes just a few topics and sometimes all of them. Life can be like that at times.
- Health issues for themselves, partner or family.
- Relationship issues, break down or divorces.
- A highly tense and stressful financial situation.
- Divorce settlements, and access rights to the children.
- The pressure of caring for a sick child or parent.
- Death, grief and loss.
- Job loss and work / career/ purpose uncertainty.
This is exactly why I have over 200 statements to select from. In a Positive Change Session the most relevant 30 statements are tapped through to benefit the person.
You may be able to see that there could be many topics of unaddressed hurts and issues from your own past. These could be negatively influencing your ability to love yourself well, share in a relationship, speak up and live the life you desire.
To date I have conducted over 2,000 Positive Change Sessions using the Targeted EFT Tapping process with excellent results. This number includes 10 doctors and 16 psychologists, plus many people from the Defence and Emergency Services, and all walks of life.
Published by New Dawn Magazine, pages 37-39, Issue 166, Jan-Feb 2018
