How do you go deeper into your pain using Emotional Freedom Technique?

 

It’s all about questioning the pain…

Have you been tapping on an issue that has been bothering you for a while now? Perhaps it’s physical pain or maybe you’ve been feeling like you’re on an emotional rollercoaster, so you’ve focused on what’s at the surface?

It’s great if you have! Its a massive step towards taking ownership of what is going inside of us. (And around us!)

But, are you now finding that there is a limit to how far the “tap on what you know” I talked about in my previous blog can take you? (click here). Do you just know there is something deeper that you need to get to?

If you’re stuck and are asking yourself how do I go deeper using Emotional Freedom Technique, the answer is simple:

You have to ask your pain the right questions.

The hardest part about EFT

Being an EFT practitioner is all about guiding people to deep dive into the core of their physical or emotional pain. The only way we can really do that is to get people thinking about and connecting to themselves.  YOU have the answers inside of you. You know, on a deeper, hidden level, what has caused the problem. We, as EFT practitioners, are there to help support and guide you through the process of discovery and release. And we do that by asking questions.

Let me give you an example here:

Lets say you have physical pain in your back and you simply start tapping on that pain and it disappears. Great! That was just your body wanting some attention or to make you aware that it wasn’t entirely happy.

But what about when you’re tapping on the pain and nothing changes? The pain and the intensity stay the same.

This is where you have to start asking yourself, and your back pain, questions. (Yes I mean that in the literal sense. You have to talk directly to your back pain like it is an entity or a conscious part of you).

How do I go deeper into my pain?

Pain isn’t to be feared. Many guru’s and spiritual healers and advisors will tell you to sink into the pain. And it’s true. Facing it and acknowledging it takes courage. But not only will you move through the healing process quicker if you do that, it will also give you an incredible sense of accomplishment, confidence and personal strength. Because now YOU are in control of IT rather than the other way around.

One of the best ways I’ve found of diving deeper is to visually tune into the pain/sensation in your body and describe it in detail. (Remember that our emotions can also cause sensations in the body which is why I’m always asking people “can you feel that anger or sadness in your body?”). Use all of your senses to identify what is happening within you.

A few simple ‘sensory’ questions I’ll ask are:

• Does it have a shape to it?
• What about a colour?
• Is there an outline?
• Does it have a texture – thick, misty, light, watery? It can be anything at all.
• How big or small is it?
• Some people might find it has a smell or a taste.

Give as much detail as you can and also TRUST what comes up for you. You might think what you find is ridiculous, but believe it or not it’ll have a meaning for you as you dig deeper.

Shift your emotional pain: anxiety

So as another example: Lets say you’re feeling anxious and you’ve done a few rounds of tapping on the fact that you’re anxious but it’s just not shifting.

You’ve got to now ask the next stage of questions in order to go deeper.

Find where your anxiousness is within your body. You might have a sensation (big or small) in your chest, stomach, legs, neck, jaw. It could be anywhere. Don’t ignore it – even if it’s a pain or sensation you’ve had for years. Whatever it is you’re feeling physically is what you’re going to link your anxiety to at this next stage.

If you can’t feel anything at all, that’s ok, it just means the connection to the body isn’t strong – which is incredibly common. I find the more you do this work on yourself, the stronger the connection will become. It’s about building up a relationship with your body again.

In the case that you can’t feel anything at all, you can still tune into your body and see if you can locate it visually i.e. where do you imagine it would be when you close your eyes and look inside of yourself.

For the sake of this example let say that you can feel it and you’ve realised your anxiety is in your chest.

Stay tuned into that sensation in your chest and describe what it feels like. It is a tightness, a tension, is it twisting, churning or swirling – however you feel it is exactly right. Don’t doubt yourself.

Now that you’ve pinpointed it in your body, describe what it looks like. (For this exercise I usually tell my clients to close their eyes and take their consciousness into that part of their body and simply have a look around). What do you see when you look at that anxiety in your chest?

What you see isn’t a joke!

To help you feel like you’re not weird (a term generally used by my clients when they first start doing this 🙂 ), here are some strangely

beautiful things I have heard over the years about what people see energetically inside their bodies:

• needles
• peaches
• blackness
• leaking pipes
• a parent
• rocks or boulders
• worms
• sludge
• bricks

There is no ‘wrong’ when you’re doing this work on yourself. Always, always, always TRUST what you first see.

Carrying on with the example above: Lets say you can feel the anxiety in your chest and it feels like a tight tension. When you look at it you see a brick that is green in colour and it appears to be heavy and rough.

If there is anything else you notice or feel, you can add that into your tapping sequence, but here you have some key points in order to help you go deeper and connect into what your body is trying to tell you. (Technically – you are still tapping on what you know, it’s just new stuff that you know now! 🙂 ).

A set up statement for the above could go like this: “Even though I have all this anxiety in my chest, and it feels tight, like a green, heavy brick is sitting in my chest. I deeply and completely love and accept myself”.

You can do many variations of that sentence. As long as you’re tuning into what you see and feel (or hear!) – then you’re listening to and acknowledging your body.

That’s stage two! 

You can still take that deeper

One of the next things I might do, depending on how the intensity is tracking i.e. is it becoming less or simply staying put, is to ask a question of the image you’re seeing inside of you.

So if we stay with the same example as above – the ‘green, heavy brick full of anxiety in the chest’. Have a conversation with it. Ask the green, heavy brick what message it has for you. What does it need to tell you? What can you do to help it release and feel safe?

Your body knows

This is quite often another stage I’ll add into working with clients trying to heal. Listening to our body is so incredibly important.

Now that doesn’t mean as soon as you feel pain you run for the Panadol. That’s the complete opposite of listening.

What I’m saying is that your body’s pain is more often than not the final stage. It’s the pimple that’s ready to burst. It’s core or roots are buried somewhere deep inside. Because emotions don’t simply dissipate.

However, what I see time and time again is that if you do this work enough and you talk to your body and REALLY tune in and listen when it’s in pain, you’ll eventually not need EFT to move it. Once you’ve mastered the technique of listening to what your body and pain is trying to tell you, all you have to do is say “ok thanks. I hear you and I’m on it”, and it will literally vanish of it’s own accord.

It’s very, very powerful stuff.

Back to your anxiety:

Lets says that this ‘green, heavy brick of anxiety’ says to you “I’m scared to let go”. You can tap on that statement just as it is, as another layer, or you can ask it another question: “What specifically are you scared to let go of?”.

The answer to that is what you’ll add into your tapping sequence and will likely blow the whole thing wide open for you and give you that ‘ah-ha!’ moment.

Just to help you out with the example, lets say the green brick of anxiety is scared to let go because, if it does, it believes you’ll be attacked in some way – that is what you’ll tap on:

“Even though this green brick of anxiety in my chest is scared to let go, because it feels I’ll be attacked if it does, I deeply and completely love and accept myself. (Again, you can do many variations of that sentence but always use the information you’ve been given).

The core of your pain

What are some key questions you can use to find the core of your pain?

The example above does leave room for further exploration. If a part of you feels like it has to be on-guard because it fears being attacked – you have to find where that came from and when it started in order to really help let go of this anxiety wrapped belief you’re holding onto within your body. (The belief being you’ll be attacked in some way).

You may of heard of the basic information gathering questions: ‘who, when, what, why, where and how’?

My preference in 99.9% of cases is to leave out the ‘why’. I can go into more detail in another blog but lets just, for now, say that it’s too ‘open’ a question when you’re trying to get down to specifics. And, if used in the wrong way, asking ‘why’ can actually put you into a victim state i.e. “why is this happening to me?” – which is not going to help you to heal.

Here are some examples of questions you could potentially ask yourself in order to go deeper:

• What specifically is causing this pain?
• What is this related to?

  

• What was I doing when the symptoms or issue started?
• What do I need to do to heal from this?
• When did this start? (age, year, how long ago?)
• When did I first start feeling like this?
• Where is this pain be coming from?
• Where was I when the problem showed up?
• Who does this remind me of?
• Who taught me this/caused me to believe this?
• How many times did it happen?

Now those are only the tip of the iceberg and depending on what it is you need to clear will depend on the specifics of the question.

These are simply to give you an idea of what you can use in order to help yourself go deeper with EFT.

You need to get to the specifics of what it is you’re feeling if you’re going to release it. We can’t heal if we’re being fluffy round the edges….

In doing this work you are giving your body a voice!

Questions, questions, questions

The only way we can get to the core of our issues is to dig.

So be curious. Be open to it not always making sense. The brain can make links with the most random of events and items. (I’m speaking from my own personal experience!).

And always follow and trust what comes up for you when you’re working on yourself. It might seem ridiculous. It might not make a scrap of sense in the beginning, but the more you explore it and dig down, the more the shadows are easier to clear and release.

If you’d still prefer to have someone help you though. Someone to guide you and hold your hand whilst you go through this healing process – please reach out. Asking for help is a huge step which is to be celebrated. You’ll feel better just with that simple first step.

You are braver and stronger than you think.

 

 

Interested in getting to the heart of your pain?

I’d love to connect.

Contact me here