1) Your Emotional Issue Is Made Of Energy
When was the last time a brain surgeon opened up a patient and found his/her childhood memories, political opinions, or religious persuasion? Our memories, beliefs, values and, importantly, emotions are made of energy. So doesn’t it make sense to treat these with energy therapy?
For too long now talk therapy has been the medium of choice for psychological problems, instead of addressing the problem at the root cause. Your energy system. This is the modality of EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques), Emotrance, Sekhem, TAT(Tapas Acupressure Technique), and so on.
2) In Some Cases, It Is More Difficult To Overcome Your Issues If You Have A Spouse And An Intact Family Where a “normal” family structure is in place, there is often a support structure in place to maintain emotional problems. That is, the family is flexible enough in its behavior to accommodate the problem in many different ways, which accidentally advantage the sufferer. In this way the patient has constant positive reinforcement for holding on to the trauma, and thus becomes unconsciously reluctant to give it up.
3) In The Wrong Hands, It Can Be Unsafe To Cure Your Emotional Issue
In some cases, if some time has passed since your problem began, you should not seek treatment at a certain point in your life. Here’s why.
To successfully hold on to and relive a problem over a number of years is an achievement in itself. It requires an entire support structure to be in place. Small (but significant) changes, which accommodate the problem, are usually made by family, colleagues, loved ones, etc, and go unnoticed over time.
In the long term, you may have accepted yourself as a “trauma victim” or “traumatised”; it may be “who you are,” and part of your identity. If reinforced over a period of time, with enough dependency on others, the issue can be the lynchpin holding several aspects of your life together, no matter how dysfunctional or unuseful they may be. And to remove it could create an entirely new – additional - issue.
4) Your Issue May Be Masking Other Things
Ask yourself the following questions:
•What would you be focussing on if you didn’t spend time worrying about the symptoms of your issue?
•How would you be spending your time if you weren’t accommodating this problem?
•What’s the upside of holding onto this problem?
•What else was happening in your life the first time this problem happened?
What do you get out of holding onto this trauma? More attention from friends and family? Sympathy? Pity? Familiarity? Certainty? Routine? Like it or not, you will have to let go of any accidental benefits which you may be getting by holding onto your problem. Especially if it began a long time ago.
5) Traumatic Memories Are Only Memories To Your Conscious Mind. To Your Unconscious Mind, They Are Current Events.
We all have our own beliefs and identity, stored deep at an unconscious level. These are the ideas, accepted as truths, written on the walls of our mind. Often these are the teachings of parents, siblings, teachers, and other authority figures we take for granted. These writings on our walls tell us who we are when we get up in the morning. They tell us how to behave, attitudes to have, ways to react. They give us mental shortcuts to everyday decision making. Without them, we would very quickly become overloaded with the millions of bits of information we face with each day. Quite unconsciously, we are constantly looking at these writings on our walls, every moment of the day. We must constantly refer to them, to avoid continual and permanent trauma.
Interestingly, traumatic memories are stored as pictures on those same walls. Your unconscious mind has constant access to these pictures. Naturally, it wants to protect you, and warns you about anything in the outside world that could vaguely resemble those pictures. Importantly, once it recognises such a thing, your mind will trigger the same stress response and physiological reactions in your body AS IF THE ORIGINAL EVENT WAS HAPPENING AGAIN, NOW. As if it was a current event.
6) You May Be Missing Something…
We all live our lives dissociated to some degree. We have to. If we lived our lives constantly experiencing our deepest emotions we’d be unable to drive, have conversations, do business, and so on. To some degree, dissociation is useful.
However, this also means that certain aspects of your trauma, too painful to consider consciously, are hidden from view. And as long as they are, they will continue to trigger stress responses, outside of your awareness.
7) Sometimes We Confuse Who We Are, With What We’ve Been Through
Many times we confuse our identity - who we are - with an event that happened to us. The traumatic experience you had, happened to you, but it is not you. It does not define or describe you; it is not all of you; and it is not the last word on you. It is not the whole of your life’s experience, nor is it the last thing you will ever experience. Repeat after me: I am not the events which happen to me.
In the case of severe or ongoing issues, we can also confuse ourselves with the accidental benefits we derive from the trauma, e.g. pity, attention, comfort, reassurance, help to do tasks, etc. Over time a part of us can enjoy these things too much, and it becomes another reason not to let go of the issue itself.
8) “My How You’ve Changed Since I’ve Changed”
Every human being is a system. Change one part of that system and rest of the system will adapt accordingly. The same applies to families, colleagues, populations.
After any treatment, be aware of the small things that change around you. Loved ones; glances; gestures. But to notice them you must be looking for them.
9) Trauma Will Change You
Sometimes going through hell changes us as a person. But sometimes, it is required. Sometimes it is just life moving you, changing you into the person you need to be, by the only vehicle available at the time(or the only way life knows how).
Because the changes from a traumatic experience can be big, can’t they? They can move your whole world, in a very short time.
But when you go to the gym, you don’t make progress by lifting the easy weights within your comfort zone. And isn’t it true to say that when we come through trauma, we come out the other side knowing more about ourself as a person, more about who we are, and what we truly want in life? Going through trauma, although painful, ultimately helps us feel our wants, and come from that place.
10) Take Responsibility For Your Issues
Taking responsibility for your issue means first accepting it is a problem. It means being kind enough to yourself in the long run – the ‘future you’ – to take action and remedy the problem, now. It means accepting yourself, WITH the emotions the issue gives you, without judgment. It means knowing that the problem is just the current version of you, and giving yourself permission to heal it now.
You must be willing to take responsibility for your issue, take action, and forgive – both yourself and others.
About The Author
Stewart RobertsonCopyright 2008 Stress Clinic, http://www.stressreliefclinic.co.uk. Stewart Robertson is the author of the blueprint EFT Training Course: http://www.eftimmersion.com and is the commanding EFT Practitioner in Scotland. His EFT Scotland Newsletter is available at http://www.stressreliefclinic.co.uk/Newsletter.html
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