EFT for Stress and Anxiety - Case Study

Blog

EFT for Stress and Anxiety - Case Study

sad mature businessman thinking about problems in living smMy client Stuart (not his real name) arranged an EFT session on the general feeling of fear dominating his life. When we met I started the session by asking him which of these two statements was true to him:

"The Universe is benevolent and abundant and will provide me with everything"; or

"Life is a constant struggle and I have to fight for survival".

He immediately said that “Life is a struggle 100%!”. Stuart described his life as a struggle to survive, he had always felt under stress and pushing himself to his limits to work hard expecting the worst to happen. After recognizing the core issue underlying the dominating fear in his life we considered that events from his childhood could be the cause.

 

He described the life of his parents also as a constant struggle to earn and provide for building the family house. When he was 4 or 5 Stuart had overheard parents' conversations worrying whether they would be able to finish the building of the house and he remembered fearing that his parents didn't have any money. He admitted that these conversations were like a big burden to him even to this very day. As a result, he was afraid he'd lose his job (SUD level 10), he would lose his home (SUD level 10), he would be broke if he fell ill (SUD level 10).

I also asked Stuart whether he experienced any physical discomforts when he thinks about money or losing home and he said that he has the feeling of his heart fluttering and throbbing in his throat (rating 10 out of 10) and feeling suffocating (10 out of 10). He admitted to be living in constant worry, which made him irritable and snappish. I explained to him Dr. Bruce Lipton's theory about the cells being either at war or at peace, which also relates to humans' lives to help him recognize that he lived constantly “in war”. With tears in his eyes he admitted that he was unable to acknowledge any good coming or being in his life.

Using EFT inevitably brings more consciousness and spirituality as it did to my life. Therefore every time before the tapping I voice my intentions as a facilitator by saying a little prayer and ask my client to do the same thing whether aloud or not within his or his beliefs. I truly believe that setting our intentions tunes both me and the client into higher realms for our highest good.

So after setting intentions we started with a more general tapping in order to reach a particular scene or memory:

Even though I live in fear without realizing that I am at war and that I am constantly defending myself from the entire world, I deeply and completely accept myself.

Even though my entire being is at war, expecting the bad thing to happen any minute, I accept myself as I am and forgive myself for everything that I feel.

Even though I have this fear to lose my home, to lose the most valuable thing I have created in my whole life, I accept and forgive myself.

As we tapped through the points I was altering the reminder phrase with the physiological symptoms and the horrible fear using his words.

Even though it is so difficult to live in constant fear I deeply and completely accept myself

Even though it is so difficult not to be able to sense any good coming my way, as I am expecting the worst

Even though it is so difficult to live in fear, I accept all my feelings and fears and acknowledge myself for all the things I went through.

Even though I've lived through so many things that taught me fear, I accept myself and I choose to find new ways to deal with life, with less fear, with more hope.

When the intensity dropped I felt he was ready to see the problem differently which I introduced with the reminder phrases:

It is not difficult a bad thing to happen if one expects only the worst,

Not difficult to get people to react badly to you if this is the only thing you expect from them,

It is difficult to see the good if you don't expect it,

It is difficult to accept help if you never expect such if you believe you are alone and fighting on your own.

Stuart chuckled while saying them recognizing how ridiculous such beliefs are.

In order to get from the general to a more specific issue I used set-up phrases that would prompt the subconscious mind, pre-framing to my client to be open to any thoughts or ideas that may cross his mind however unrelated they might seem:

Even though I have this fear I wonder how was this fear born;

Even though I have this fear I wonder how did I learn that I have to fear my survival;

Even though I have this fear I wonder for whom did I fear when I was little;

Even though I have this fear I wonder whether I have to fear constantly.

Some childhood memories loomed and all were connected with his parents' worries about work and respectively money. At one particular event when my client was about 5 or 6, his mother was threatened with losing her job due to restructuring of the company. The parents had discussions charged with worries of how they would repay the mortgage if the mother was out of a job. At some point, they even started looking for a smaller house. These conversations of losing their home as a result of the situation had a huge impact on the child's mind installing fear for survival despite the fact that actually everything turned out well for the family and the mother was offered another job.

I asked my client to give a name to the story as if it were a film and to focus on the emotions popping up. He called it “When mother was to lose her job” and he immediately felt tension and fear at SUD level 6, oppressing feeling combined with physiological symptoms of the heart at the same SUD level. We tapped on:

Even though I have this movie “When mother was to lose his job”, I deeply and completely accept myself and accept what happened to my family then;

Even though I feel tension and fear when I think of “When mother was to lose her job”, I deeply and completely love and accept myself;

Even though I have this oppressing feeling of fear when the bank could sell our house;

Even though I feared that we'd be left homeless.

After we reduced the tension and fear SUD level to 0-1 my client realized how much sadness for his family he had stored within herself. So we tapped on:

Even though I feel so sad that my mother and father had to go through this, I deeply and completely accept myself.

Even though I have this sadness just thinking of the time “When mother was to lose his job”, I accept that this thing happened in our lives.

Even though I am so sad that mum and father experienced so much worry and fear, I forgive this event for causing so much fear to mother and father, and forgive mother and father for experiencing so much fear, and forgive myself for fearing together with them.

We continued tapping on this sadness with some gentle re-frames:

Even though I am so sad about my parents' experience, I am open to new ways to look at this situation.

Even though I am so sad that my mother and father had to endure so much, and I endured it with them, and I endure something similar now, I accept myself and forgive the Universe for bringing in such ordeals, maybe such ordeals happen to teach us that we are stronger than we think, maybe to teach us that there is always a way out of a difficult situation, maybe they happen to help us grow stronger, to grow wiser, to grow greater; maybe to understand that the fear does not help us to survive.

After this round of tapping Stuart visibly lightened and he exclaimed: “Oh, you've put it so beautifully and it brought peace to my soul; after all everything turns out well and fears and worry are pointless but only burden you!”. He had to express and honour the sadness he had for this event before he could appreciate that in reality, everything turned out well.

I decided to re-enforce his new perception of the event by another round of tapping where in the set-up we would acknowledge what happened and how the Universe intervened by miraculously providing another job for mother:

I wonder if there is a new way to look at this event, it wasn't all that bad after all.

I wonder if I could see the world differently.

I wonder if I could see less things to fear in life.

I wonder if I could expect less negativity from life.

Maybe even I can expect something positive.

Because when there is no fear something good will happen.

Although the sadness for his family had dropped my client had another aspect when I asked him to run the movie. he called it “a heavy feeling” attached to this event despite its positive outcome. It would still affect his life because he could not comprehend the reason why it happened to his family. He feared that something similar could happen to him. Therefore he pushed himself to the limits to be the “No.1 worker” at work otherwise he may be out of a job and out of his home (big emotional intensity). So we tapped on the following aspects: heavy feeling, caused by an unfair situation, the ordeal for mother and father while introducing forgiveness to the Universe for placing his family in this situation. When I asked him whether he was ready to forgive the Universe he admitted that the Universe actually provided a happy ending but the fear experienced during the situation had badly affected the young child then. Although my client reported the SUD level of the heavy feeling to be at 2, I felt that there was still charge. So I introduced some gentle re-frames:

Even though my family experienced so much fear and pain, I wonder if I could change my attitude to this situation since I can't change the past.

Even though I still have this heavy feeling related to this situation, I know that heavy feelings are part of life.

Even though this situation caused so much fear to so many innocent souls, I am open to admitting that such things happen in life. Maybe the situation wasn't all that frightening at the end, only I perceived it so.

Through tapping, I introduced to my client the concept of looking at reality through filters or spectacles based on our belief systems which children download from their parents. I suggested that mother and father were looking through the “the spectacles of fear” and maybe it is time for my client to use spectacles of his own!

As the heavy feeling disappeared I tested whether he still had any physiological symptoms. They were gone together with the tears and he looked visibly relieved. When I asked him to tune back into the movie of fear, he laughed back and said that it only looked frightening, it was just a memory from the past! He admitted however that he was now able to see how much it had affected his work. From the two statements “Life is a struggle” and “The Universe will provide” my client moved much closer to the understanding of a supporting Universe as everything went well with his ancestral family. Then I asked my client how much he feared he would lose his job (at the beginning of the session this fear was 10) and he adamantly said that right now he didn't think he would lose his job at all. When I asked him how much he feared he would lose his home (this fear at the beginning was 10) I could see my client struggling to answer my question. When he finally did, he said:

How can I put a number to it? I believe in my lucky star!”

 

If you find this article interesting or useful help us share it with more people that may need it by using the sharing buttons above! Thank you!

 

Video

image Play

EFT - How to Tap

image Play

MR Demonstration

image Play

What is the experience?

image Play

When to use?