By guest author Faith Worley
When it comes to having tools that help us release emotional tension and anxiety in the moment, one of my favorites is the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). EFT uses tapping on certain acupressure points to allow emotions to move through us without getting stuck, thereby keeping us from getting stuck in the meanings we give to those emotions
For instance, last Thursday night my teenage son couldn't sleep. This was especially a problem because he needed to be up by 5 the next morning for a day filled with lifting weights, concentrating on boring reading assignments, tests, and a football game that would have him getting back home by 11pm at the earliest, with a ride home on a bus that he’d never yet been able to nap on.
It's a fairly universal experience: to feel trapped by your own wakefulness, knowing that every passing sleepless minute is making the next day harder for you… and the harder you try to fall asleep, the more frustrated and powerless you feel, and the more you dread the dawn.
He was expressing his sleepless frustration in a way that was very noticeable, so I got up, in sleepless frustration myself, to put a stop to the disruption.
When we got away from his room and his sleeping (how??) brother, my son explained everything, and I heard his worry. How was he going to be able to deal with such a long day, let alone move through it successfully? He knew it was going to be terrible.
At this point I had him get his blankets and make a bed on the couch, and told him we were going to tap about it. We tapped a round on not being able to sleep, and another about his worry that the next day was going to be the absolute worst. After those two rounds I asked how he was feeling, and he said that he felt ready to go to bed. So to close our session, I had him tap with me while I prayed for his sleep and for the following day.
I knew I wouldn’t see him at all on Friday, so on Saturday morning I asked him how everything had turned out. He reported that he woke up with lots of energy for lifting, his classes went well, and though there were times when he felt tired, his energy would pick up again. He got through his reading assignment smoothly, and he felt he did well on his test. He said he was hyped for the football game, and was even able to nap in the bus on the way home. On Thursday night he hadn’t felt that any of that was possible. Additionally, this Monday he brought home his test to show me he’d gotten 100% – icing on the cake.
It’s truly amazing what kind of delightful future is available to us if we can keep ourselves from getting bogged down in negative meanings and associations, which tend to lock us into a future we don’t really want. It’s wonderful to be able to discover hope where we thought there wasn’t any to be found.
I’d love for you to come tap with me at Simply Wild where I’m holding sessions on the first Wednesday of the month. There’s a more beautiful and hopeful future waiting for you, too.
