The Boy Who Hated Tapping

by Monica Broadfoot Johnson
www.eftgetsubetter1.com
Tucson, Arizona, USA

Today was rather interesting. I am an elementary school counselor, and I have a student who comes to me because he has difficulty controlling his anger. He often yells that he has anger problems. He also hates the tapping. He thinks it is dumb.

So today he came again and was talking about how everybody else makes him mad, that he can’t help it, that his body just takes over, that he is just so mad!

This time, I decided to try things a little differently. I told him that he did not have to tap, but he did have to pay attention. I would just tap on myself, if that would be ok with him. It was. I also asked if I could be him. He agreed.

So I began with,

Even though I’m so mad that I can hardly stand it, I’m still ok. All this anger. I deserve to be angry. I should be, with all of the garbage that I put up with. I probably should be even more angry than I already am.

All the while, he is playing with toys. I remind him that his part is to pay attention. He agrees. So while I am going through this anger protocol, he begins to add to it, little things like. “Yup, that’s right.” “Yah, I should be.” “You know what else they did to me?”

After about 5 minutes of this at the most, he has a shift. He starts telling me how good he is feeling. Then he tells me what a great counselor I am and how he has told his brother, who he says has the same problems, that I really help him. I incorporate into my tapping that “I am a great kid, and I really like this nice feeling.” “Maybe I can choose to have a good rest of the day.”

He left me with a completely different demeanor.

Talk about surrogate tapping!

Monica Broadfoot Johnson
www.eftgetsubetter1.com