Every day I talk to women (and I used to be one who did this too) who feel compelled to constantly diet to lose weight or to control their out of control feeling with food. There is a push-pull relationship that develops, an all or nothing kind of view.

It is incredibly frustrating, defeating, and totally depressing because the dieting never works permanently. It is a temporary fix for some to a deeper problem; the compulsive need to eat.

Unlike other addictions, you can’t stop eating. You can’t just avoid food totally. We have to eat to live, so it gets tricky when food is your obsession and/or addiction.

A process of hyper-vigilance and avoidance, fear and deprivation sets in for many with food. This is also where a state of black and white thinking comes in. On the one hand many feel they have to restrict or control food intake in some way (some form of diet, and there is always a new one) or there is constant eating or bingeing.

Often there are painful feelings or difficult feelings that require addressing but that are too overwhelming and need to be numbed with food.

So a constant focus on food as the “problem” and food as being the thing to control is really sort of dangerous for people with this issue. I often see any hint of deprivation throw clients into a rebellious desire to eat.

The first step to stopping reliance on dieting for some is using EFT to clear the painful or difficult emotions that haven’t been addressed successfully in the past. I have come to believe that emotions are like water and meant to just flow naturally through us. They are not good or bad but an experience. It is when for some reason they get “stuck” or don’t move through us that we have problems and pain.

We don’t have to be aware of what these emotions are, we can start wherever we are at with tapping.

With one of my clients recently we began by tapping on the desire to eat.

Set up phrases:

Even though I just want to eat and I don’t know why, I can’t stop and I don’t know why… I deeply and completely love and accept myself

Inner eye: I don’t know why I want to eat
Outer eye: ”
Under eye: ”
Upper lip: I just want to eat
Chin crease: I’m not even hungry!
Collar bones: I just want to eat
Side of body: I wish I knew why
Top of the head: I’m really tired of it

After this first round a thought came to her about how her father always used to make her feel ashamed and fat, and how once he humiliated her in front of others.

At this point we began tapping on the feelings of humiliation through all of the points:

“My dad made me feel humiliated that time in the living room”

After we tapped on that issue, there were several others that came up for her too with him. It seems he was a primary figure in her humiliation with weight and desire to diet to relieve it.

After a few sessions working on these issues and tapping on what came up for her she is no longer binge eating or emotional eating at all through difficult situations where she feels triggered.

Dieting is a way to punish ourselves or use force to achieve a goal, it seems to me. When we take away the force, address the underlying feelings – whatever they are – and release them, we are free to eat in a more “natural” way and the strong desire to binge or eat junk foods can just disappear.

Sandy Zeldes is a Certified EFT Practitioner & Certified Nutrition Consultant with over 7 years experience. She helps her clients find relief with weight gain, stress, mood swings, and low energy or fatigue. Visit her online at www.eatlikeagoddess.com.

“Julie” came to me for weigh and eating issues. She had been working with a book on ending food addiction (author: Kay Sheppard) and had determined that one of the emotional drivers for her was, as she put it, “Not-Good-Enough Pain.”

Because I was in the process of preparing to teach EFT Levels 1-2, I was especially aware of the basic core concepts. So I talked with Julie about how “not good enough” was like a big forest with many individual trees (specific events) or like a tabletop with many legs supporting that table. Would she be open to working with some specific events from the past in order to bring healing to this core belief? She agreed.

We had already done some tapping for the emotions around this. I then asked her to close her eyes and tune in to that “not good enough” feeling. “Just let your mind be open to finding one of the early times that you felt this. What other time does this feeling remind you of?” She said, “I don’t know why this is coming up, but I just remembered being on the monkey bars on the playground, I was probably about 5 years old, and this boy Ricky, who was always mean to me, came up and made fun of me. He had his friends with him, and they called me Little Miss Piggy, Pig Nose.” She was amazed to find tears coming.

People are often surprised at how much pain can still be in these seemingly insignificant childhood memories. I asked Julie to make a small movie of this event — how long would it be? Only a few minutes. I asked her the title. She said, Little Miss Piggy, Pig Nose. The title was a 10 in intensity for her, so we began by simply tapping for the title:

Even though I have this Little Miss Piggy, Pig Nose movie, I love and accept myself
Even though I have this Little Miss Piggy, Pig Nose movie, I love and accept my little girl self — that really hurt my feelings…

It took several rounds of tapping for “this Little Miss Piggy, Pig Nose movie,” but the effect was dramatic. The tears that initially came with these words subsided quickly. After three rounds, the intensity of the title had mostly been released, from a 10 to a 4 down to a 1 or 2.

I then asked Julie to narrate the movie, beginning before the upsetting part. “I’m climbing on the monkey bars… I’m swinging from my arms… I’m having a good time… now I see the mean boy coming…he’s walking over with his friends.” I stopped her — “Any intensity?” Surprisingly, she said, “No!”

She continued. “Now he’s coming over and saying to his friend, ‘hey look, there’s Little Miss Piggy, Pig Nose!” I stopped her again — “Any intensity?” Again, “No!”

“So what happens next?” I asked. Julie then said something totally unexpected: “Well, I just keep swinging and I tell them that they’re just stupid boys and that I don’t care what they say! And I laugh at them!” We both laughed at the conviction in her voice — she knew they were acting stupid and that it was not about her! She said, “I know that’s not what really happened, but that’s what I see in my movie now. All I can do is laugh at them. How stupid those dumb boys were! Picking on a little girl — shame on them.”

Apparently our work together on the title alone had completely cleared the trauma. I realized that the title she had chosen was the crescendo of the event. That might not always be a good idea, but in this case, it worked wonders. Those nasty words, which had hurt her so much as a little child, had been completely neutralized, and she could see the whole thing clearly and not take it personally anymore.

Just to be safe, I had Julie rewind and run the old movie in her mind, trying to stay with the scenario as it had really happened. She found that hard to do! She had trouble even imagining it and couldn’t get back any pain — even though 15 minutes before, she had been in tears.

We ended with a “power tapping” for the little girl inside her.

Even though those boys called me Miss Piggy, Pig Nose, so what? I don’t care! They’re just stupid boys!

As we tapped the points with “so what?” and “I don’t care!” and “They’re just stupid boys!” Julie was grinning. It felt great to empower her inner child to throw off the insult and put those boys in their place.

At the end of the session, Julie felt great. My hope is that this healing result will generalize into other places in childhood and beyond where Julie felt put down or insulted with regard to her appearance. She felt so much lighter and calmer at the end of the session, and she agreed that continuing to tap for those old wounds will really help her heal her issue of emotional eating.

Most smokers know they light up a cigarette when they are under stress. Many more are unaware that many other emotions lead to smoking as well, such as, anger, worry, fear, hunger, sadness and a host of others.

It appears that those negative emotions trigger something within each person that leads them back into their old habit of ameliorating it by lighting up a cigarette and taking a few drags to calm down.

What if you could eliminate that trigger? Can you imagine what it would be like to deal with your anger or stress using EFT instead of using a cigarette? It would be freeing and release you from your addiction to cigarettes. So how do you do it? Here’s how:

First, it takes a little bit of conscious noticing of when you’re feeling like you are so stressed that you find yourself wanting a cigarette. When that happens, its very important that instead of reaching for a cigarette, you instead start using EFT to tap away the negative thoughts and feelings. For instance, if you’re feeling stressed, you can simply do a Setup like this:

“Even though I’m feeling so stressed that now I want a cigarette, I love and accept myself nonetheless.”

“Even though I don’t believe I can stop this urge to have a cigarette because of all this stress I’m under, I accept myself anyway.”

Then go on to the reminder statements as you tap on each meridian access point as follows:

Eyebrow (EB): “I’m under so much stress.”
Side of Eye (SE): “I really want a cigarette.”
Under Eye (UE) :“Whenever I’m under stress, the only thing that helps is a cigarette.”
Under Nose (UN): “I really want that cigarette right now.”
Under Mouth (Ch): “Actually, I don’t really want a cigarette, I just don’t know what else to do.”
Collar Bone (CB)“Actually, I do know what to do and I’m doing it right now. I’m tapping my urge away.”
Under Arm (UA): “I’m under so much stress.”
Top of Head (TH): “All this stress I’m under. I let it go.”

Drop your hands and take a deep breath to integrate and process the tapping and then check in on your SUDS (emotional intensity) level to see how much the urge for a cigarette has changed. If it has gone down somewhat, continue along the same lines as before, only add a phrase that acknowledges that some of the urge has gone away.

Before you finish 2-3 rounds, your stress may be gone along with the urge for a cigarette. If another urge arises, treat it the same way.

I recently had the privilege of being invited to take part in the Tapping Summit. Some of you may have listened to my presentation on “Healing from Addictions.” One important point I make is that real, lasting change usually requires more than quitting the addictive behaviour. Unless we get at and resolve the unresolved emotional issues that drive the behaviour it may actually be the best ‘quick fix’ available to you, but it won’t last. No one wants to relapse or switch one addiction for another, but that is often what happens when we are relying one sheer white-knuckled willpower. My experience tells me that usually the addiction is an attempt at a solution, and we need to hear and understand its message. In this article I would like to give you an idea of how to work with the problem, using EFT, to find the solution that will be hidden in it.

Looking at our current relationships is a good place to start the emotional work. Who is upsetting you, or making you angry or uncomfortable in some way? Here is a hint – take your pick from your partner, mother, boss, brother, husband, father, neighbour etc etc?! Feeling powerless creates unbearable internal stress which needs to be soothed in whatever way works for us. When you realise the various ways you have given away your power to both your drug of choice and to the people you have made responsible for the way you feel, you are on the road to real freedom.

Here is an interesting example of Karen and her chocolate addiction that seemed to come out of the blue. It was actually a messenger that allowed her to resolve an old issue which had been triggered in her current relationship with her partner.

The Background to Karen’s Problem

Karen was a client I had worked with in the past and had recently made an appointment to come and see me again. We had already worked on and cleared a range of issues including a problem with alcohol. As she emerged from her addictive behaviour with alcohol we had worked on her self image, self esteem and being single. As she had become more loving towards herself she had moved on in all areas of her life and begun a relationship with a wonderful partner. I hadn’t seen her for at least a year when she phoned and made an appointment.

Karen told me that her relationship was good and strong and she was still amazed at herself and the life they were having together. The problem was that just recently she had started to overeat chocolate. Once she started she just could not stop. She had put on weight as a result of it and was feeling very out of control. She had no idea why this should be happening now. She knew her partner loved her. They wanted to be together, and they had committed to sharing their lives with each other…in fact they were coming up for their 2nd anniversary. Despite everything she ‘knew’ she said there were times when she felt very afraid and kept having the thought that he would leave her after 2 years. The more the 2 year anniversary approached the worse she was feeling and the more the chocolate thing was getting out of control.

Deciding What to Work On and Where to Start

I noticed three important things:

• Karen had a lot of strong negative feelings which she was self medicating with chocolate.
• She kept coming back to a fear of loss. When she was thinking about her partner Simon it was in terms of how much she had to lose, rather than how much she loved him.
• There was some kind of connection between the two-year anniversary, the fear and the need to eat chocolate (the temporary solution or quick fix).

Karen’s unconscious mind was speaking volumes and had really given me all the information I needed, verbally and non verbally, in just a few minutes. The place to start here was with the uncomfortable feelings about Simon. In other words, to take a look to the relationship:

Me: When you think about Simon how do you feel?

Karen: Oh…I really love him…(heels digging in to floor!)…

Me, interrupting: No… how do you really feel …in those moments when you have to go and eat chocolate…?

Karen: Oh…actually I feel really afraid. Small and childish…sort of not enough. Sometimes numb, just blank…Or I am angry and clingy…

She remembered a time recently when she had provoked a tiff and told him she didn’t need him (which was not really how she felt at all).

Her voice, as she talked, was higher than usual – almost whispering. She was feeling the feelings as she was describing them:

Me: Where abouts in your body do you feel this?

Karen: It’s like a big weight on my chest…and tightness in my breath….heaviness around my heart.

What We Did

We began tapping (using the short cut points) on the various thoughts and feelings, alternating the focus between the physical feelings and the phrases she had used to describe her emotions:

“this heaviness around my heart”
“this weight on my chest”
“tightness in my breath”

“I feel so small when I see him”
“I don’t need him…he irritates me”

“Helplessly Angry”

As we continued the feelings intensified…and Karen said she felt “helplessly angry.”

Me: Is “helplessly angry” connected to the situation now?

Karen: Yes..it is… but it seems old as well…

We continued tapping:

“This old anger”
“This ancient helpless anger”

Quite quickly the feelings shifted to sadness:

Karen:….I don’t know why I just feel sure he will leave me when we get to two years.

Again taking her words:

“I don’t know why.. I just feel sure he will leave me”

“I wonder why I feel so sure…he will leave me”

“I don’t know why….he’s going to leave me”

“Something about 2 years..”

“Something about 2…”

Suddenly something flashed across her face….

Me: What happened then?

Karen: It was a memory. I remembered the day my sister was born and everything changed. I was 2. I guess I had something good going on for two years and then it was taken away. I was the oldest and when my sister came along I just knew it was over. And it was. I was expected to be big sister and like mum… and then every year or two another one came along… (Karen was the oldest of 6 children).

We carefully tapped through the whole story, including what she had seen, heard and felt – screams from the bedroom, doctors and neighbours rushing in, hushed voices, being told to go away. When she felt calm and grounded she realised she had made certain decisions and created particular beliefs about herself, as a direct result of her experience. At age 2 she was suddenly no longer the centre of anyone’s world. She summed up her decision as, “Good things only last 2 years!” alongside the beliefs: “I don’t matter…. there’s not enough time… or love.. or care.. or interest in me…” all fused with the idea of being 2 and good things
only lasting 2 years. And then the whole thing had repeated itself roughly every 2 years as another sibling was born.

We continued tapping through all the aspects of the memory until Karen felt calm and peaceful. Then we finished with:

“I understand this now”
“I accept this now”
“I release this now”

At this point Karen felt enormous compassion and love for her younger self – the little girl who wasn’t much more than a baby. She understood how coming up to her 2 year anniversary was ringing alarm bells in her unconscious mind. Now though, through the work she had done, instead of bringing pain and loss it brought the opportunity for healing. The chocolate addiction and the anger and sadness driving it were the messengers and Karen was able to receive the gift.

Follow Up

After this session the chocolate addiction disappeared as did the feelings of fear and smallness and anger. There was simply no need for the problem to exist any more. She didnt need to give her power away to chocolate, or anything else – nor did she need to project negative feelings on to her partner. I didn’t see Karen for a while but she emailed to say she was getting on with her life and her relationship!

Whenever you are dealing with addictions you will find that current relationships are full of opportunities for healing. When we are no longer carrying around our unresolved conflicts from the past the need to self-medicate just drops away. This approach and many others are detailed in my book Healing the Addicted Heart: 5 Stages of Transformation. The book has many ideas and practical exercises which are keys to real and lasting change. It leads us through the 5 stages of transformation accessing previously unconscious material, releasing it with the tapping and making a choice to live in a new, more loving way. I believe passionately in this work because, inevitably, as we make peace inside ourselves we create a more loving, kinder world.

Due to the sensitive nature of this issue, I have withheld specific details.

A gentleman in his late 30’s, from US, called me in January this year. He wanted phone counseling and EFT therapy for CSA (Childhood Sexual Abuse).

When we began the sessions he revealed that he had been sexually abused at the age of 10 by strangers. He had very low confidence in high school and got into alcohol and drug abuse in his college. For the past 20 years he had been caught in this addiction cycle. Due to the addictions he was laid off from his job recently. He had been to a rehabilitation centre and also for psychotherapy but that didn’t help much with addiction and CSA. The clean phase lasted only for a few weeks. It was leading to enormous tension and stress within his family and impacting his relationship with his girl friend as well. He had difficulty in concentration, anger management issues and difficulty in remaining faithful.

He had been clean for the past 2 weeks when he contacted me and was fighting the temptation to go back to alcohol and drugs. We worked on the anxiety that led to the craving and simultaneously took up CSA. The following are details from the CSA sessions.

When he was 10 years old he was asked by his friend to visit another man’s house where the abuse took place.
I did the movie technique on him. While he was narrating the story, the anxiety started building up. I immediately asked him to stop and tap on it. He could remember going up the stairs to the room. After tapping on the anxiety about telling the story, I made him tap on all the details that he could remember. Some of the aspects taken up were –

Feeling of being trapped
Feeling of tightness in my stomach as I think about it
Anger for taking advantage of a 10 year old
Anger as the perpetrator didn’t stop the abuse
I understand that it was not my fault

Later the anger changed to sadness. He said he had seen his perpetrator a few years back and had felt like beating him to pulp but now after tapping he felt differently. He said maybe that person would have changed now. This was a cognitive shift.

In the next session I ran the entire incident by him and asked him to stop me whenever he felt any anxiety. He said he felt anxiety but that was for another incident. His anxiety for the first one was negligible.

In this incident, he was asked by another stranger, an elder man, to get into a car. he was taken to an unknown place. This became a routine that lasted for awhile. He said that it had felt more like an adventure for him at that time and he had enjoyed it but it was always laced with fear. Tapping was done on-

Anger for being manipulated
Fear while it was taken to that place
Guilt for enjoying the adventure
Guilt for continuing to experiment
Even though the experiences may have impacted my life, I choose to start afresh.

Surprisingly his intensity went down pretty fast after tapping on the guilt. Somehow the guilt was holding that abuse in place and after the guilt was gone, the abuse too lost its significance. It was, as if a heavy load had been lifted off his shoulders.

In the next session, I asked him how he felt during the week post session and he said that he was fine and was concentrating on his career. I asked him how he felt about the abuse and he said that it didn’t bother him and he didn’t know why. I asked him to guess why. He said – ‘It was in the past which is over and I want to move on’. After that we never tapped on CSA again as it didn’t bother him.

With the tapping on addiction, low confidence, fear of upcoming job related tests etc along with counseling for remaining faithful, stress and anger management, he was able to remain clean and there was an increase in his confidence. The last I heard from him was 2 months back and there had been no relapse and he had passed the exam with flying colors and was trying to work on his future goals.

I strongly feel that one has to be very careful in approaching CSA with EFT because if not handled properly, it can unleash overwhelming emotions that are difficult to control. The survivor is afraid to re-visit the ‘forbidden’ part of his/her life as it causes trauma and therefore it is important to handle each incident in totality but also not run the incidents again and again unnecessarily. Re-testing is an important part of EFT but in abuse cases I feel that it should be done less. Also, I never ask my clients to forgive their perpetrators unless they are ready to do so. In my opinion, it is possible to let go of the incident, be unaffected by it without forgiving the perpetrator. It’s more important that the person forgives oneself for the experience, forgives oneself for being seduced, or enjoying it (in some cases) , releases the anger, hurt , vulnerability, does not feel responsible for the abuse and does not feel emotionally scarred or damaged for the rest of one\’s life. A person who has been abused may take time to get over the scars of abuse and rebuild his confidence and feel better overall, but the time that is taken in reducing intensity for each specific incident is actually very less.

The feeling of peace that comes after releasing these incidents is very liberating.

A week ago I worked with Mary (not her real name). She wanted help with food cravings, specifically chocolate. At first we tapped on craving the chocolate, but it quickly became, “Even though I love the feel and taste of this chocolate in the back of my mouth.” We did this many times, testing each time by imagining (we didn’t have any chocolate handy) her seeing it, unwrapping it, smelling it, tasting it. It wasn’t just the chocolate. It was the chocolate candies that were in her desk at work. She couldn’t resist them, specifically after lunch, and this had been going on for several years on a daily basis. At first her craving intensities were diminishing, but after testing and exaggerating the senses, the craving was still there.

Further discussion lead to a connection with stress she had felt, beginning several years ago, with her former boss who had taken advantage of her by giving her extreme amounts of work to do, no appreciation or acknowledgment and, on top of that, unrelenting criticism. The chocolates became a soothing antidote. But it didn’t end there. What came out next, from tapping on her boss’s criticism was her mother’s criticism when she was a young girl and how she was not allowed to cry when something was bothering her. Everything had to be stuffed. We had a number of rounds with her speaking powerfully, as she would have liked to, to both her boss, and then her parents. There were tears and true anger that emerged in her language and articulating.

After more testing her craving (still imagined) had come down to zero. I told her that when she was actually at work, if her craving came back it just meant that another aspect emerged and that she or we could tap more on that. I heard from her today, a week later. She has had no craving for the chocolate.

Paula Bobb