Editor’s Note: We originally ran across CJ’s account via EFT-Articles.com. She gave us permission to republish and offered to contact Cynthia to see how she was doing. She provides a detailed update at the end of this article.

In November 2009, I taught a three-day EFT workshop in New York. At the beginning of the first day, I asked whether anyone was experiencing pain or discomfort. Several people raised their hands and reported headaches, shoulder pain, neck pain, back pain, and knee pain ranging anywhere from 3 to 10 on the 0-to-10 scale. One woman, Cynthia, said her lower back hurt so much that she had decided to return home. “I know I just got here,” she said, “but on a scale of zero to 10, it’s a 22.”

I invited Cynthia to stay for a few minutes, after which if she didn’t feel better, she could certainly go home. She accepted, and we tapped as a group on behalf of everyone who was hurting. At the end of EFT’s Basic Recipe, most felt substantially better, including Cynthia. We then tapped for “this remaining pain,” which brought further improvement. Nearly all of the volunteers were either completely pain-free or close to it, and Cynthia’s pain level fell to a 2.

Then suddenly her pain rose to a 3. I said to the group, “This is interesting. Cynthia is probably tuning into a different aspect of her back pain problem.” Turning to Cynthia, I asked, “What were you thinking about when your pain moved up a notch?”

She said, “I was thinking that you were probably going to ask me to stand up and see how my pain had changed, and that made me nervous.” So we tapped on her apprehension about standing up. Soon Cynthia could barely find her pain.

I asked if she would be comfortable standing up now and she said yes. She gingerly stood and cautiously bent to the left, right, and back. Her movements were tentative and it was obvious that she expected to feel discomfort, especially when bending forward. “There’s no way I’m going to do that,” she said.

I asked, “Are you afraid?” and she said, “Yes!” So she sat back down and we tapped on:

Even though I’m afraid of falling down, afraid of hurting myself, afraid of the pain coming back, and I’m really afraid of bending forward, I deeply and completely accept myself.

At the end of that round of tapping, Cynthia was delighted to stand and bend forward a few inches, reporting that she felt much better.

We talked about back pain in general and someone mentioned Dr John Sarno, the author of several books about back pain. Dr Sarno’s theory is that none of the things that are blamed for back pain, like herniated discs, actually cause it. He shows his patients x-rays of backs with damaged or bulging discs and other problems that are supposed to cause pain, but all of them came from people who are pain-free. He says it isn’t the discs or old injuries that cause pain. Instead, he says, the reason your back hurts is because you’re angry. “Might you be angry about something?” I asked Cynthia.

“Yes!” she shouted. “I’m furious! I’m 63 years old, way too old to start over, and I’m in real estate, which is going nowhere these days. I have a horrible relationship with my partner of 17 years, who’s an alcoholic. I’m worried about my stepfather, who is elderly and frail and lives hundreds of miles away. I’m depressed and worried, and I have really serious financial problems.”

Wow, that was some list! Everyone in the class could see that Cynthia had several issues to choose from when it came to EFT tapping.

“Which of these would you like to start with?” I asked. “What would you most like to tap for?”

She thought for a moment, considering all the options, and then said, “I’d like to tap for my fear of failure.”

Cynthia had just given us a perfect example of a global issue, one that is so vague and general that it might or might not improve with EFT, and if it did, the tapping probably wouldn’t produce a dramatic change.

“Let’s aim for a specific event that has contributed to your fear of failure,” I suggested. “Think of all the things you’re angry about and give each one a title, like a movie. You don’t have to tell us what they are, but if you feel comfortable sharing one of them with us, the EFT will probably work faster. Let us know when you have a specific event that makes you angry.”

“I have one,” she said. “I’ll call it The Forgery.”

I had no idea what The Forgery was but it had to be big and was probably traumatic, so instead of asking Cynthia right away to tell us what happened, we started by taking the edge off, by tapping about The Forgery in general:

Even though I’m so angry about The Forgery that I can’t think straight, I deeply and completely accept myself.

Even though The Forgery makes me furious, I deeply and completely accept myself.

Even though no one can understand the terrible effect The Forgery has had on my life, I love and accept myself anyway.

All of these setups made sense to Cynthia, who nodded throughout. If the statements hadn’t made sense to her, we would have switched to something else, but her body language made her agreement clear. For anyone working with trauma issues, the Setup Phrase “No one understands how I feel about this” is usually a safe and effective place to start. After a round of this generalized tapping, Cynthia began to relax. She also began to elaborate, which is a normal reaction to effective tapping. “Here’s what happened,” she said. “My partner, ‘John,’ forged my signature and cleaned out my retirement account. That’s why I’m angry.”

We tapped for her raided retirement account, for her anger toward John, for the terrible things he did with her money (most of it went to liquor stores), for her anger toward herself for allowing this to happen, and for her fear of a penniless future. Gradually the tension in her face relaxed, her sense of humor came back, and she laughed at some of the Setups we used, like, “Even though I’m 63 years old and have one foot in the grave and my life is over… and even though I’ll be homeless for sure, I’ll be living in a cardboard box….”

After another round of tapping, I asked Cynthia how she felt. “Well, now I’m not angry any more,” she said. “Now I feel sad.”

This was a new aspect and one that reflected a cognitive shift. Cynthia was looking at her event from a different perspective. We tapped for everything that Cynthia felt sad about. Throughout the tapping, I encouraged Cynthia to say whatever was on her mind, which made it easy to create Setup Phrases that used her own words.

At the end of that round of tapping, she said, “I don’t feel sad any more. Now I think about John and I feel pity.”

Cynthia agreed that she was still light years away from forgiving John for ruining her life, but she was one step closer to considering the possibility of one day doing so. This led to a discussion about forgiveness (one of Gary Craig’s favorite themes) and grudges and how healing occurs. Cynthia agreed that letting go of the pain-producing anger she had brought to the workshop was already helping her think more clearly about her situation, so that she felt resourceful rather than defeated. Then Cynthia jumped to her feet and said, “Watch this!” She bent her back in all directions and effortlessly touched her toes.

Because the workshop lasted three days, we had plenty of opportunities to test Cynthia’s progress. Her back continued to feel terrific and in fact felt more and more flexible and free. On the second day, after reviewing her tapping experience for the class, Cynthia was able to tell us The Forgery story without hesitation and without any emotional discomfort. When I asked whether she would feel comfortable telling us how she discovered the forgery, she described without hesitation how she got a phone call from a credit card company saying that her payment was late and that in fact several months had passed without payment.

“I said that’s impossible,” Cynthia told us. “John had been paying all my bills for years and they were always paid on time. But the person on the phone kept insisting that my account was in arrears. I knew there had to be a mistake so I went to my bank and asked for copies of my recent statements. And there it was in black and white. Most of the checks were made out to a liquor store or to cash. He’d been stealing from me for months. And when he ran out of ready cash, he forged my signature on the retirement account and cleaned me out completely.”

“Yesterday at the beginning of the workshop,” I asked, “did it occur to you that you would be telling us about what happened or any of the details about how you learned about it?”

“Absolutely not,” she said, “I would have died of embarrassment. In fact, I still can’t believe I’m doing this. But it’s amazing. I feel completely comfortable.”

What Might Have Happened

My husband, Stephen, is a psychiatrist. He was able to attend the November workshop, and he observed Cynthia’s transformation with interest. “While watching Cynthia’s response to EFT,” he says, “I couldn’t help but consider what might have happened if she had gone to a physician with her complaint of severe back pain. This symptom would have been considered as presumptive evidence of an anatomic abnormality causing inflammation and muscle spasm, and she likely would have been subjected to radiologic investigations, most likely CT or MRI scanning of her back looking for disc pathology. Then Cynthia would have been given anti-inflammatory medications to take by mouth, and, depending upon the findings of the scans, she might have been subjected to injections or referral to a physical therapist, with attempts to stretch contracted muscles and to build her core muscle strength in her abdominal muscles. It seems unlikely that a physician would consider that there might be any connection to her emotions, and her shame about what had happened in her relationship would have inhibited her from mentioning her finances or her exploitation by her partner. If this information did come out, she would have been referred to a counselor or psychiatrist, with the inevitable waiting period, followed by appointments in which she would be encouraged to discuss the events and her feelings, possibly followed by a conclusion that she was depressed, with antidepressant medication considered and prescribed. Many medical practitioners believe that rapid relief of back pain is not possible, and they assume that this symptom is probably going to be chronic and is not likely to respond much to treatment.”

Seven Weeks Later

Seven weeks later, when I asked Cynthia for an update, she replied, “Since our workshop I have continued to tap twice a day and I am happy to report that I am still completely mobile and have let go of the back pain to the point where I have resumed my normal routines at my local gym. If I experience ‘stress moments’ in between my tapping times, I silently massage the sore spot on my chest (when in public) or go directly to the tapping points that I have discovered are most effective for me, which are under my eyes and on my collar bone, and that helps me stay balanced and focused.

“I tap in the morning and at night. The morning ritual is just for me. My evening tapping is as much for other people, and it takes place after my quiet time of prayer and meditation. This tapping is done on a vision board of family and friends. I tap for all of them but especially for those who are physically or mentally struggling. Also on that vision board is my daughter’s cat, Bubba, whom you might remember from the first workshop I attended last year, when I asked everyone to tap for him. Well, Bubba is still alive and going strong, and the vet has dubbed Bubba the miracle cat.

“To be honest with you,” she concluded, “I don’t think about the forgery at all anymore. There is no anger, resentment, anxiety, or now that I am specifically trying to think of it, no feelings whatsoever. It’s almost as though all emotion about the forgery has been erased from my mind. It’s merely something that happened. How great is that???!!!!”

At an EFT workshop the following June, Cynthia brought the class up to date, explaining that her former partner no longer lived with her but now her stepfather did, the future was looking brighter, and she continued to feel well and free from pain.

Followup with Cynthia

And this week (January 2011), over a year after the workshop that helped change her life, Cynthia wrote, “My back is fantastic!!! I have absolutely NO physical limitations. I bend, stretch, and lift heavy objects, and best of all I continue to tap every single day. In the morning it is a ritual with me, and I tap as needed through the day. As you may know, I am a member of AlAnon, which has strict guidelines of using only their literature at meetings. On several occasions I have observed a person in extreme distress and after the meetings have shared EFT with them. It is amazing to watch someone go from frantic to relaxed in a matter of minutes. I am so blessed to have been exposed to EFT and am able to continue to use it for my own energy and share it with others.”

Regarding her relationship with her partner, she added, “The months following our November workshop were difficult. My partner’s behavior become increasingly erratic and I was coping with the additional stress of worrying about my stepfather in Indiana, who had been successfully living on a feeding tube for 10 years. However, after the death of my mother, he seemed to ‘shift’ his needs to me. I found myself traveling back and forth to Indiana every other month. Each time I traveled I returned home to a new crisis. Once on a return trip the bank actually called me in Indiana to say my mortgage had not been paid. Foolishly I had left the money with John for him to take to the bank while I was away.

“Finally in April, Dad moved in with us in New Jersey. Even though this move was sanctioned by my partner, things did not go well. John’s behavior became more bizarre. His drinking increased, but always in secret. He worked the overnight shift as a security guard at an adult community. His job was at the main gate house. He would disappear for several hours each day, claiming he was chatting with friends. I later found out he was visiting a female massage service … if you can interpret my indication. When he returned home he would sleep for an hour or so, get up, eat something, go back to bed, and the routine would go on like this until he left for work. The household became a prison for Dad and me. We tiptoed around, spoke in whispers, and stayed out of the house as much as possible.

“The last straw came when John called from work late one evening to fight with me. I told him I would be sleeping on the couch. He told me if I wasn’t in bed when he came home, he was going to throw me off the balcony. I hung up the phone and called the police. They advised me to leave the house for the evening. So we packed up Dad’s feeding pole and went to my daughter’s house. The next day I applied for a restraining order, which John violated, and he was taken to jail. I now have a permanent restraining order against him.”

Cynthia’s life became more stressful when her stepfather as hit by a truck while he was crossing a pedestrian crosswalk. Because of his age (82) and the seriousness of his condition (many broken bones), he has been moved several times from hospital to nursing home and back again. “But he is doing well,” she says, “and the doctor thinks that another six to eight weeks of physical therapy will enable him to come home and be able to walk with a walker.

“As far as recovering any monies that I lost ” she says, “I was advised by an attorney that I relinquished all those rights when I was forced to refinance my condo. Interesting how the law works … or doesn’t … isn’t it? I’m grateful to EFT for helping me deal with stressful moments. It has helped me cope with the things I can change and the things I can’t. Since my very first exposure to EFT, tapping has become a way of life for me. Just like coffee or tea in the morning. I am addicted to my daily dose of centering myself and getting my instant energy boost. I also tap during the day while at work and in times of stress. I do a quick body scan to find the EFT spot that seems to be seeking attention and silently tap that spot. It’s amazing how something so simple can give produce such an immediate response. I am a happy tapper and am forever grateful to you for teaching me the process.”

I recently had the unexpected and unpleasant experience of being betrayed by someone I thought was a friend. This was not a close friend but someone with whom I was on friendly terms, and with whom I thought there was mutual respect. Sometimes people are just not who you think they are.

I think anyone would feel upset by this and experience some hurt and anger. EFT has helped a lot as I’ve been working through my feelings. A few days ago, I began to have a sharp pain under my right shoulder blade. This is a vulnerable area where I had pulled a muscle exercising some weeks back, but this was a new and much sharper pain. Of course, I immediately thought, “my body is expressing this feeling of being stabbed in the back!” So I did lots of tapping around that idea. But to my surprise, there was no movement in the pain. No results. Zero change. It was at an 8 and stayed stubbornly at an 8. It was the kind of pain that only showed up when I made certain movements or took a deep breath. A half hour of tapping and the stabbing pain had not changed at all.

That night, it was hard to sleep because any wrong position brought up the sharp stabbing pain, and it was so severe that it would jolt me awake. The next day brought no change despite more tapping. It really did feel like a knife in the back, over and over. Whenever I made a wrong move, I would wince with pain. It was only during journaling on the third day that I realized maybe something else was involved as well.

Sometimes It’s Not What You Think

As I journaled, I was trying to trace exactly when the pain had started. It occurred to me that I had not felt it until after a walk in the woods on the day that it started. I’m keeping a friend’s dog for a few weeks and so we walk a lot in the nearby woods. This is a very sweet dog but he can be a little threatened by other dogs, so when we come across others walking their dogs, I simply ask them to keep their dog at a distance. (I’m quite close to my friend’s dog, so I will call him “my dog” in the rest of this article.)

That day in the woods, we had encountered a woman with two huge dogs, and she had them off-leash. I immediately leashed my dog and held him close and asked her politely to please keep her dogs at a distance. She refused and said nastily, “if you don’t get upset, there won’t be a problem.” By this time, her two huge dogs were all over my smaller dog, sniffing and nosing, and my dog was growling threateningly. I finally just pulled on the leash and started running away with my dog, narrowly avoiding a dogfight as they all broke into barking and snapping. I was angry and told the woman, “You asked for that!” She had the nerve to shoot back, “You should keep your dog under control!” Yet she had never leashed her own dogs or made the least effort to control them, despite my respectful request for that.

I remembered that I was seething with anger as we ran in the other direction, and that my back had been wrenched a bit as I tried to maneuver my dog out of there fast. It wasn’t long after that encounter that the stabbing pain had begun.

Just thinking about the incident made me feel really angry, so I decided to take a walk (in some different woods!) so I could “tap and rant.”

Tapping and Ranting

I’ve found this to be a great way to get anger out of my system. As I was walking and continuously tapping, I let that woman have it verbally:

How self-centered! How entitled!

I can’t believe some people!

Who does she think she is that she lets her dogs run roughshod over everyone else?

What a nasty person!

(and many words and expressions not suitable for printing!)

The great thing about tapping and ranting is that you can do this while walking outside and thus have the privacy to express whatever you need to and it does no harm. It doesn’t have to be noisy. I was almost whispering some of the words and, oh, did they feel good to say! Personally, I find that it helps to give my anger full expression in a way that hurts no one, with continuous tapping to release it fully from my system.

When I felt done, I moved my body in the way that had been bringing on the stabbing pain — and the pain was so much lighter! I took the first really deep breath in days. Only a small discomfort! Thank goodness. Finally, the sharp pain in my back had softened and was down to a 3 or so. Success! (Since that day it has continued to improve and is only a slight discomfort now.)

Reflections

I found it fascinating that my body could not seem to release the pain until I tapped for the specific incident that was locked up there. And yet my emotions about that were, I believe, very related to the bigger issue I was dealing with. These are pointers I gleaned from this experience:

- Trace puzzling physical effects to exactly when they began.

In this case, being very literally specific was what made the difference. Even though the dog incident was much less important to me than the betrayal I was dealing with, the emotions around it had really gotten stuck and were causing me physical distress.

- Be aware of synchronicity.

The Jungian concept of “synchronicity” is that of meaningful coincidences. The woman with the dogs “betrayed” my expectation that neighbors would be courteous and helpful. The “how could she do that to me?” feeling was just the way I was feeling about the other person. Somehow, that small incident seemed to mirror the larger one.

- Realize that an on-going stress can make you physically vulnerable.

Without the stress I was already feeling, the incident with the dogs would have been upsetting but probably without such a strong physical impact. I was already feeling “stabbed in the back” — how easy it was for my body to lock up around my anger and outrage at that moment.

By the way, healing the emotions for the dog incident seemed to go a long way towards releasing my anger about the other situation as well. It is almost as if the seemingly unrelated incident allowed me to bring these emotions into sharp focus so that the tapping could clear them. I love the way healing sometimes comes to us in mysterious and unexpected ways.

The process of uncovering the connection between physical pain and possible emotional contributors to the pain excites me. As a Holistic Wellness Counselor/EFT Practitioner, it continues to fascinate me to see how interwoven the two are.

This doesn’t diminish or take away from the validity or truth of our physical ailments. But rather, what’s important in our journey to healing is to discover how our emotional issues can fuel the pain and hold us back from healing.

I had a client, a fellow in his late twenties, come to me for back pain. He’d read about EFT and wanted to give it a try for the pain. He explained to me how he exercises, works out regularly, has tried physical therapy, acupuncture, sees a chiropractor every week, and yet he still has back pain. His MRIs showed nothing to account for the amount of pain he suffers. He’s driven himself mercifully trying to get rid of this pain.

We started off by tapping on the physical pain and frustration:

Even though I have this problem; I’ve had it for years—this back pain that doesn’t go away, even after trying everything to heal it. I’m discouraged and frustrated by this lack of healing.

I’m angry about it. It depresses me. After all this effort, it should be better! It doesn’t feel fair. I feel cheated. I should be better and stronger. I’ve worked so hard at trying to get rid of this back pain.

My back pain should be gone—it’s not fair. But despite this back pain I deeply and completely love and accept myself.

We tapped on each of the sequence points, saying “this back pain, which won’t heal” and “I’m discouraged and angry”

As we talked and tapped we discovered that the first time he had back pain was as a young teen, when he started vigorously lifting weights to build himself up. He was always the skinny kid and tired of being teased. So, he engaged in dangerously aggressive physical workouts in an attempt to improve his body

We explored and tapped on being not good enough, not built up enough, being too skinny, and all of those related issues.

We next uncovered that his mother didn’t think he was good enough and told him he wouldn’t amount to anything. So we tapped on a few specific events dealing with his mother.

As we continued to tap on all of these specific events (“table legs”), slowly the issue of not being good enough and not looking good enough started to collapse. As the table legs (events) started to collapse, he noticed his back pain starting to diminish. This didn’t happen after one session, but after about a half dozen sessions.

Equally important, he started to feel lighter, more tolerant, and accepting, and more relaxed about life in general. He noticed these shifts even before his back pain started to improve! He said he no longer felt quite so critical of himself or others.

We always finished our sessions with a round of sequence point tapping and some positive affirmations. Since we’d cleared his energy system of disruptions from negative feelings, we wanted to reprogram his subconscious with positive replacement thoughts such as these.

I am on a wonderful journey towards complete healing
I look good and I feel good
My back is strong and healthy
I let go of the need to be perfect
I accept myself the way I am
I heal easily and fully
My back is strong and flexible and feels good today
Everyday I am learning to appreciate myself more
I am choosing to enjoy life
I’m choosing to be happy and to accept myself

Jessie Wyatt