In the ‘be positive at all costs’ popular culture experiencing resistance or engaging in self-sabotage is seen as a ‘bad thing’, something to be overcome or eliminated.
If you experience resistance or self-sabotage you might feel lacking, defective or even morally defective and, if you are really unlucky, other people will agree with you.
I think the conventional ‘wisdom’ that resistance and self-sabotage are bad and should be treated like some kind of mental leprosy is wrong and may even make things worse.
I think there is a more useful explanation for resistance and self-sabotage.
One of the many things life is good at is presenting us with challenging situations.
We might have to speak in public, go through difficult medical procedures, visit relatives we can’t stand, deal with angry customers and do many more things that we would prefer not to.
You could just grit your teeth and get on with it or you could use tapping processes to ease your apprehension and find the resources you need to be the best you can be in that situation.
So, you might start looking for tapping scripts that ‘work’ for your problem. You might hope with just a few rounds of tapping that you can go from stressed / distressed / anxious / terrified to calm / centred / happy / relaxed.
It’s a simple solution that probably won’t work.
In a culture that values ‘positive’ feelings and rejects (or fears) ‘negative’ feelings many people focus on getting past feeling bad to feeling good as quickly as possible. They hope that if the tapping ends on a high note then all will be well.
In the understandable desire for (premature) reassurance we try to speed past difficult feelings and get to the enjoyable ones.
Unfortunately, to genuinely access your emotional resources it’s more effective to resolve what gets in their way.
If you search for ” EFT / Tapping + ‘your problem’ ” on the Internet it won’t take you long to find some tapping scripts.
On the face of it tapping scripts are a bargain.
Just find a script that fits ‘your problem’, tap along and ‘your problem’ will be solved.
A tapping script is a list of phrases created by someone who is trying to cover all the possible aspects that they can think of with their idea of ‘your problem’.
All you have to do is tap along with the script / audio / video.
It’s easy, the author takes you where they think you need to go, all you have to do is follow along.
Tapping/EFT is an excellent self-help tool. It’s a simple way to soothe emotional stress and remove personal difficulties.
All you need to do is notice what is going on in your thoughts and feelings, then direct your tapping to soothe those troublesome memories, emotions or beliefs.
Using EFT on memories, emotions or beliefs can be quite straightforward, especially if you know what to tap on.
But sometimes it can be difficult to use tapping for self-help, because it can be hard to tap for ourselves, while we are in the middle of what we are tapping on.
Working on your own stuff can be difficult because:
When you are on the inside of the problem you are affected by the feelings and emotions of that problem. If the problem is upsetting or scary you will be upset or scared. It’s difficult to do good work if you are feeling strong emotions.
When you are inside the problem you see the problem through the perspective of the problem, it is as if you are wearing ‘problem goggles’. For example: if the problem is that you think there is nothing you can do to help yourself, that belief will get in the way of working on that belief because you will think there is nothing you can do to help yourself.
When you are inside a problem it’s hard to see what’s going on – it’s easier to read the label when you are outside the jar. Being a human is complicated. We are full of contradictory thoughts, feelings and responses, in so much confusion it can be difficult to see what is important. To people on the outside it might be obvious, but when you are on the inside it’s not so clear.
This is why working with another person who can see what you can’t see and guide your tapping accordingly can be so helpful.
A skilled EFT practitioner won’t be feeling what you are feeling, they won’t be wearing your ‘problem goggles’ and from the outside they can sometimes see what is going on in us more clearly.
But, there is never another tapper around when you need one!
What if you could more easily see what needs to be done and more easily work with it?
3rd Person tapping helps you be both on the inside and outside of the problem.
By asking surprisingly simple questions we can work with our stuff as if we were someone else and gain a little extra distance and perspective to help our tapping do the work it needs to do.
Even though they come and go our thoughts are constant companions.
We don’t ask for them, they seem to arise of their own accord.
Sometimes our thoughts are helpful and pleasing to us.
Sometimes our thoughts can be like barbed hooks running through our mind.
When those thoughts catch our minds, they dig in and we get pulled where we don’t want to go.
As babies we have an unfiltered experience of the world. We see, hear and feel things, our inner lives are a chaos of sensations and impressions.
As we grow up we learn to think to make sense of the world. Thinking helps us make some sense out of the chaos. We learn to throw nets of thoughts over our experience to understand what is happening and to help us to decide what to do.
That’s an amazing achievement for our minds, but there is a problem.
You may have noticed that life is full of challenges.
If you are reading this you will already have experienced and survived many difficult situations.
It’s more than likely that life will continue to provide us all with more challenges.
Some challenges are completely unexpected and we have to deal with them as best we can.
Sometimes we know about situations in advance, so we have lots of time to imagine how difficult they will be, and how badly we will handle them.
There are lots of things we might not look forward to including:
interviews
holidays
medical & dental appointments
exams
social events
public speaking
meetings
…
It’s easy to use EFT to take the charge out of these difficult events after they have happened. But how do you use tapping to make future challenges like this much more bearable, or even, enjoyable?
One of the many things life is good at is presenting us with challenging situations.
If you search for ” EFT / Tapping + ‘your problem’ ” on the Internet it won’t take you long to find some tapping scripts.
