How To Soften Resistance To Change
Do you feel resistance to change?
If you have used EFT / Tapping for any length of time you will probably know that some thoughts feelings and behaviours can be difficult to shift.
This can be confusing, if you really want to change, the resistance to it doesn’t make any sense.
One way of understanding this is to give up the idea that you are a single, unitary, individual (which is what your conscious mind would have you believe) and think of yourself as a system of many parts, most of which are at work below the level of consciousness.
It’s as if the conscious self is the captain of a ship, choosing a course and giving commands, and all the other parts are the ship’s crew: sailors, engineers, deckhands who actually do the work.
If the captain and the crew are in alignment about what to do and where to go then the ship works well. If there is conflict between the captain and the crew then problems may arise.
A lot of resistance to change can come from a conflict between different aspects of ourselves.
Our conscious mind wants to make the change - lose the difficult emotion, change the unhelpful behaviour or dissolve the limiting belief - that’s why we are doing the tapping after all. Other parts of ourselves below our conscious minds may have different ideas about what we need and resist our conscious intention.
Your resistance may be trying to keep you safe
It’s easy to get annoyed with this resistance if it blocks your way, but it is there for a purpose, usually to protect you. Our resistance to change is one way that our system tries to protect us from danger.
Many of our danger protection systems are installed at an early age. These danger detectors are built to cope with the situation as it existed back then, using the capabilities you had at the time.
Over the years those systems have been streamlined and forgotten, woven into the fabric of your being.
In some cases the danger you are being protected from has long gone, but the protection system runs on regardless, being triggered by situations that seem threatening. Like many problems, they are solutions that have gone well past their sell-by date.
Since protection from danger is a prime motivation for our system as a whole, trying to tap your way past it may be very difficult.
In this tapping process, “I want and I don’t want”, we take pains to acknowledge any resistance and tap with it, rather than against it.
If you find for some reason that you are not getting over a difficulty, or feeling, or a behaviour that is stuck, this little tapping technique may help you loosen the resistance that holds it in place.
Instructions
Tap on two alternating statements
I want to get over this, and I don’t want to get over this
- EB: I want to get over this
- SE: and I don’t want to get over this
- UE: and I want to get over this
- UN: and I don’t want to get over this
- CH: and I want to get over this
- CB: and I don’t want to get over this
- UA: and I want to get over this
- TH: and I don’t want to get over this
By alternating “I want to get over this” which is what your conscious mind wants and “I don’t want to get over this” which is acknowledging the part of you that resists it; and in joining those two thoughts in the same tapping statement with an and, you can acknowledge both sides of that inner conflict and tap it through.
As you work through these rounds of tapping you may find that you have some thoughts and ideas popping into your mind about why you want to get over this and why you don’t want to get over this.
Those thoughts and ideas may give you a little more clarity on what you want to do and it may give you further material for tapping and help you come to the right decision for you.
This process will help you clear out some of the internal conflict and clutter that gets in the way of a sound decision and taking action.
It may even become clear that what the conscious mind originally wanted was not the right thing for you at that moment.
Variations on a theme
You might find these alternative phrases better fit your situation.
- I want to change and and I want to stay the same
- I don’t want to feel this and I do want to feel this
- I want to let go of this and I want to hang on to this
- I want to change this behaviour and I want to do things the same old way.
Each of these variations is a slightly different way of expressing the “I want to change, and I don’t want to change” conflict.
This tapping process is designed to acknowledge and soften the conflict rather than give either side the ability to ride roughshod over the other.
Image by 00luvicecream from Pixabay