EFT with some NLP

EFT? Wasn’t that a Michael Jackson song? Well no… NLP is an acronym for Neuro-Linguistic Programming and EFT is another acronym for Emotional Freedom Technique.

I came across an article describing EFT that led me to this site. After my interest was piqued I found a practioner of both NLP and EFT in my area and set up an appointment.

Background info on the two techniques:

Neuro-Linguistic Programming was developed in the early to mid 70’s by John Grinder and Richard Bandler and is a set of techniques to improve how you think, behave and feel.

Emotional Freedom Technique is a unique version of accu-pressure where by you tap various meridian points on your body with your fingertips to rid yourself of “negative emotions”. The reason people believe this works so well is because it releases unresolved negative emotions associated with most physical pains and diseases.

Okay, so this is all well and good, but does this stuff work?

My therapist was a pleasant woman who hails from England and had actually trained with Richard Bandler. The first part of our session began with her asking me what sort of issues I wanted to sort out and wanted to overcome by using EFT. After a few rounds of questioning she was able to put together a mental profile of me.

She asked me to pick a past event that was uncomfortable or painful to me and to describe how that event made me feel. I selected an event and the emotion I felt and then she told me to say this phrase “Even though I feel (emotion, plus the reason for the emotion) , I deeply and profoundly accept myself.”

Now, you say this affirmation 3 times while tapping the outside part of your palm (karate chop area) with your other fingers. Once the affirmation has been said 3 times you take your dominate hand, using your index and fore fingers together, and tap meridian points along your face, chest, rib cage and head. Each meridian point is tapped 7 times. After tapping the meridian point on the head you take a deep breath and think about the event again and gauge how it makes you feel.

My first attempt at this didn’t do much to change how I felt about the past event. So my therapist questioned me further about the event and I responded with a different emotion, an emotion I never associated with the event before. I did the affirmation 3 times again, but replaced the old emotion with the newly discovered one, went through the meridian points, took a deep breath and thought about the event.

While thinking about this event I began to smile then even began to LAUGH!!! I was honestly laughing about this event! I asked my therapist what was going on and she told me I was releasing the negative emotion. She told me some people burp (like her), some laugh (like me) and others do other things.

Looking back on this, and doing some additional reading on EFT, I believe the ”trick” to EFT is to get to the root negative emotion regarding a past event. You must get to the root emotion of that event for the emotion to be “overwritten”.

Unfortunately, EFT isn’t covered by insurance, but the goal of EFT and NLP is to give you the tools to treat yourself so you don’t need to see a therapist for years and years. The number of sessions needed depends on the person and their individual needs, but my therapist said it normally takes any where from 3 - 6 sessions.

I was so pleased with the results of my session that I’ve made another appointment. I’ll be posting my results soon.

“positive” Monkey out