Emotional Freedom Therapy Sounds Crazy

My aunt, Ada, is kind of kooky sometimes. She has always been very into self-help stuff. She has a guru lady she sees periodically and a chiropractor who always has her on some detox or supplement and gives her (really good, actually) nutritional advice that has helped her with minor pain issues (like how sodas cause inflammation - she can turn her neck pain on by drinking a Coke). Don’t get me wrong; I like kooky! Her latest thing has been a group of women she meets with every other week or so and the goal is to gain freedom from emotions running your life by doing all these exercises. A lot of the stuff she has told me about is pretty good stuff to reflect on, like how much control we really have in our lives when we can have more control of our emotions and how often we create these realities out of false statements by just stating that things are so (like “This is too hard for me to handle’). . “Tapping” is something she told me about a few months ago and it sounded like hooey to me so I didn’t bother trying it even though she kept telling me how well it was working for her and how much she thought it could help. Apparently the therapist who runs the group volunteers with an organization that goes to different areas where disasters have occurred and they use tapping to help people get over their post traumatic stress. Here is how it works, essentially: you choose an issue and think about how you feel when you are in the moment or whatever. You tap on a series of accupressure points (above the eyebrows, side of the eye, under the eye, and so on) while you repeat a simple affirmation, Well, we went for a visit after she had been telling me to try it for weeks and she made me walk through it one night. I chose the issue of not being able to sleep very quickly after going to bed. I often only get four hours of uninterrupted sleep and would frequently spend an hour trying to fall asleep. So I put myself in the moment and began tapping and repeating the affirmation after her and as I did I swear to you there was some sort of electric charge that seemed to shoot from my fingers and just radiate out as I tapped and I was completely overwhelmed - it felt like a release - just a huge flood. I cried as I stopped repeating her simple affirmation and walked through the rest of the points on my own, working out that it takes me so long to fall asleep at 3:00 because so often I was spending from 2:00 on over Ollie with a loud suction machine as he dealt with another episode related to his medical issues and then going from that intense situation where in the back of my mind I am very aware how serious it is that I am having to manually clear my child’s airway and there have been times it’s so intense I end up peeing myself because I have to go so bad and I can’t walk away for even 30 seconds. It’s a heavy load being so responsible for someone’s airway. It’s hard to transition from that role to sleeping peacefully (no shit). As I worked this all out in just a few moments, that being so wound up was not going to allow me to sleep so I needed to stop being so wound up as soon as my head hit that pillow, I felt that tide of relief and energy slow and I felt so much more at peace. The mind is a powerful thing. I once started to read The Power of Mind, a Christian Science book, because a friend of mine’s dad was into that and I was fascinated by how much the mind can do. I was able to convince myself to stop hiccuping in my first meditation. Now, I almost always only hiccup once and then I remember that I have the power to control it, as I’ve proven time and again over the years, so I simply stop it. It doesn’t ALWAYS work, but maybe only six or seven times over 25 years have I not been able to stop them immediately after the first hiccup. So, it does not seem impossible to me that this technique works using nothing more than the power of suggestion, but so what? Since that night I have never taken more than twenty or thirty minutes to doze off after going to sleep and usually it’s just ten! Tapping helped me with anger when Oliver would wake up in the night, so often JUST as I had dozed off next to him. I found myself getting frustrated and talking through clenched teeth and not being a nice mommy. I want him to think of me as kind, loving, and patient and he has never done anything to be deserving of me being mean so this was an issue that was really weighing on me. I tapped it out and came to so many little understandings. Just allowing myself forgiveness because it’s natural to be grouchy when you are not getting enough sleep and the little bonus sleep you try and get each night doesn’t happen or the naptime that is supposed to be your chance to get something done gets reduced to a half hour because he decides he has had enough sleep. But it’s not his FAULT and he should not be on the receiving end of my bad mood. Is it the tapping that helped me get that anger under control or was it just taking the time to reflect on where those emotions where coming from and focusing solely on the issue? I don’t care! Because since then I have had maybe one or two episodes where I just wanted to put him in his mother f-ing crib and walk away (which you usually can’t do that when your kid has a trach because you’ll have to keep running in to suction) and otherwise I have handled all episodes with love and tenderness and guess what. When I’m not all worked up those episodes don’t last nearly as long. I used tapping after Oliver’s first trip into Barnes & Noble after being isolated from the public for so long. I found myself not looking at people as we walked around. I had to suction him a few times. I know people were aware of his trach and when i realized that I was avoiding people’s eyes it bothered me because I didn’t understand why. That is not my style. It bothered me for days afterward and when I addressed it during a tapping session I worked out that it wasn’t that I was ashamed of my son or that I was embarrassed because I am not. It was that I didn’t want to have to even wonder what they might be thinking or see them look weirded out because I’m pretty observant and all it would take would be a flick of the eyes or a slight turn of the mouth and it would speak volumes I just didn’t want to hear. I just tuned them out so that I could enjoy the memory with Ollie (who LOVES books) and not have to think about them at all. I forgave myself and accepted myself and now I don’t bother avoiding anyone’s eyes because what I also worked through during that tapping session was that I really do not care if someone is made uncomfortable by my son or any of his medical accessories. I am made uncomfortable by a lot of people every day for one reason or another. That’s life! I actually kind of enjoy tube feeding him in public and talking to people about it. As long as they don’t get too close! Anyway, the idea of tapping away your troubles might seem silly, but the fact is that we go through a whole hell of a lot when we are special needs parents - the shock, the grief over things you had anticipated that probably aren’t going to happen, the upheaval of your life, the extra work, the things you mourn for your child that he may not get to experience. We are SuperParents and can totally handle this, BUT it’s hard and if there is something that can help anyone else cope with the kinds of things I’ve been dealing with I want to share it, even if it sounds too good to be true and you now think I’m a nut. Please give it a try if you think it would help to have fewer meltdowns or blue days. I believe it’s really helped me a lot! Here is all you need to know to get started: http://eft.mercola.com/