On a Business Note:
Clearing out our Cluttered
Emotional Cupboard
I giggled recently when I read an article saying ‘The queen of clean Marie Kondo has said she has “kind of given up” on tidying since the birth of her third child.’
I must admit my first reaction was “That thought sparks joy for me!” I used to feel somewhat
inadequate when I thought of her tidy, uncluttered home with a few objects she loves.
Emotional clutter, however, is a different story for me. Emotions and their impact on our lives is one of my favourite topics.
The thing is - though I’ve been an EFT practitioner for 16 years
and have done a lot of clearing-out work over those years, I’m human just like you and still have plenty of emotional objects I don’t love!
Recently I had a session with my own practitioner. Even though I can do my own tapping very effectively, it’s not the most effective or smart thing to tap on our own ‘biggies’ (why, is a topic for another article).
One of my Biggies
Something happened for me when I was 33: a whole 22 years ago. It was a pretty indigestible event and I won’t share the details because of the personal nature. The chain of events flowing from it was going to have far-reaching effects for many years to come.
At the time I felt completely powerless, and incredibly angry. I could not understand that person’s behaviour. I remember the utter desperation at the time, the hurt… the lengths I went to, to resolve it (unsuccessfully). It felt unforgiveable. I also felt ashamed, guilty, revengeful, disappointed. So many emotions.
Yet I tried to forgive because I wanted to be a good person and not carry a grudge. So I ‘thought’ I forgave and then met up with the person again a few months later, almost to prove that I wasn’t holding any grudges.
Contrary to my thought of forgiveness, it was still alive and well in my memories and emotional brain, and not really over. At the time I didn’t
have anything like EFT to help me work through it. In stressful times, the brain safely tucks events away to reference it for later use. It checks against past events to see if we’re safe now and in the future.
This memory popped up from time to time. Not in a big way, just enough for me to vaguely realise it’s not resolved.
We all do that right? We have to get on with living ‘now’ so we just shove that memory back into the dark corner of the cupboard and carry on.
Recently it came up in my weekly EFT session. I knew it was finally time to clean out this corner of the cupboard. And man, was it dark, musty, and dense with
cobwebs!
How it Worked
In a complex story like this that involves a period (as opposed to just a single 10 minute event) there can be many different intense peaks, smaller peaks, pictures, sounds, other senses and emotions stuck in our brain and nervous
system.
So how do we go about to clear it out? One piece at a time – just like eating that poor proverbial elephant.
It’s important to handle a life-changing story or event bit by bit to clear out all the emotional components of it. I had images stuck in my mind all these
years that didn’t cause much distress when I briefly thought of them. But in this session when I had the time and space to focus on it with a compassionate, non-judgmental practitioner, it surprised me how all the emotions came flooding back again.
That’s what I hear from most of my clients, too… they say things like “I truly did not realise I still felt so much emotion about it! It’s so
far back in the past!”
But does it Hurt?
When we tap the EFT points while we remember a distressing time in our lives, it takes the sting out of it. It’s not like we have to experience all the rawness again as if we’re back in it. That’s exactly what we avoid in an EFT
session.
Our aim is to make it as painless as possible while thoroughly processing it out of the system. So yes, we do feel some of the emotion and that’s normal. Yet certified practitioners have learned techniques to make it safer, far less painless and quicker to let the body know it’s over and we’re safe now.
So I worked my way bit by bit through that traumatic time. We addressed all the different emotions, the images stuck in my brain, and what I made it mean.
That’s often why painful events stick with us for such a long time: we unconsciously make it mean something painful. Aaother way of saying this, is we create or adopt a belief about ourselves or life. In this
case, my events meant I was unloved, powerless, helpless, I would be judged and cast out, and no-one could ever find out. Quite the burden!
At the end of the session, we did another check (like a run-through on Fast Forward) to see if there were any emotions or unresolved pieces left behind. There were a few aspects that popped up at the end and we tapped through those,
too.
What does EFT Tapping really do?
Tapping helps the amygdala to calm down about something so that we feel safe again. It switches off or at least minimises the fight/flight/freeze response about that specific thing, and its
associations.
Tapping also has the natural effect that we can then see things in a different light. We gain insight into the situation; we have a different perspective. Then we can glean the learnings instead of being stuck in the suffering and “Why, oh why”.
What can
one Expect after a Session?
By the end of the session, I felt wonderfully light and free. It felt like someone had given my brain and whole being a good scrub in all the corners. It’s difficult to describe in words the freedom one feels when an old troublesome memory feels and even looks completely different. No charge, no hurt. The visual memories seemed further away, blurred, or looked
completely different.
What showed up was a new understanding and perspective on the whole story. I felt ‘clean’ from the inside out and experienced the biggest peace imaginable.
Over the next few days, my brain kept going back to the memory and this time, with a completely different
feeling. I felt gratitude for the experience, instead of the usual “ouch” and then shoving it down again.
Some people (including me) sigh or yawn a lot during a session. And sometimes even for hours afterward. It's a wonderful sign that the nervous system has started to relax. Sometimes, physical symptoms we had before the session can disappear or heal. A stomach issue I've had, started feeling
better shortly after this session. The body is amazing - it can do the healing when we're not burdened with extra clutter.
Of course, now I think “Why did I wait so long to tackle this?”
There can be many reasons, and maybe you can
identify with some:
- We’ve ‘moved on’, or so we think.
- We don’t really realise how much past memories still affect us.
- We’re focused on now, today, tomorrow and the
future.
- We are told not to dwell on unhappy times.
- We’ve got more important fish to fry.
- We’ve got so many tasks in our daily lives to get through that a memory from the past hardly
seems worth going back to.
- And we think we’ve forgiven.
The truth is that most of our unhappy memories can probably still evoke emotion in an empathic, safe space. I’ve seen it happen time and time again. And that means, it’s not really fully processed and behind us. There's
something there to look at.
Those memories continue to have an impact on our physical body, our mind, our wellbeing - even though we’re not consciously aware of it.
So to paraphrase Marie Kondo:
Think of a memory from the past. If it does not spark joy, see an EFT practitioner!
