In the beginning of my practice 14 years ago, I was incredibly excited to help people with my new tool, EFT tapping.
Many clients expected a large issue would simply vanish in one single appointment. I was inexperienced and could not yet explain how that was not realistic. I might even have had that same expectation and inadvertently caused huge pressure for myself and the clients.
Are One Minute Wonders the norm?
Gary Craig (creator of EFT) often talked about a “One Minute Wonder”. That’s a session where we’d tap for a couple of minutes on an issue, and it would completely vanish. No signs of the issue after one tapping session, and the results would last.
It did and does happen. And… that’s not the norm!
Now, with 14 years of EFT practice under my belt and working with many different situations, issues and people, I’m so clear on this:
An issue does not usually disappear in one session.
We peel the layers of it, one by one, step by step.
Everything is connected, even our issues
I usually work with my clients in 3-month programs for this exact reason. That offers us the best chance to work through many different aspects of their challenge.
Many times, our problems are interlinked and interlaced. Working on one, has benefits elsewhere too.
For instance – a client might have challenges with boundaries in a relationship. And also with practicing self-care. And also with burn-out at work.
Working on one of these issues will have ripple effects in the other areas – because they have common roots.
An example:
Recently I worked with someone who is facing the scary leap of leaving the relationship he’s in. It’s terrifying, yet he knows he cannot stay. His heart was clear about the decision. Yet, there were parts of him that were not on board. He felt out of alignment. Parts of him needed to leave, and parts of him still had reasons for staying.
There are many different layers here.
One session can do a lot to relieve and process some of the emotional layers, so there’s more ease to move forward with the decision. And… there are many layers of loss, uncertainty, fear, guilt, feeling responsible, feeling angry with self, childhood events that play a role in how it’s turned out… and more.
How do we get the best results with EFT tapping?
It’s important to work slowly and thoroughly through all the pieces of an issue.
It’s not realistic or fair to expect ourselves (and a practitioner) to rush through and dust off “a problem” in a session.
When a client wants a quick fix, I explain this clearly and calmly. I don’t offer quick fixes.
Yes, EFT can often have very fast results. Most of our problems though, are complex and multi-layered and have many branches. For a complex problem we need patience and persistence and definitely more than one session.
EFT works. But when we try to rush the process and “do it all” in one session, we might think it doesn’t.
Our inner world is like a garden
Think of an overgrown garden that’s been neglected and left to grow wild for a few years. It’s not possible for even the world’s most experienced gardener, to tame it in one hour.
Of course I’m not saying my clients are neglected gardens. Their inner world might be, though.
Usually people seek help when a challenge has been around for a while, and it’s grown too painful to manage by themselves. By the time they arrive in my virtual office, the problem is significant and complex.
We tend to their inner garden with kindness, patience, love, compassion and enough time to see all the garden beds that need loving attention, pruning, water, fertilizer, and new seedlings.
Questions?
Feel free to ask about EFT or the way I work. It might become the next article or video, and help others too!
