“Jane” had just about run out of excuses. A year after moving, a jumble of unsorted boxes filled every room in her house. She was embarrassed to let anyone come over and was feeling paralyzed and hopeless. She’d even hired a professional organizer to help, to no avail. Her home had become a place of despair and her only relief was in staying away.
Jane’s story helped put the situation into perspective. Her husband Jim was in long decline from Parkinson’s disease. After 50 years of marriage, they’d sold their beloved family home to move into a much smaller place in an assisted living community. This was a painful move for Jane and with all the boxes to be sorted her distress was ongoing.
She was sick of living in clutter and chaos, but Jane just couldn’t focus and would become confused and distracted every time she tried to start unpacking. She was quite worried about having developed ADD.
We began tapping with: “Even though I feel so overwhelmed with all these boxes, I deeply love and completely accept myself”…“Even though I feel confused and get distracted…” As we continued, quite a few issues surfaced and we simply “daisy chained” into each new aspect of the situation.
Next up was “Even though I should be able to handle this…” Here we tapped away Jane’s anger and frustration with herself, along with guilt and fear of judgment from others. This lead to a strong feeling of constriction in her chest and throat: “Even though I have this constriction…” As we tapped on the physical sensations, emotions of sadness and grief came up, and we tapped on those in turn.
Her sadness lead deeper into feelings of loneliness: “Even though I’m alone in this, Jim can’t help me and if I don’t do it nothing happens…” “Even though it’s all up to me…”
Tapping for loneliness naturally lead us into the reality of Jim’s Parkinson’s: “Even though he’ll never use those tools again…” (this was a big one!). Tapping on this grief and sadness was very effective and brought Jane’s overall intensity down to around a zero.
At this point Jane was feeling terrific relief and it was tempting to end the session right there and call it a success. But because we were doing a phone session, and Jane was at home and still surrounded by stacks of unsorted boxes, I wanted to really test our results, so I had her open up the nearest box and look through the contents.
Coming face to face with Jim’s letters home from the war, and all of his books that she’d have to decide whether to let go, her “zero” intensity quickly rose to about a 6 or 7! We tapped again on some of the earlier themes: “It’s up to me, I have to make these decisions alone, he’ll never be able to use that again, so many decisions, it’s overwhelming”.
Then we came upon a new theme: “If I let go of this stuff, I’ll be letting go of my past, of my history with Jim…and maybe I’ll forget…maybe I’ll lose my memories…” This was a deep-seated fear, but it cleared very quickly and Jane actually began laughing. As we tapped, her terror of forgetting their life together began to seem ludicrous.
At this time I threw in some reframes as we tapped around the points: “What if I could actually enjoy this process? What if it gave me pleasure going through these things? What if I could collect all of the happy memories held by these objects as they pass through my hands, just like a bee collecting pollen to make honey?”
We also tapped on “Even though I’ve had so much dread about dealing with the past, I’m also excited about what I can do with this room once it’s cleared out, and I’ve got a beautiful future ahead of me”. For the first time, Jane began picturing the room as it might be, and this gave her surprising pleasure!
By the end of our session Jane was laughing and felt eager to tackle the boxes. That she might actually enjoy the process seemed incredible, and would have seemed impossible even 20 minutes earlier. Her fears of having ADD had vanished.
I suggested she do a few quick rounds of tapping before opening each box, just to sustain the good feeling: “Even if I do get stuck or overwhelmed dealing with this stuff, I choose to collect and enjoy all of the wonderful memories held by these objects, and release the objects themselves without fear, for others to use and enjoy”.
This session showed me how important it can be, whenever we’re stuck and procrastinating, to deal with our feelings using EFT. Even the best organizational strategies are pretty much useless when we’re swamped with emotions. I’m so grateful for this amazing healing tool.
Copyright Rob Nelson 2019
