Phobia Help: EFT
What’s available? Try EFT
What can help you manage your fear?
Virtual reality software is currently being tested, but not regularly used. Traditionally, the only way to get a handle on your fear of water has been “exposure therapy” – supervised, gradual experience with water – known as swim lessons. I support that way for you. But first.
It’s also important to prepare mentally for your classes, in order to keep relaxed. Relaxation techniques can be taught in class. But how else can you face your fear as you prepare for a teacher, swim classes, and a pool?
Emotional Freedom Techniques
There’s a treatment I admire and respect; some of you may have heard of it. It’s called Emotional Freedom Techniques, or EFT.
EFT has a high success rate, it’s affordable or often free of charge to learn and use it for yourself: in person, by phone, or online, using Skype, for example, with a therapist, no matter where you live. OK.
Briefly, EFT can be explained like this:
We are all made of subtle electrical energy. We measure this energy when we have an EEG (brain) or EKG (heart) test performed to check our health, or even determine whether we are alive. Every doctor depends on these reports. Yet there is so much more to the energy systems that make up our life and our health.
Acupuncturists have treated patients via their bodily “meridians,” or subtle energy circuits for over 5,000 years. Your subtle energy flow, known as “chi,”, “ki,” “prana,” depending on your part of the world. This energy feeds both the body and the emotions, practically speaking.
How did your fear of water start? Some people remember how it started, while some others no longer do.
What about you? You might have a strong memory of the moment your fear of water started. An energy disruption happened then. But, as the principle goes, your memories are not the cause of your fear. That long-ago energy disruption within your electrical system is the cause. Correct that, and the corresponding negative emotion is thus also corrected.
To repeat: your fear is rooted in an imbalance or disruption in your energy circuit. This electrical disruption is the source of your problem, according to energy-based principles.
How to do EFT on yourself
Okey-dokey. So,
you tap yourself with your fingers on a certain set of meridian endpoints, as you declare what your fear is and affirm that you accept yourself,
while you dwell on your fear of water. Just briefly think about it, or mention your fear out loud; it’s enough to work.
The tapping sends out pulses along that certain meridian, rebalancing the energy disruption that feeds your emotions – say, your fear of water.
The energy disruption is corrected, and the unwanted emotion disappears, replaced by a calming relief. You are still yourself, only no longer so afraid of water. You will be ready to start lessons and the life of a beginning swimmer.
Can you believe it?
The first EFT case
Fabulously, the earliest form of EFT, called Thought Field Therapy, was first discovered in 1980 by psychologist Dr. Roger Callahan, while treating a patient with a severe – guess! – water phobia.
After a year and a half of trying conventional psychological teatment, Dr. Callahan tried tapping under his patient’s eyes, at the endpoint of the stomach meridian.
Like that, the phobia disappeared, and the patient promptly hied off to the nearest pool (this was Southern California) and began to splash water on her face. Phobia resolved.
This patient didn’t lose her common sense, however, only her fear. She was rational as she went to the water. She knew she needed to learn to swim next. And, she made this decision without dread.
Discover for yourself…
It’s not possible to state that one round of tapping will eliminate your fear of water. EFT does merit a closer look, however.
Here’s the primary link to all things EFT: http://www.emofree.com
Find an EFT practitioner/therapist near you:
For a fascinating explanation of energy psychology as the future of therapy, I highly recommend this article: http://noetic.org/noetic/issue-thirteen-august/energy-psychology
Meet Tam Lewellyn-Edwards, one formerly water-phobic man, who was treated with EFT in 1999. He has been completely free of his fear of water ever since.
