Self Healing Portal

This article takes a look at the benefits of involving others in our healing. It is based on my own experience of discovering that I have built a healing team around me, and offers insight into how powerful this can be.

This article by guest writer Noreen Barron looks at some of the factors that might be contributing to our difficulty involving others in our healing. Many thanks to Noreen for sharing this excellent article with us – trusting ourselves is the foundation of our ability to trust others and something that most of us can benefit from spending time on.

This is a phrase that I recently learnt and have used extensively to great benefit in my EFT tapping. This article is also a good example of the power of doing healing with our inner child/younger selves.

It could be easy for people to think that because I’m a big advocate for self healing that I do all my healing on my own, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. While I am a real fan of being empowered to do a lot of healing on my own, I’m also a great believer in the benefits of being a part of a healing team. This article looks at some of those benefits, by looking at my own healing team.

My early experiences of doing sessions with a wonderful friend of mine who practiced a method of healing (a forerunner to the energy psychology methods we use now) taught me the power of two people coming together with the intention of healing. My healing team seems to have changed form over the years since we worked together, with different people and modalities coming and going based on what I most need at the time. Here are the parts that currently make up my healing team, with thoughts on how they support me far more than I would be supported if I was working alone:

As well as help from the people around me, Reiki has been a major support for me. I feel that my healing journey really began when I learnt Reiki and it has been a guiding force on my journey ever since. I start and end each day with Reiki and am very thankful for the still, quiet space in which healing and intuition take place. When I tune in to Reiki I am reminded that I am part of a much greater whole than I can see with my eyes, supported and never alone. In addition to being a wonderful way to start and end my day, whenever I feel any confusion or lack of clarity I can check back in with Reiki and come back to a still centre throughout the day (when I remember to!)

I do a lot of EFT on my own and sometimes when I encounter a feeling that there is something more to what I am working on than I am able to access on my own, I ask my partner to sit with me as I tap. He doesn’t use EFT very much and doesn’t feel very comfortable leading me through the tapping, but that doesn’t matter because in those times what I most need is someone I really trust who is able to hold a healing space for me, a space in which I feel safe and I know I can allow whatever needs to come up to arise and pass through. It has amazed me time and time again how I can’t access the core of an issue on my own when parts of me feel unsafe, and then the issue just opens up effortlessly in the loving and supportive presence of my partner. I continue to lead myself through the tapping, doing exactly what I was doing on my own, yet in the presence of someone who helps all parts of me feel safe it feels like the key is provided to unlock the door that was previously locked and immovable.

If you have issues that you are working on that you sense you just can’t quite get to, consider the possibility that while you consciously feel safe addressing them on your own, perhaps a part of you is afraid to go there. Consider seeing if you can draw on the support of your partner or a trusted friend or a tapping buddy and see if you are able to more easily access the issue with their support.

I am also blessed with friends who are on a healing journey, which whom I can share and gain insight into what I am working on. I usually proof read my emails before hitting send and so often am amazed to find I’ve written a sentence that I don’t remember writing that stands out as an obvious issue to be addressed with Focusing or EFT. So often in sharing what’s on my mind with a good friend I find myself processing what I am working through and gaining more insight into what I could tap or Focus on. In addition to my own insights friends often ask questions or point something out that I have missed, that I am then able to focus on with my healing.

If you would like to be doing EFT more regularly but just don’t seem to be able to integrate it into your life, consider reading through some of the emails you’ve sent to good friends recently. They can be filled with gems of ideas of what you could tap on!

A key member of my healing team is my fabulous Focusing Partner. We have been Focusing together once a week for the last few months and we are both in awe of the healing that takes place within the Focusing space. A Focusing Partnership is truly special – there is something in the mutual vulnerability and support that develops that engenders trust and the magical unfolding of our journeys. We both love how easy and fun Focusing can be, rich with imagery and laughter in place of trying to figure things out with our conscious minds. And we don’t even have to do anything to support each other as Focusing Partners other than simply listen and reflect back some of the content of what our partner is saying – as long term “Miss Fix-Its” we have both marvelled at the power of simply listening and reflecting and are so in awe of how the issue we are Focusing on unfolds on it’s own without either of us needing to direct it.

While Focusing can be very rich on our own I’ve found that we reach new depths when we Focus with a partner. If you would like to be able to have a Focusing Partnership with someone, consider contacting my Focusing teacher Suzanne to do an 8 week course in Focusing, it’s an investment that results in you having ongoing free support for the rest of your life.

I first discovered the idea of a tappy bear through a posting on the EFT forums. A practitioner wrote that she had bought a tappy bear for the children who come through her practice to use and she’d found she loved tapping on him herself. I was doing a lot of inner child healing at the time so I decided to take my inner child to the second hand store and she chose the most beautiful tappy dog. Benji has supported my inner child through a lot of tapping since. There is something magical about a soft toy, something that denotes support on a very deep level to the child within. There are times when something comes up that is so upsetting to my younger selves and I can tap on Benji or simply have him on my knee as I tap and a part of me feels supported in a way that I can’t even put into words.

You may think the idea of having a tappy bear is only for children, but consider the possibility that there might be a child inside who would love to have a bear (or a dog!) as their own special healing buddy.

There is a wonderful community of support that has developed on the EFT Forums. I find that reading what others are working on and the wonderful replies they get from various posters on the forum regularly gives me inspiration and ideas for my own tapping. I have also developed a fabulous network of contacts through the forums and have learnt so much through my interaction with each person.

If you would like some ideas for different angles to approach an issue from, or simply learn some new approaches to tapping, the EFT forums are rich with inspiration and ideas. You can create an anonymous login and be sure that you have the privacy to ask any questions you want to, or you can simply read the postings by others and learn from them.

One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever read about healing is that if your current practitioner isn’t working for you, you need to find a new one, and that includes if you are your own practitioner! I do a lot of EFT on my own but there are a few big issues that no matter how many aspects I clear on my own, I don’t seem to get to the bottom of. I have found that working with an experienced practitioner with whom I resonate is truly magical, it enables me to see past my filters and approach things from new angles that I simply couldn’t see on my own, due to my beliefs and unresolved emotions. While I am good at leading myself through the tapping, with some issues I have blind spots that I am only aware of because I am not resolving the issue, and with these issues the assistance of an experienced practitioner is priceless. I’ve also found that a compassionate and skilled practitioner is particularly helpful in helping me to transform resistance into self acceptance, something that can be really difficult on my own if I am really tired of a long term issue. Another benefit I’ve found with working with a practitioner is humour – it is very difficult to crack a joke to lighten things up when you are in the depths of your own emotions, and a good practitioner is able to lighten things up with appropriate humour in a way that really helps things open up instead of getting bogged down and serious.

If you find the mere idea of working with someone else on your issues difficult for any reason, there is a wonderful article by EFT Practitioner Noreen Barron on trusting ourselves and the healing process that you can read here. If you have been working with an EFT practitioner and just aren’t sure whether they are the one for you, you might like to read How can I know if I’m working with the right practitioner for me?

I also consider each person I have learnt from to be a part of my healing team, in a more indirect way. There is such a wealth of resources available free of charge on the internet and I have learnt so much from them. I regularly listen to audios that I’ve downloaded from the web, and read newsletters that I receive, and so many of them offer inspiration and new ways of approaching my healing and help me to feel less isolated in my healing as I hear others’ stories and find similarities in them with what I’m working on.

If you are feeling stuck with dealing with your issues, consider listening to some free audios on the web to get some new ideas of approaches. Some of the richest sources of learning on the web include:

One of the most important members of my healing team is of course me! I have found over the last few months that as I am able to let my aware adult self support and guide my younger selves magic happens. As I build a stronger relationship with all the parts within me I not only become more able to support myself, but also more able to reach out and ask for support from others when that is appropriate. I honour my healing journey in ways that I never could have imagined in the past, and know that there is no emotion that can surface that I can’t handle, because I have tapped or Focused my way through so many of the emotions that were too big for me to handle earlier in my life. I feel truly blessed to have access to the wonderful methods that I do that enable me to support myself in this way.

So maybe now could be a good time to reflect on who the members of your healing team are. If you have a desire to have more members on your healing team but have a strong resistance to calling on the support of others, check out EFT Practitioner Noreen Barron’s excellent article on trust and healing.

Noreen Barron is an experienced EFT practitioner who really understands how difficult it can be for some of us to trust enough to reach out to someone else for help. In this article Noreen discusses trust and gives some wonderful tapping statements for anyone who finds themselves doing all their healing alone and finding it difficult to trust enough to ask for help. Many thanks to Noreen for sharing this wonderful article with us.

Trusting your self is synonymous with an acceptance, respect and love for your self. When we are babies we are entirely dependent on our caregivers to look after us, to meet all of our needs for love, food, shelter and warmth. We learn whether we can trust (have the faith and belief) that our needs will be met. This gives us our sense of security and safety in the world, it makes us feel we belong, that we are cherished and loved. If our needs are nurtured we develop a healthy sense of self worth that continues to flourish throughout our life. If, however, our needs are not met or are shamed, the seeds of self doubt, shame and guilt set in and start to grow into branches of feeling bad, worthless, unlovable, unsafe and so on. If children receive the message that their needs are not important, they deduce that neither are they as a result. If you have been shamed for having needs, you begin to feel who you are at your core is wrong. Children learn to deny, repress, minimise and disown their needs. They canʼt trust their needs or who they are. There is no safe haven to retreat to, which ultimately becomes exhausting and takes a heavy toll.

In many situations, needs will be met depending on certain conditions, and so we adapt ourselves to meet these conditions. Very often this develops into someone becoming a “doer” or a “people pleaser” in life. If who you are is not enough, maybe what you do will get your needs met.

Acknowledging and honouring the existence of our needs without feeling shame or guilt is critical to our emotional health. Being able to reach out and ask for our needs to be met is another step forward. Being able to receive, without having to feel we have to do or give anything in return, is a proportional reflection of how much love and acceptance we have for our self.

Listening to and following our inner voice or intuition leads to self trust. The more we do this, the more we trust that voice. We see that trusting it leads us to our greatest good, which was always inside of us, it is who we are at our core. EFT helps us to reveal that goodness.

Imagine yourself in some everyday situation, and picture someone (maybe someone you know, or a stranger) looking at you with great love and admiration and telling you something they really like about you. Now picture a few more people coming up and agreeing that you are a very wonderful person. (If this embarrasses you, stick with it). Imagine more and more people arriving and gazing at you with tremendous love and respect in their eyes.

Picture yourself in a parade or on a stage, with throngs of cheering and applauding people, all loving and appreciating you. Hear their applause ringing in your ears. Stand up and take a bow, and thank them for their support and appreciation.

I recently had a great example of the power of tapping with our younger selves, so I thought I would write it up as an example to help anyone who is trying to get their head around how inner child healing works and what can happen when an inner child is triggered by something happening in the present. It is also an example of how powerful the use of the phrase “the truth is” can be with our tapping.

I was working on our block of land, shovelling mulch into the trailer behind my partner’s ride-on mower and driving it over to the other side of our property to drop off the mulch. It was a beautiful afternoon and I was feeling good. As I drove over with the first load I waved out to my partner with a big smile on my face (I rarely use the ride-on and it was fun for him to see me enjoying his toy!) Then I rounded the corner of our tunnel house and lined the mower up to cross the small bridge to the other side of our property. All of a sudden I felt sheer terror, absolute panic and had a flashback to something that happened earlier in my life. Instead of seeing the bridge on our property ahead of me, I found myself thinking of the scene that was in front of my eyes over 25 years ago when I nearly drove my father’s tractor off a bridge. I felt terrible and there was just no way I could consider driving across the bridge.

I realised that my response was way out of proportion to what was happening, so decided to go over and tell my partner that I was going inside to tap. He misunderstood and thought I just wanted him to show me how to cross the bridge. Despite being terrified I found myself just following him down to the bridge, following his instructions and driving across it with my heart pounding and absolute terror that I was going to drive off the bridge. My fear hadn’t lessened at all by having crossed the bridge, instead my first thought was that I was going to have to do it all over again to go back. I let rip with some pretty choice words to my partner and realised that I needed to be by myself and tap with what had been triggered.

As I had been feeling great and had no concerns at all about driving over the bridge, I decided to start right away with talking with and tapping with my inner child. I started tapping:

ET you felt terrified when I went to cross the bridge and it reminded you of when the tractor nearly went off the bridge, you are a wonderful young woman and I love you very much.

ET you are so frightened right now and it feels just like when the tractor nearly went off the bridge, we are safe and we are OK.

I then specifically tapped on the incident that had happened, which had resulted in one wheel of the tractor being right off the bridge, but fortunately the rest of the tractor staying on it due to my doing what my father had always told me to do if: “If you get in any trouble put the transport tray down.” I used Betty Moore-Hafter’s great phrase “the truth is”:

ET you were terrified that you were going to end up in the water, and R (my younger sister who was also on the tractor) screamed in your ear and leapt off the tractor, the truth is you did exactly what Dad had taught you to and the tractor stayed on the bridge.

ET it WAS terrifying for you and you WERE so scared, the truth is you stayed calm and reacted in the best possible way and prevented something terrible happening.

After a little more tapping on specific details, the next thing that came up was my fear as a teenager of what Dad was going to say when he got home and found his precious tractor dangling over the creek. I tapped this, and once again used “the truth is”:

ET you were so afraid of what Dad was going to do when he got home, the truth is that Dad was just so relieved that you were OK.

ET you were so afraid that Dad was going to be angry, the truth is that Dad wasn’t angry with you, he was angry with Grandad, who was in charge, because he should have seen that the heavy load was unsafe on the bridge.

ET you were so afraid of Dad’s reaction, the truth is it wasn’t your fault and Dad never thought it was. (Note: children and teenagers often think things were their fault even when they weren’t so it is often important to include this in the tapping.)

It was interesting to see how the various aspects of the incident unfolded, and then once they had been dealt with a belief came up. All of a sudden it became apparent to me that my younger self was really afraid of crossing the bridge because there is no transport tray on the ride-on and that was what saved her, that was her safety message that she had learned so well. So again I used “the truth is”:

ET Dad taught you “if you get in any trouble put the transport tray down” and you are terrified of me crossing that bridge because there is no transport tray, the truth is that the mower is really small and the load on behind is really small and the foot brake on the mower acts just like putting the transport tray down.

I continued tapping along this theme for a bit then checked in with how I was feeling by imagining myself back on the ride-on and about to drive over the bridge. All I could see was the terror I felt crossing the bridge just before doing the tapping, so I tapped for myself on the terror while driving over the bridge. As I did so I realised why I had done what I had – I had been puzzled as to why I had just compliantly followed my partner’s instructions and crossed the bridge even though I was terrified. As I tapped I realised that because I had been triggered to a child state, I only had the resources available to me as a child – I had no choice but to follow the instructions. On tapping on this all the emotion around the event seemed to have dissolved, so I decided to test in earnest by unloading the mulch and driving back across the bridge, without my partner’s instruction.

I felt fine as I approached the bridge, no fear at all, and marvelled at the difference between crossing it about half an hour earlier and now after having tapped. The bridge is only a little wider than the mower, so I simply lined up the front wheels, drove on slowly, stopped to check the rear wheels were on OK, then drove straight across. I was fascinated to see myself using logic that was simply not available to me earlier when I was in the triggered child state. It reminded me of what Cathryn Taylor talks about – how when we are triggered back to a traumatic incident earlier in our lives, we only have the resources available to us that we had at that time – similar to how I had compliantly followed instructions instead of insisting that I take the time to tap first.

If you find yourself reacting way out of proportion to what is going on in your life, or doing things that you really don’t want to, consider taking a little time out on your own and asking who inside you has been triggered. Forcing myself to drive across the bridge just caused more stress and didn’t resolve the issue. Taking the time out to listen to and tap with my inner child resulted in me having the freedom to drive across the bridge whenever I want to, without a care in the world. Whatever the bridges are in your life that you are afraid to cross, time spent with your inner child could result in you having the same sort of freedom that I found. And use of the phrase “the truth is…” could be a powerful way to lead you to this freedom, letting go of false beliefs that you took on in the past.

This article is for anyone who finds themselves with challenges with time, whether it is that you find you simply don’t have enough of it or you are just not getting what you want done because you are putting things off. I have recently had an amazing experience which resulted in me having a completely new relationship with time, and it was a result of a fabulous free resource that is available to everyone.

When Betty Moore-Hafter ran her last EFT class "But I Don't Have Time! - How EFT Can Restore Balance And Spaciousness To Our Busy Lives”, I ironically felt I was too busy to attend it, I just didn’t have enough time! One day a few weeks later, when I was going through a meltdown feeling completely overwhelmed by all the things that needed to be done in the two weeks before my partner was due to leave for the UK for his son’s wedding, I realised that I needed to take the time to listen to the recording of Betty’s class. It resulted in some major AHAs for me and a completely new relationship with time, which is really interesting to me as before listening to the class it hadn’t even occurred to me that I even have a relationship with time.

Betty began the class by asking us to close our eyes and get an image of our relationship with time. As soon as I closed my eyes I could see a speeding train and I had the sensation of it just going too fast for me to be able to get on it. Imagery is so powerful and this was a real wake up call for me on how I felt about time.

During the class Betty shared some wonderful historical contexts and different concepts of time, and a stunning new metaphor of what time is and how the metaphor can assist us in changing our perceptions. She introduced several concepts that really caught my attention – including ideas of spaciousness in our lives, not just with stuff but also with time, As I followed along with the tapping I realised that while I prefer to live lightly on the earth and not have many things, I tend to clutter my life with activities instead, because I try to pack so many activities into each day!

It is so easy to listen and tap along with a teleclass and think that the concepts are wonderful and really interesting and then slip back into our old patterns and fail to integrate anything that we were introduced to into our lives. I had a hint that this wasn’t going to be the case with this class when near the end of the class Betty again asked us to close our eyes and check in with an image of our relationship with time. Where I had started the class with an image of me looking at a train rushing by so quickly that I had the sensation that I couldn’t get on it, when I checked in again at the end of the class I was on the train, having a leisurely afternoon tea in one of the carriages and enjoying the scenery go by. I was intrigued by this change over the course of just over an hour and curious to see whether it would result in a change in my perception of time in the days following listening to the class.

There have been four things I’ve noticed since listening to the class that indicate that I really do have a new relationship with time. The first is that I realised that I had miscalculated the number of weeks before my partner’s departure and had been working on that basis for some time, with the result that I had been unnecessarily stressing myself out – the extra week made all the difference and made the “To Do” list entirely achievable! This was a great reinforcement of what Betty teaches - that our perceptions of time are what cause the stress, rather than time itself.

The second change I’ve noticed is that I’m generally quite relaxed about time now, for the first time in my life. It’s hard to convey the enormity of this, time has been a challenge for me since I can remember and the very idea of being relaxed around time would never have felt comfortable to me in the past.

The third thing I’ve become aware of since the class is my language around time. I have been amazed to find that when referring to something I am going to do, there is almost always a descriptive word in my sentence that refers to speed! “I’ll dash across and…”, “I’ll quickly send her an email…”, “I’ll run over and see…” It amazes me now that I see how prolific this is in my language that I hadn’t seen it before, I was previously completely oblivious to it. And as I write up this article a few specific events from my childhood are floating into my mind – more tapping to be done!!!

The fourth is a very delightful opening of a new way of approaching a hobby I have just taken up. Inspired by the need to find ways to brighten up the mudbrick house we are going to build, and my recent pleasurable experience making curtains (if you want to read about how EFT can transform an incredibly frustrating experience into a pleasurable one, you might enjoy reading about how tapping with my inner children paved the way for me to finally be able to sew*), I have recently started to learn patchwork. Prior to listening to Betty’s class my whole focus was on learning tips on how to make quilts quickly. After the class a whole new world opened up to me as I have discovered the world of hand piecing and am finding it incredibly enjoyable. In the past producing something quickly would have been my sole focus, and now I can see how that’s really just like watching the speeding train go by. Now I’m finding each stitch a pleasure, and having let go of the pressure to get things finished, I’m finding each moment in time every bit as pleasurable as reaching the end goal used to be. Who would have thought making furnishings for our new house could have been a portal into the present moment. I feel like I’m finally on the train and enjoying the leisurely afternoon tea!!!