I hope that many of you got a chance to hear the tapping sessions and interviews in the EFT World Summit. There were well over 40,000 people registered, and many of them were new to EFT – that is very good for the world, and for EFT! For those of you who signed up for this newsletter during the Summit, a warm welcome.
I received such wonderful letters from people about my presentation on the highly sensitive temperament. Many wrote to say that they had never understood themselves until they heard this talk, and they were so moved that they cried and tapped through the whole interview, happy and grateful to be seen and heard.
Here are some comments:
I’ve heard of the Highly Sensitive Person idea and was fairly sure I fit the category (although I haven’t read any books on the subject). What I really appreciated was your idea of turning the qualities around and praising them! That thought just never ever crossed my mind. What a great way to counter-balance and let go of the critical remarks made over the years about “over-sensitivity.”
My name is Christine and I have been listening to the EFT World Summit and I just listened to you last night and had the biggest ah-ha moment ever! Everything you said about Highly Sensitive People is me! Literally everything you said I have said to myself or felt or my family has said to me my whole life! I finally felt like someone understood me and now understand why my acting/writing career has not taken off. I have core issues of Highly Sensitive People so whenever I would audition and get rejected I feel it so deeply, and also the need to be seen and heard – but underneath, obviously, being so scared of being made fun of or ridiculed has totally made my career go nowhere and now I see why!
I normally don’t write e-mails to people I dont know but I felt compelled to because I literally learned so much from your talk and want to thank you for making me aware of being highly sensitive and that it’s not a negative.
I also want to include nearly the whole of a long letter that I got, not because of her nice words about me—though of course they are wonderfully gratifying to hear—but because the real tribute goes to the writer who demonstrates here how deeply she is blessing herself, and her sensitivity, with transformation using the tool of EFT.
At the end of the letter she tells a story of her childhood that painfully impacted her sensitive heart, and led to some powerfully limiting beliefs in her life. I have turned it into a tapping routine for all of us to borrow benefits from.
Celebrate your sensitivity!
Here is Andie’s letter. I suspect that you will find that what she says resonates in you as well. I have highlighted many of the phrases in her letter that stood out to me as both tappable, and worth celebrating.
Dear Rue,
We’ve never met or even spoken but you’ve been so instrumental in changing my life that I had to write to thank you. My name is Andie and for over a year now I’ve been using EFT (as a ‘self-helper’) to free myself (among other things) from chronic tension headaches and muscle pain which came to be labelled as ‘Fibromyalgia’ by my doctor.
When I first came across one of your articles on emofree.com, linking the Highly Sensitive Temperament with chronic pain, it was like a HUGE light bulb went on in my head… it was the start of a journey which involved me reading Elaine M. Aron’s books, buying your 4 ebooks and tappingtappingtapping to reframe my sensitivity and deal with childhood issues.
A part of me always knew (very deep down) that being so sensitive was a gift, with many aspects to treasure, especially my empathy and insight where other people’s ‘problems’ were concerned and my ability to form deep connecting relationships, including romantic ones. However my need for approval, strong reaction to criticism and ‘lack of boundaries’ has led to some difficulties with friends and family, stress within my chosen profession (teaching) and eventually a chronic health condition. I say all this now with no emotional ‘sting’ because your work has made it all so understandable and EFT has made it all so get-overable!!
I now work as a Maths tutor, one-to-one, which is amazingly fulfilling to me (much more so than the constant demands of classroom teaching). I am also 8 months pregnant with my first child at age 37, and I KNOW without a shadow of a doubt that my sensitivity (and AWARENESS of it) will make me an amazing mother. It was what I was born to do. My life is wonderful (and headache free) as long as I stay centred and listen to my body’s messages. I have trained to be an EFT practitioner and I know that I will make a great one, but that’s something for the future…right now motherhood is calling!
Of course I still have issues…most recently I have re-established contact with a treasured old friend who I have been trying to ‘help’ as I can SEE how her chronic fatigue is linked to her sensitivity and I know how EFT can work miracles. But she has been procrastinating about doing some (free) sessions with me and I now realise some part of her needs to stay ill to get the ‘help’ (including financial) that she wants. It’s very hard for me to ‘let go’ and have her remain in pain when I know there’s a solution but I’m tapping on it (including my NEED to be needed which I fully acknowledge). It’s hard where friends are concerned though, isn’t it?
The hardest part for me is knowing that, to honour myself, I need some distance from her (I’d been visiting her every week which is a hard pattern to break). I know she will come to me when she is ready but I feel so guilty ‘abandoning’ her, especially when recently she called me ‘her rock.’ Last week when I was preparing to go over to her house, I strained the muscles in my back, was unable to drive there, and instantly knew my body was telling me to put myself (and the baby inside me) FIRST before I try to help others, especially those who seem to want to stay stuck. There’s no point ‘bending over backwards’ for people who refuse to be helped! Being Self-ish (however beautifuly you re-frame it) is still the MOST difficult thing for me and a constant source of inner conflict. But I know I can tap on the guilt and I know that staying true to ME is the most important aspect to staying healthy. It’s just not as easy as it sounds.
I’ve just listened to your EFT World Summit interview and it re-affirmed EVERYTHING for me. Despite over a year of inner work, I still found myself crying and tapping my collarbone throughout your initial description of HSPs!!!! I feel like playing it to everyone I know and saying – ‘This is ME, I’m different to you (and I’m proud to be this way) – so deal with it’. You also reaffirmed the importance of being Self-ish…believe me I might need to be told that every day for the rest of my life to counteract the opposite message so prevalent in Society and in my family!
Rue, you were eloquent, focussed and truly inspirational – please keep up your amazing work! I get overwhelmed with excitement when I imagine all the EFT ‘newbies’ and HSPs (who might be where I was a year ago and not even be AWARE of their true nature) who will have listened to that interview and begun an amazing journey of self-awareness and healing. You came into my life just when I needed you most and I am thrilled to know that this WILL be happening for others as they tune into the Summit. After all, 15-20% of 40,000 subscribers makes, at a rough estimate, between 6 and 8,000 HSPs who could be listening. WOW!
I’m sure you’ll have lots of feedback from the interview so I won’t take up too much more of your time. Don’t worry if you are unable to reply personally – it’s been very therapeutic to write all this down and realise how far I’ve come.
My biggest tapping breakthrough
I will leave you with a little story though – this was probably my biggest ‘tapping’ breakthrough, so it might be of interest to you (Do feel free to use it if you want to).
My grandmother (‘Nan’) died when I was 7 years old. We were very close, her death was sudden (at 62) and I was devastated. I even remember being so upset at school that my teacher gave me a hug (VERY rare in those days!) But before I began this healing journey of mine, I would have sworn blind that it was ‘past stuff’, that I’d dealt with 20 years ago and which didn’t affect me any more.
BUT as part of another EFT session I did (actually a conference call with Rick Wilkes) it was pointed out that I might have ‘abandonment’ issues – and within minutes I just knew it was connected to Nan. (Oddly, only the previous week I had driven past her old house and had to stop out of the blue to cry and tap – isn’t the sychronicity of the Universe amazing? This issue was clearly begging to be resolved.)
In short, once I’d re-connected with my grief I stayed there for days. I mentioned it to my mum and asked her how I’d reacted at the time. She told me that I’d cried for weeks. Her words were ‘We didn’t know if you’d ever stop. I remember commenting to your dad, after 4 or 5 WEEKS, that you didn’t seem to be getting over it. Everyone else had started to stop grieving by then and move on. But you were seemed stuck and we were worried about you.’
As soon as I heard this, I KNEW instantly that they wouldn’t have needed to say any of it to my face (and probably didn’t.) But ‘Little HSP Andie’ would have picked up the message, the ‘vibe’, that it was time to STOP crying, (for the sake of everyone else). What a message, eh? When I tapped on this (with a friend, cos it was really intense) I could physically feel the pain in my chest. I was 7-years old again and ‘stuffing down’ my crying… which had never been released…
My outpouring of grief and sadness over the next few days, complete with seeking out old photos, cards etc to allow me to re-connect to my Nan, was the biggest healing of my life.
Subsequent tapping sessions led me to realise how many of the beliefs I formed at the time had been running my life ever since:
‘Other people’s feelings and needs come before mine.’
‘It’s selfish to wallow in your own sadness.’
‘Other people don’t like the intensity of my feelings (and don’t know how to deal with it) Best to hide them.’
‘The world is not a safe place’
(One minute I was getting off the school bus, the next I was told my nan was dead. My world had fallen apart. There was nothing I could do.) This accentuated my need to control events and my ‘must prepare for the worst’ outlook for the rest of my life.
‘It’s dangerous to be fun-loving, spontaneous and carefree.’
(My nan was like this and look what happened!)
‘Surprises are NOT welcome.’
The last three were especially enlightening to my partner who could finally understand why I hate surprises, why I have to overly prepare for everything in advance and why I have real trouble being spontaneous. (‘If I imagine the worst and prepare for it then I can’t get so hurt again’) It has helped to deepen our understanding of each other and his wonderful spontaneous nature is now something I am working towards embracing for myself…
I’ll leave it there I think. Something about your interview this morning said to me – ‘About time you let that amazing woman know how she’s helped you heal your life without ever even speaking to you.’
And so I have.
Andie
(Rare extrovert-HSP and proud of it!)
Transforming a difficult experience into a self-blessing
Think about a painful childhood experience of your own where your sensitive heart was broken. Write a description of this experience, including all the feelings and thoughts that you have carried around it, lodged in your body. Select the phrases that particularly trigger emotions in you to tap on.
Tap, using Andie’s words in the phrases below. Your experience was different from hers, of course, so other ideas and sensations and beliefs will naturally arise in you. Add those in to your tapping too.
Tapping on the side of your hand, say the “Even though” phrase, include one or more of the statements below, and add “I deeply and completely accept myself.” Also add some celebration phrases, like these:
…I deeply and completely accept myself, and I honor myself for hard that was.
…and I want to bring healing to this now.
…and I want to think differently about it now.
…and I intend to honor my sensitive heart.
…and I appreciate my need for deep connection.
…and I celebrate the gift of my sensitivity.
Move through Andie’s list of statements, continually tapping the key phrases as you tap on the points, until the issues no longer trigger you physically or emotionally. Feel free to use your creative imagination.
Even though…
…my grandmother (‘Nan’) died when I was 7 years old……we were very close, her death was sudden (at 62) and I was devastated…
…I felt abandoned..
…I even remember being so upset at school that my teacher gave me a hug (VERY rare in those days!)
…once I’d re-connected with my grief I stayed there for days…
…my mum told me that I’d cried for weeks…
…her words were ‘We didn’t know if you’d ever stop…”
…Mum told me I didn’t seem to be getting over it…
…she said that everyone else had started to stop grieving by then and had moved on…
…I seemed stuck and Mum said they were worried about me…
…’Little HSP Andie’ would have picked up the message, the ‘vibe’, that it was time to STOP crying, (for the sake of everyone else)…
…I could physically feel the pain in my chest…
…I was 7-years old again and ‘stuffing down’ my crying… which had never been released…
…I thought other people’s feelings and needs come before mine.
…I was told that it’s selfish to wallow in your own sadness…
…’other people don’t like the intensity of my feelings (and don’t know how to deal with it) Best to hide them…’
…’the world is not a safe place’ One minute I was getting off the school bus, the next I was told my nan was dead. My world had fallen apart…
…there was nothing I could do…
…this accentuated my need to control events and my ‘must prepare for the worst’ outlook for the rest of my life…
…’it’s dangerous to be fun-loving, spontaneous and carefree.’ My nan was like this and look what happened!…
…’surprises are NOT welcome…’
…many of the beliefs I formed at the time had been running my life ever since…
Self blessing is the loveliest thing you can do for yourself. You deserve this!
With deep thanks to Andie and to all of you who wrote to me after the EFT World Summit, and with my love and blessings all around –
Rue
