I have two teenage daughters. My oldest one doesn’t want to use EFT because she KNOWS it works. She thinks it is abnormal to just zap your problems away in a minute. My youngest daughter also knows it works. I’ve been able to tap with her a couple of times with success, but for some reason she thinks it is stupid and so doesn’t want to do it either. What can I do?
My answer when it comes to changing others is always the same: Work on yourself first.
Every loving parent does not what their children to suffer. They want them to avoid pain in the first place, and if they do experience painful emotions, we want to return to the all-too-short period of their lives when we could “kiss it and make it ALL better.” Remember those times? I sure do.
To the extent that I have used my reaction to my children as a focus for my own inner work, I have become a better man, and a better father. When I get wrapped up in their pain and start making it very important for their pain (which is now mine, too) to GO AWAY, I become… well, you can imagine. I start trying to FIX them, and what comes out of my mouth is far from unconditional love. Oh, I mean well! I really do! I know in my heart that I don’t want them to suffer. That approach just doesn’t seem to be healing… for any of us.
EFT is incredibly powerful. It can, indeed, take dramatic events and ZAP! The sting is gone. When is the right time for that to happen? Five seconds after the event? Yes, I think that would be great! Why suffer unnecessarily???
But what is “unnecessary” suffering? I have suffered in my life, and I cannot think of a single event of suffering that has not gone into Who I Am, as well as leading me to the teachers, books, lessons, and yes, even to techniques like EFT. Was the suffering necessary? I can’t be sure. What I can say is that God has used every scrap of suffering as a way to connect more deeply with me.
I can remember when I was most ill, there were all kinds of “stupid” options all around me—goofy stuff like meditation, yoga, proper nutrition, prayer… you know, stuff like that. What a load of crock! That stuff can’t help ME! I have a chronic, lifetime condition. And if the doctors can’t help me, the ones who are supposed to know this stuff, well, I am just going to have to suffer until I die! If someone had come to me with EFT at that point I would have sneered… and been none too pleasant about it.
But when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. If you are finding out about EFT with a hope of helping your children, WONDERFUL! The best way to help your children heal is to heal yourself. When your children’s experiences trigger some feeling in you, use EFT on what that reminds YOU of. What from your past or present fears can you address?
When we become more and more emotionally free, magical things happen. First and foremost, we become more unconditionally loving, accepting, and forgiving. We start seeing our children in a new light, one that honors and respects the difficulty of their path. We start being honest about our own feelings, because they no longer scare us. And we can be present with the honest feelings of others because those hurts and pains no longer scare us, either.
There is also an effect on the family energy field when even one person is working on Self. As you heal, you are demonstrating—energetically—how someone can indeed heal from painful memories and day-to-day fears and concerns. You see, it IS normal these days to have a trauma (big or small) affect your whole life and the lives of everyone around you… for a very, very long time. That IS normal, in the sense that it is typical. We, as a society, will redefine what is “normal” when we start showing that even intense phobias and traumas can be released with gentle tapping and statements of honest feeling and affirmation. We’re not there yet, obviously.
You, as a parent reading this, are called to create this new environment right there in your home. If any of the children, friends, and extended family members want to join in, fantastic! But if they do not, it does not lessen the importance of your work on yourself, and the incredible impact that will make long term on everyone you touch. If nothing else, we can cease to be a cause or intensifier of the energy disruptions of others—especially of those we most love.
So, the first step is to work on yourself and all the fear reactions you have. Once you do, you will often feel a gentle call to tap in support of others. This is called surrogate tapping. I consider it a physioemotional form of moving prayer. You tap “for” the person, or you can tap “as if” you are the person.
I follow my heart here (the loving one, not the one gripped by terror ). If I feel called to tap for someone, I will. But if I am in emotional pain myself, I tap for ME first. And I try to avoid tapping (or praying) to “fix” someone else. There is a difference between tapping for someone’s pain to be released and tapping for someone’s pain because *I* need them to get well, behave differently, not die, etc. Can you feel the difference?
Remember back when your daughters were tiny babies. Did they ever cry inconsolably? My kids sure did! And a part of us desperately wanted to make them all better. We loved, cuddled, fed, talked, sang, and tried to distract them. Sometimes our best intended interventions don’t seem to help. Now that our children are older, it’s not much different, is it?
I feel our first and highest calling, when someone is in pain, is to be Present and feel Safe within our own being. If our children feel distant, or nothing we DO seems to help, then forget about DOING and focus on BEING. Be peaceful, be unconditionally loving, and be connected to your own source of inner guidance. It is from that state of being that miracles manifest… and we’re awake enough to see them even amidst the tears and angst of those we love.