originally published in the Rising Sun EFT Group Newsletter
This article is the final installment of my report of using EFT very successfully for a broken wrist, the subsequent surgery and my healing.
A friend mentioned to me that the body registers an accident or other trauma in slow motion. What a profound thought. Of course, our conscious experience of any sudden accident is that it happened so quickly. There’s no time to stop it or change the course of things — in a flash, it’s all over.
I started wondering what would happen if I replayed the event in slow motion while tapping. If my body had registered various emotions and thoughts that I wasn’t even conscious of, maybe this would be a way to clear even more of the trauma.
I tried it and was truly amazed at what happened. When I put the event in slow motion, it went something like this:
(Here’s the background story: when the accident happened, I was carrying a huge load of wood from our garage and trying to maneuver my way between some bicycles. I lost my balance and went down, too top-heavy to right myself. I fell with all my weight on my left wrist and heard the bone snap.)
I started with the moment when I was first aware that something had gone wrong. Strangely I remember the words in my mind — I thought “I’m destabilized!”
“Even though I’m destabilized, losing my balance…. oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no!”
I paused the inner slow-motion movie at that moment and just tapped all the points for the “oh no’s.” This brought up a huge wave of fear and it cleared as I tapped. That’s the same thing I did with each of the following.
“Even though I’m going down, oh my god, oh my god!”
This one brought up shock, disbelief and terror. Tapping for “I’m going down, oh my god oh my god.” Huge emotion came up and was released.
“Even though I can’t stop, I can’t stop, I can’t stop!”
A huge sense of powerlessness. There was nothing I could do. More tapping.
“Even though I’m going to get hurt… oh no, oh no, oh no!”
With each little piece more emotion came up, along with tears. Finally I reached the point of impact.
“Even though I just hit the concrete, oh my god, oh my god.”
“Even though I heard the bone snap, oh no, oh no, oh no! ”
“Even though I’m hurt, I’m hurt, I’m hurt”
“Even though it looks really bad, really bad, really bad.” (my wrist was at a strange angle).
For anyone who is cringing, I will tell you that I was never in terrible physical pain. Maybe endorphins kick in, I don’t know. My main experience was absolute terror that I had hurt myself pretty badly.
Strangely, I couldn’t finish any of the above set-ups with “deeply accept myself” or anything similar. In the slow-motion process, it seemed that I just had to stop and tap with the exclamations and get the emotion out of my body. Then after all that emotion was released, I came back and tapped through all the points with the positive reassurance:
“But it’s okay now, it’s okay now, I’m okay, my wrist is okay… I want my body to know that everything is okay. I love and accept my body, you went through so much, but you’re okay now.”
After that process, which took less than 10 minutes, I felt like a million dollars. I’d done a lot of tapping previously and didn’t expect that there would be so much emotion left. But there it was, right on the body-level. The slow-motion replay brought it out. And once it was released, I felt great.
Some weeks later, I had the opportunity to present to a group of psychotherapists and the topic was EFT for Trauma. I told my wrist story, including the part about going through the event in slow motion. These professionals were especially impressed by the slow-motion tapping and said that it made perfect sense. As they explained it, the brain cannot process everything that is happening so fast, and our system is overwhelmed. The details and the horror are registering but not on a conscious level — they remain as if frozen in the body. This is a major component of Post Traumatic Stress. They saw great value in this process of unpacking the trauma little by little, tapping for every possible piece of the slow-motion replay. Of course we talked also about the Tearless Trauma Technique and how in many cases, you would not address the details until you had tapped for the fear and dread of even going there.
So I’ll add Slow-Motion EFT to my toolbox now. I never would have chosen to break a bone. But the experience of healing my wrist using EFT and the Creative Language approach has taught me so much that I can be grateful for the experience now. Isn’t that one of the great things about knowing EFT? Almost any life experience is an opportunity to help yourself and to learn more about helping others with this wonderful tool.