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Articles & Ideas

Using EFT

Using EFT for racial prejudice

Important Note: This article was written prior to 2010 and is now outdated. Please use my newest advancement, Optimal EFT. It is more efficient, more powerful and clearly explained in my free e-book, The Unseen Therapist™.  Best wishes, Gary

by Gary Craig

Hi Everyone,

While on my morning jog I got to thinking about my recent articles on "Breasts, body parts and self image concerns" and....

....how we judge one another on the "beauty" of our body parts and........how this can lead to feelings of inadequacy because of our "sub par body parts" and........how we can gain emotional freedom from any unnecessary degrees of inadequacy by using EFT and........how this type of challenge, at least to EFT, is no different than any other emotional issue.

This led me quite naturally to the related subject of racial prejudice. At the core, I find no real difference between (1) judging one another based on our body parts and (2) judging one another based on the color of our skin or our ethnic background. Both type of judgments are "conditioned responses" (thank you Dr. Pavlov) wherein we are conditioned by our various cultures about what is good or bad about other people. Black skin is great if you live in tribal Africa but not so great if you live in Whitesville.

Then my thoughts went back about 30 years when my 5 year old daughter, Tina, was watching Sesame Street (a children's program) on television. There were two young boys on the screen--one black and one white. Since neither my wife nor I had knowingly transmitted any racial attitudes to our children, I was curious as to how Tina might judge these two boys.

So I asked her...."Do you see any difference between those two boys?"

She answered, "One of them has on a striped shirt."

It's not that she didn't see the difference in skin color. Rather, to her, the bright red and white striped shirt was what stood out. Skin color was less important. Further, she didn't have enough conditioning to associate black skin with anything other than "just another kind of skin." It was no more worthy of comment than the color of the carpet on which the boys were sitting.

My jog continued and my thoughts went to a TV drama I saw starring John Ritter as a white police officer. At one point in the drama, he was having a candid, heart-to-heart talk with a black police officer who, for years, had been his dear friend and working partner. I don't remember John Ritter's exact words, but this is pretty close...

"I love you. You are my dear friend. But you are black and when I shake hands with you I want to wipe my hand clean....and I don't know why."

Maybe when John Ritter's character was 5 years old, like my daughter, he didn't have the associations necessary to cause this conditioned response. But, somewhere along the line, he learned them. Even though he knows logically that they shouldn't be there, his conditioned emotional responses take over when he shakes hands with black skin. This is in the way of love, of course. It provides a barrier to touching one another in ways that count. This, and other insidious responses like it, are lodged within our psyches and reliably (and often subtly) show up on cue whether we want them to or not.

Fortunately, they are all EFT'able.

For centuries, this sort of prejudicial association was largely deemed untreatable. It was just considered to be "the way things are" and little or no attention was given to it. So it continues to seethe beneath the surface--just like the body parts issue--planting itself firmly in the way of love.

This need not be because EFT can be used to drown out these useless conditioned responses. From EFT's point of view, prejudice is no different than trauma. They are both just memories that trigger responses. We need not go down special avenues here. We need only point the EFT process (through language) at the specifics of the challenge.

My experience suggests that we are not likely to see too many "one minute wonders" in this area. Why? Because most prejudice has been built through years of reinforcement and many, many, many aspects. Persistence, though, should bring the building down.

Prejudice is a two sided issue. There are those who hold the prejudicial thoughts and those at whom the prejudice is aimed. Both need emotional freedom from this burden and so I suggest below some sample EFT intro language for both sides. They should provide a good start.

First, here are some EFT language intros for those who hold the prejudicial thoughts, starting with one that John Ritter's character might use...

"Even though I want to wipe my hand clean and I don't know why....""Even though I have a hard time kissing (ethnic group)...""Even though I feel uncomfortable around (ethnic group)....""Even though I feel superior to (ethnic group)....""Even though (ethnic person) embarrassed me when I was 12....""Even though (ethnic person) makes my chest tight when he comes within 10 feet....""Even though I am hesitant to introduce myself to (ethnic person)....""Even though I am afraid of what my friends might think if I befriend (ethnic person)...""Even though I can still hear my father saying, ___________ (about ethnic groups)..."

Next, here are some EFT language intros for those at whom prejudice is aimed.

"Even though I feel inadequate around (a "superior" ethnic group)...""Even though I get this klunk in my stomach when I'm around ("superior" person)...""Even though I still feel such anger about being belittled in second grade by ("superior" person)...""Even though my mother always said, "you should keep your distance and stay where you belong"....""Even though I'm a prisoner within other people's thoughts....""Even though I somehow think ("superior" person's) opinion of me is more important than my own....""Even though I feel inadequate each day when I walk in the door at work...""Even though I fear there will be another holocaust..."

This is no light, cutesy thing we are discussing here. Instead, it has MAJOR implications. What we are exploring is A WAY TO REDUCE OR ERADICATE RACIAL PREJUDICE IN THIS WORLD. Seem impossible? Seem like too global a challenge? Too much conditioning to take all the issues apart and address them? Too many people in the world? Too many countries? Too many cultural barriers?

I didn't say it would be a piece of cake. But we now have the tools to do this and we can start with ourselves. We can use EFT to collapse our own useless prejudicial conditionings and thus allow a greater sense of personal peace to float to the surface.

What better trade could you make?

And, while we are at it, we can collapse our judgments and sense of inadequacy about our body parts. From there we can be a model of love, acceptance and forgiveness. We can walk more lightly in this world. We can walk on velvet. Then we can apply EFT to others and thus create more models...and let it snowball from there.

Personal peace, anyone?

Hugs (without barriers), Gary

FOR MORE EFT HELP ...

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