By Madeleine Allen

I wanted to share this remarkable story of the first time that I have ever used EFT on someone other than myself.

For background, I am a management consultant, specialising in leadership development.  I work with large organisations to improve their performance in leadership and management. Recently I met with a client who is a marketing executive, to help him to do some work on assertiveness. 

This client (I shall call him "Jim") is a very confident, capable young man, who has made excellent progress in his career since starting work 2 years ago, and is already a very valued member of his organisation.  He confidently presents to large groups, and negotiates with industry leaders, big businesses and politicians all over Europe.  This made me uncertain as to why he needed assertiveness coaching, however I always remain open-minded, and I work with my clients to enable them to achieve their full potential.

When we started, Jim told me that his real issue was just with one particular colleague, who he said was mean to him, undermined him, put him down at every opportunity and was generally making his life difficult.  We worked for an hour on different techniques to help Jim to re-build his damaged relationship with his colleague (I shall call her Diana). 

It soon became clear that Jim's perception of Diana's behaviour towards him had become completely distorted by anger. When I tried a technique in which a client visualises the other person, Jim couldn't even call her image to mind, and seemed unable to describe what she looks like.  He said "I don't even want to picture her.  All I can see is a brick wall of my anger towards her".  Other comments he made included "I'm angry that she even exists!", and later he said "I'm angry with her because one time when she was especially mean to me was the same week she got diagnosed with cancer.  She took it out on me just to be vindictive."

I realised that Jim's thinking was completely distorted by the anger that he was feeling, and that we had to clear the anger in order for him to see the situation more rationally.  Although I had never used EFT with a client before, intuitively I felt that it would be a good time to start.  I tentatively introduced EFT, likening it to acupuncture which Jim is comfortable with.  He said he didn't think it would help, but he'd give it a go.  I got the feeling that he was just humouring me.

Before we started, I asked him to rank his anger on a scale of 0-10, and he replied "It's not even on that scale, it's through the roof". I had already made a list of statements based on Jim's comments so far, and showed them to him to invite him to choose his own set-up statement.  These included:

Even though I am really angry at her...

Even though I'm so angry I can't see past this brick wall...

Even though I can't think of the words to say to stand up to her...

Even though I hate the tone of her voice...

Even though I feel put down when she corrects me in public...

Even though she called me a stupid little boy...

Even though I feel angry when I think about her...

Jim was only willing to use the last of these, and he didn't want to say "deeply and completely accept myself", so I asked him to choose an affirmation that he felt comfortable with.  He finished up with:

Even though I feel angry when I think about her, I completely believe in myself.

We started with the karate chop point, and he repeated the set up three times, then ran through the other face points, collar bone and finger points twice.  He didn't want to use the top of the head or underarm points as he said they were "stupid".  Jim was laughing all the way through, and several times said "This is so stupid".  After two rounds, my own confidence was taking a knock, so I thought I'd check where he was at before continuing.  I was ready to ditch the EFT and go back to what I felt comfortable with.

I asked Jim to stop, and he laughed again, although I noticed that his laughter had a different quality - before it was scorn or derision, and now it sounded genuinely mirthful.  I asked him on a scale of 0-10 where his anger was.  He replied "It's not even on that scale".  At first I thought he was repeating his original answer (when he told me "It's through the roof") so I checked, "Where is the anger now?", and a surprised look came on his face as he said "I don't know.  It's just gone!".

I stopped there, because he was able to address the rest of the coaching session with a completely different perspective, and we were able to make major shifts in his relationship with Diana.  At the end of the session I checked again how he now felt when he thought about Diana, and he reported emotions such as respect and compassion.  At last he was able to work on constructive and practical actions for rebuilding his damaged relationship with his colleague - what a breakthrough!

I checked in with him again weeks later and Jim reports that his telephone calls and meetings with Diana all have a different, more constructive quality now.  He's even quite looking forward to a 3-day overseas business trip with her in the New Year, which in the past he would be dreading.

In thinking about what really worked here, two things stand out for me. First, listening to my intuition, both when it told me to introduce EFT and when it told me to stop.  Second, I think that the first hour of coaching really helped us to find the core issue and work with it very quickly, so when Jim selected his set-up statement it was probably the right one.  If I had introduced EFT earlier, we may have spent a long time working on statements about assertiveness, when the underlying issue was his anger.

GC COMMENT: Another way to go about this that is often more permanent is to ask Jim who Diana reminded him of. Chances are this will take you to a more foundational specific event.

Thank you so much for this excellent technique.

Madeleine