By Nancy A. Morris, EFT-ADV

This case really shows how encouraging the client to find their own way to describe the event (with their own “internal language”) helps to allow EFT to work through the practitioner.

Sophia was beside herself when she came to see me.  She’d had bouts of a-fib (atrial fibrillation) for over 7 years.  It happened maybe once or twice a year but they were long episodes lasting up to 38 hours and once requiring a hospital visit to shock her heart back into rhythm.  She was no newcomer to a-fib, so why the distress?  The previous Saturday night she was in bed, relaxed, and just drifting off to sleep when she was “startled awake” by the rapid and irregular beating of her heart.  At the time, she simply took more heart medication and a sleeping pill and fell asleep.  When she woke up her heart was back in rhythm.  She thought all was well.

However, since that night she gets very fearful and anxious every night in bed and is unable to fall asleep.  Sophia felt that her fear of falling asleep was directly related to having undergone open-heart surgery and being on a heart/lung machine (her own heart had been stopped for a while) and the somatic trauma of this as well as the atrial fibrillation.  She’s had to take sleeping pills each night and felt groggy in the morning and the fear stayed with her all day.

I asked Sophia where in her body she felt this and not surprisingly it was the center of her chest. Her level of intensity on this issue was a 10 on a scale of 0 to 10.  We did an EFT setup and tapped through several rounds on the Saturday night a-fib episode.  As reminder phrases I used things like, I was relaxed, all was well, and then suddenly, I was startled awake, I was in a vulnerable place, just falling into sleep, and I was jolted awake, it scared me. Slowly Sophia’s level of intensity came down - 10, 9, 8 out of 10.

I asked her to describe the physical sensation and at first it was hard and tight, then it started to get softer and expand.  I asked her what this fear was and she said she was “afraid of not ever waking up” so we tapped on that specifically and slowly her level of intensity came down further - 8, 7, 6, 5 and the feeling in her chest had softened a little.

At this point she described the feeling in her chest as a flutter; she said that it would relax and then flutter fast and then relax again like a bird.  When asked what kind of a bird, Sophia said it was a white dove.  If it had a name, what would it be?  Grace, she replied. 

We tapped on, This frightened bird inside my chest, she wants to get out … how can I help her out? … she isn’t helping me … she thinks she is but she’s just keeping me from sleeping and making me anxious … she’s trying to protect me, but I don’t need her help, I need some sleep, I need to relax.  With more tapping her level of intensity went down 5, 4, 3, 2 on a scale of 0 to 10.

At this point Sophia said that Grace had flown out, but there was still a shadow of Grace in her chest.  She asked if she could just go inside and visualize this shadow while I continued tapping and I said fine.  Sophia described what she visualized: she could see her “higher self” putting her hand out to coax the shadow-bird onto her finger, it looked very frightened but she was being patient with it.  When the bird did not move for a while, I had her pause and we did collar bone breathing.  After this I had Sophia check into her chest and she said it was a 0 and that Grace was gone and the shadow-bird was sitting on a branch in a tree.

Sophia felt great relief and gratitude.  She called the next day to say she’d fallen asleep peacefully that night without any sleep aids.  A week later Sophia reported having fallen asleep each night without sleep aids and that the burning coal in her chest had remained gone.  By trusting EFT and trusting the client’s own personal process we were successful.

Nancy A. Morris, EFT-ADV