Performance anxiety and many aspects

Hi Everyone,

Anthony Smith offers this recent case history on performance anxiety. I think it deserves our particular attention because it displays the skillful art of dealing with aspects.

Near the end, Anthony asks about whether or not tapping on both sides of the body (bilateral tapping) has merit. In my experience, tapping on one side only is likely to do the job. EFT has demonstrated this repeatedly. However, acupuncturist Michael Gandy (who appeared at our advanced seminars) is of the view that sometimes it matters which side you tap. In working with Michael, I have seen occasional evidence of this. So, it seems to me, that as long as both hands are free, one might as well tap on both sides. It wouldn't hurt and might make a difference on some occasions.

Here is Anthony's post.

Hugs, Gary

by Anthony Smith

Thought I would share with you a case I saw today which appeared at first to be a straight forward case of performance anxiety (is there such a thing?).

27yo female physiotherapist who has to give a 2 hour workshop tonight. It is on a topic she knows well. When I asked her what the problem was she said she was anxious about giving the presentation. Associated with her anxiety (an 8 SUDS[0-10 intensity]), she has picture of herself putting up a slide and hearing herself getting her words all jumbled as she was trying to explain the slide. EFT (top of head and basic seven points) took her down to a "4" but it would not budge from this despite using the PR spot.

I asked her what picture she now had and she said it was flashing back to the first time she remembered mixing up her words. This was processed to a "0". She then said her anxiety about tonight was rising again. She described the feeling now to be more of a fear. She said "I have to convince others" of the value of her information. I asked her to put a "?" after her statement "I have to convince others?" and had her tap on that. It went to "0" and her belief became "I want to share with others (my information)".

She then reported a fear ("5") of not being able to "get on a roll" with her talk. This went to a "2" and then she reported a rise again up to a "5". This she said was related to having to pause at appropriate times during her talk. Part of her kept saying "don't stop talking". Tapping brought this to a "3" and she reported it would not shift from this and that she was aware of her heart pounding.

I then (intuitively) had her tap as Gary showed at the conference: top of the head, between the eyes, (then using both hands) both sides next to eye, both sides under the eye, upper and lower lip at same time, both collarbones, and both under arm. She immediately said "That feels better, I feel more balanced". Her anxiety/fear then changed to realising she actually enjoyed talking to others and that a small level of anxiety in fact motivated her.

Because she was squeezed into my day at the last moment and her talk was tonight, I just used the EFT recipe as above. She was surprised how many aspects came up out of her original anxiety. Right at the end she agreed that her anxiety goes back a long way (school days) and so I suggested we meet again and I used Larry Nims' technique to clear the emotional roots of this problem.

For me this raises the question of whether with some people: is there a "better side" to tap on? Should one use both hands routinely? Perhaps Gary and others might like to comment on how often they have clients use two hands to tap at once. I guess one could muscle test for whether one side is better to use than the other!

Anthony T Smith

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