Melissa (not her real name) was in total despair when she chose to contact me because I work with women who spent my youth with a physically or -more often- emotionally unavailable mother. In our preliminary talk, she said that it felt like her mother didn’t like her, didn’t want her to be happy, and was never, ever on her behalf side. Melissa was fearful to maneuver forward in a business she just had setup, experienced asthma, and hated herself for the health of her acne skin.

We started the initial EFT session with a round of “this constricted breathing” to calm her, and I recommended it as a complementary treatment on her asthma.

EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) is really a simple tapping procedure that gently realigns the body’s energy system – kind of acupuncture without the needles.

I often work with a short guided imagery to connect litigant with her inner child on a very direct, emotional level. Usually, this unearths deep, painful, core feelings like abandonment and loneliness. In this case, Missy, a happy, cheerful {6} year old popped up! Before I could express my surprise, Melissa went in to a level 10 deep grief with a constricted throat about the loss of herself in her early childhood. We tapped several rounds on the grief, the loss of happiness, the loss of joy and innocence, until we reached an intensity of 0 to at least one.

So, what had happened to this happy, little girl? She got “killed “by her mother. A memory came up, when mother forced Missy to wear to school one morning an ugly dress that she hated, and we used the Movie Strategy to release it:

Even though what I wanted, didn’t matter…
Even though she needed to dominate me…
Even though she was trying to kill me…

In terms of homework, I asked Melissa to daydream frequently about Happy Missy (as we called her) and connect emotionally with this particular self-expressed, joyful, young version of herself. (Tuning to the needs of the inner child on an imaginary level, holding her, speaking with her, having fun with her, is a healing follow-up practice).

In the beginning of the next session, Melissa explained that she had tapped on “this constricted breathing” when a severe, midnight asthma attack was coming on, and she did not need to use her strong medication. We thought that was great. However, emotionally, she was still “a mess”. When I asked her about Happy Missy, she expressed anger and grief. “I can’t go there, I am not that individual anymore, I can’t stick to that happy part, I feel only the loss of the person I was then. ” We tapped on the anger and grief in her chest and throat. Then feelings of anger, sadness, and humiliation at her mother came up, and we tapped many rounds onto it.

Even though my mother made me unhappy my companion…
Even though she’d maybe not let me shave my legs and made me wear these ugly socks and heavy shoes…
Even though she just didn’t value my feelings…

At the conclusion, when I let my intuition take over, we achieved a breakthrough.

Even though I had to sacrifice Missy for scraps of attention from my mother…
Even though when I interact with Missy, I quit all desire to be loved by my mother because she hates Missy…
Even though I have this conflict…

Completing this round, Melissa could see and feel the young girl (her true self) clearly, and she’s maintained that connection from the time.

Melissa had revealed her history of severe acne and the intense negative emotions linked to it through the first sessions. Now it was time to zoom in with this hot issue.

The acne had started when she was 13 years of age. The effects of it and the visit a treatment have been the all-consuming focus of her life. Some of the many treatments she tried to cure it, had made things worse, much worse. “I can’t ever fix my face, and I hate it”, she said. She’s been covering her face with make-up, and incredibly few people have ever seen her without it. A memory with the intensity of 10 on our scale of discomfort came up: One day in high school, she entered the locker room after a fun gym class – she saw her face in the mirror. “My skin looked so awful, it had been as though somebody dropped a 1000 ton ball on my head. “

We tapped on the disgust, the anger, the grief, driving a car, the shock, and her mother saying: “I never had acne. ” We tapped on being “the ugly thing”, the devastation when a botched chemical peel intended to improve her skin made everything worse (“I looked at suicide”), We tapped on the constant feeling of strain and tension in her body, on “these acne feelings” when she was looking at a mirror. It had been very intense, very emotional.

Finally, after many rounds of tapping, I tested our work: I asked Melissa to imagine considering a mirror and see her face without make-up. At first, she cannot imagine it, then, there is a lengthy pause, and she said: “I can’t feel anything about this. That horrible feeling isn’t there anymore. ” Then she said that she felt disoriented, since “these acne feelings” had been such a big part of her life. “Who am I? It’s scary. But I really do feel similar to Missy”. Then she said that there is a constriction in her throat: “I can’t endure just how other people look at me! “. Since our session was coming to a finish, I gave her a “Choices” statement as homework: “Even though I still have some of those “acne f eelings”, I elect to release this burden and appear within my face with emotional detachment. “

In a e-mail update in my experience, Melissa reported that the horrible feelings about her skin were completely gone, but that she felt like she was in a “dead zone”. Next session, we explored this dead zone. It was an emptiness, a void in her heart and head, she described as an obvious vapor waiting to be filled again. She said that she always have been this person with acne, now she didn’t quite know who she was anymore. We brought the dead zone feelings from an 8 to a 2, then more childhood memories came up, and we released in this and the next session more painful, humiliating events, all centered around parents who did not care, controlled her every move, disrespected her feelings. By the end, she was ready to move ahead in life and with her business.

After our last of five, very intense sessions and an laser acne treatment, Melissa gave me this feedback in a e-mail:

“I went outside today in the daylight with no makeup and my face still red plus some scabbing about it to walk 2 blocks to the mailbox. I felt very calm, pretty unselfconscious, and basically OK about how exactly I would appear. Pre-EFT, I’d have wrapped my head up in a scarf and skulked down the sidewalk, in terror that i would pass someone on the sidewalk, be observed by anyone. Now, WHO CARES! “


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