By Dr. Patricia Carrington

So-called "resistance" to the EFT process such as not coming down in your intensity level after several rounds of tapping, not remembering to do EFT when it would serve you particularly well to do or feeling certain that EFT will "do no good" for a certain issue, and the like — is always frustrating.

The reason is because EFT is admittedly a great technique. We know the valuable results it offers so why aren't we able to use it more often? Why does it sometimes fall flat on us, seem useless, too much bother, or sometimes even "superficial?"

Actually, our feelings about EFT at such times give us important clues about issues that are having an effect upon our lives at that very moment. We might think of the EFT process as a miniature stage upon which we reenact, on a small scale, the way we handle any help offered to us by any person or any technique. This miniature stage, when examined, can give us extremely valuable information that will help us use EFT more effectively.

Let me give you an example that involved a feeling of un-deservedness in one of my clients that was blocking her progress in EFT.

Like many people, Corinne didn't know why she felt that she didn't "deserve" to benefit from EFT — she just felt strongly that the idea of benefiting from it made her feel uncomfortable — and she didn't even know she felt that that until I questioned her when her progress was blocked.

What came up for her as she tried to explore what was bothering her (when her intensity level was not coming down with EFT) was that she felt she didn't deserve to have a "wonderful artistic business which supports me and my family" (something she had just recently been tapping on) — this ideal of hers seemed just too good to be attainable.

We then started to work on her "un-deservedness" feeling. The EFT setup phrase Corinne decided on was:

"Even though I feel I don't deserve this wonderful artistic business, I choose to honor my right to be happy."

This seemed a very reasonable choice for a setup phrase, but after several rounds of tapping it became clear that while her sense of un-deservedness had lessened slightly in its intensity, she still looked distinctly unhappy when she thought about the artistic business she so longed for.

I thought there might be a hidden aspect to this issue which we needed to address first in order for her to make real progress, so, I suggested that we back up and seek to discover the origin of her feelings of un-deservedness. We did this because as soon as EFT promised to bring Corinne to a happier and freer state it would run up against blocks generated by her feeling of un-deservedness.

In answer to my question about the origin of her feeling of un-deservedness she could think of absolutely no reason why she should feel that she didn't deserve happiness. I have noticed, by the way, that people often have difficulty with un-deservedness issues because this emotion frequently originates early in life, at a time when the word "deserving" means nothing to the child. However, whether they know the word or not, a young child may infer that they are "undeserving" because of something that happens to them, or some remark addressed to them, etc., and later it is often hard to connect the event that created it (many times these are repeated events) with the feeling of un-deservedness itself.

Here we followed the often repeated advice in EFT training to look for a specific event(s) that may have caused the problem and work on it, rather than trying to tackle a generalization such as "undeserving".

Since we had reached the end of her session, I gave Corinne some EFT homework. It was to tap at home on:

"Even though I don't know why I feel I don't deserve this, I choose to allow myself to know why."

Tapping on "not knowing" something and allowing oneself to know it, is often an excellent strategy in EFT because the problem lies in the "not knowing" and it is that which has to be addressed head on.

I instructed Corinne to tap on this issue morning and night and during the rest of the day – to just notice (but never forcefully seek) any thoughts that might pop into her mind concerning her feeling of un-deservedness. Perhaps, I suggested, answers might begin to come to her in dreams, or in daydreams, or in fleeting thoughts.

At the next session, she reported that she had an interesting thought, quite unbidden, while riding on her bike. She had remembered that her little sister had had a very hard time with schoolwork, while she herself had just whizzed through her work with almost no effort and usually came out of the top of her class. Watching her sister struggle, and knowing how extraordinarily easy it was for herself to do well in school, had made her feel very uneasy and guilty.

"I hardly had to lift a finger to do well in school!" she told me. Then came an insight — she now remembered how often she had felt that she didn't deserve the good grades and praise from the teachers that she was getting because she hadn't worked hard to get it, it was almost as though it were phony — while her little sister was working terribly hard to get much poorer grades!

This was a revelation to Corinne and opened up a whole new avenue for her therapy. And all this all happened because a roadblock to EFT was addressed when it first occurred – we discovered that EFT wasn't working because she felt undeserving, so we simply had to back up and address her feelings of un-deservedness and the issue of her being unable to accept the good things that EFT might bring to her.

The lesson in all this is that what we may consider at the time to be just a "negative block" or "resistance to EFT", something to be gotten out of the way as quickly as possible, may actually contain a hidden message that is very valuable – and the way to find this treasure is to back up and make the block itself the focus of your tapping.

If you do that — as the old Wild West prospector's saying goes — "There's gold in them thar hills!"

Recommendations

        ■  If you are not coming down in your Intensity Level after several rounds of Tapping, or if you feel certain that EFT will "do no good" for a particular issue, allow this stumbling block itself to be the focus of your tapping.

        ■  Use an EFT statement such as, "Even though EFT is not working right now, I choose to realize WHY and use this knowledge to your advantage.

These strategies can be of help, not only for the tapping process itself but for your life in general…