Courage
I remember sitting in my very last Core Skills weekend, pregnant with my second child (back in 2010) and expressing to Gail Palmer how very bold you have to be to do EFT. This model is so gentle with it’s non-judgmental, non-pathologizing and humanistic approach. Yes, it’s gentle - but gentle doesn’t mean avoidant. We BOLDLY go to the places our couples don’t want to go.
Have you had to call on your own courage to move into the hard places? To expand “move in” - I mean follow emotion, keeping your pacing and reflections to attune to the present experience of the relationship, keeping an eye on each partner (or family member if doing EFFT). Going for the pain. We go for the pain, so we can soothe it, make sense of it and eventually repair and restructure/integrate.
Why might we not move in?
Here’s a list of reasons I’ve seen therapists not move in (myself included in some of the examples):
-We’re afraid to lose a client.
-We’ve been taught to listen/don’t interrupt (so by not interrupting, we miss emotional handles to grab).
-We feel inadequate in the model or as therapists in general so we sit back and hope it all works out. We only move in when we feel confident.
-We’re tired. Our real life is hard and when we’re tired, we might instinctively choose to disengage in session instead of moving in (which actually makes it harder in the long run).
-We’re afraid of losing control of the session.
We have REALLY GOOD REASONS for not moving in. But, we also have courage to go to the places our clients don’t want to go. I heard a trainer say to a client, “Of course it’s easier to have courage when you have a whole army behind you.” We think of having courage as this lone warrior kind of thing. No! You can have courage because you have an army of EFT therapists that are fighting the fight with you. I’m with you. Please reach out if you need to see your army face to face. (There will be some practical applications of this in the Fall - look forward to more trainings and networking events!)
Take heart, EFTers - you have an army behind you.