EFT And Grey Life Syndrome

EFT and Grey Life Syndromenby Chip EngelmannnnThrough the connectivity of the Web and the wonder of SKYPE, I am now getting customers from across the world who want to get rid of their emotional and physical aches and pains. But most of my clients view EFT as a form of therapy where you take what is wrong to the practitioner, and he or she helps you get better. Better, in this case, means back to your life before you had your emotional or physical aches and pains. nnStopping at “okay” seems to be an insidious consequence of the indoctrination of the disease-state paradigm. We are so used to Western medicine’s “Nature broken - man fix it” approach that we want to apply it to natural therapies as well. Nature isn’t broken; it is giving us a message to change something about the way we are living. nnLike other holistic practitioners, I choose to see health as sliding scale where death is at one end and optimal health and well-being is at the other. nnDeath <– Disease <– Dis-Ease <– Okayness –> Feeling Good –> High Energy -> Optimal Health and Well-being. nnThe goal of the current disease-state paradigm is to bring the person back a step toward okayness. If someone is in a disease state, we cut it out and/or cover it up -- that is, “manage” it -- with medications that will get them from disease to dis-ease to feeling okay.nnLikewise, an emotional sliding scale might look like this: nnPowerlessness <– Anger <– Irritation <– Okayness –> Optimism –> Happiness –> Spiritual Abundance and EnthusiasmnnClients typically come to me to get their unmanageable, suppressed emotions to the point where they are manageable. The client is ready to settle for just-about-okay. nnThis is the state I call Grey Life Syndrome–not good, not bad, but bearable: While it’s well and good for the sufferer to feel happiness, self-esteem, joy and love, these qualities are considered transient and eventually return to, at best, the okay state. We don’t have to be happy with our job, it can be okay or irritating if it feeds us. We have television to get us through to the weekend when we don’t have to go to that job. Relationships start well but digress into a comfortable support structure to make us feel like we are okay. nnGrey Life Syndrome. Let’s give it an acronym–a pharmaceutical ploy to make a disease state sound familiar and acceptable. Ahem. GLS is a state where we rehash what has happened in the past, lowering our self-esteem and fearing what the future will bring. We don’t believe life can get better, so we strive to make it tolerable. We have plenty of dreams, but our fear that they are not possible (or practical) stops us from making plans to achieve them. Being happy here and now is impossible because we are constantly thinking about what went on before and what will happen next. nnThe heartbreak of GLS is that we never get to feel good. In fact, there is no reason that we cannot be heathy, be happy, enjoy life, have good relationships, enjoy our family time, have abundance and beauty around us, enjoy our work, and live in joy. Except that we don’t. nnWhat I am discovering with EFT clients who are willing to go the distance, is that the same process that can take them from unmanageable, suppressed emotions to feeling okay, is the very process that can take them from feeling okay to feeling happy.nnWhen we use EFT to relieve emotional pain, we look to the experience that triggered the pain reaction. (For details, see my free eBook, The EFT Quick-Start Method). Using the trigger as a guide, we can trace it back to events in the past, like a detective, looking for the core issue that is being triggered. nnWhen we release the core issue with EFT, chances are the triggers collapse as well. nnLikewise, if we want to deal with GLS, we examine how we are feeling, and trace those feelings back to core events that made us feel unsafe or less than. These feelings have caused us to create a “safety net” of stability. We don’t want our expectations to be dashed like they were in the past, so we don’t try, or at least not very hard. Somewhere in our past, we made a decision like “I can’t have what I want,” so we avoid situations that might get our hopes up. nnBy releasing the emotions that led to our decision, we come to a place where we can reverse that decision. nnHowever, to move forward on the emotional scale, at some point we have to stop focusing on what is wrong with us and start focusing on what is right with us. EFT can be helpful here as well. nnDr. Pat Carrington has created a powerful EFT exercise called the “Choices Technique.” The idea of the technique is that you take one of your core beliefs or decisions that no longer supports you, and change it into a belief that does. (Again, if you are unfamiliar with the EFT tapping process, please download my free 15-page eBook, The EFT Quick-Start Method)nnThe first step is to take our core belief and transform it into a statement that is more supportive.nnFor example, if we believe:nnWorking hard and suffering is virtuousnnwe can transform it to: nnLife flows easily when I am happy and in tune with God n(or the Universe, or whatever feels right for you).nnThis gives us the basis for our set-up phrase, which is a combination of our past belief and our new choice. We would use this set-up phrase while tapping on our karate chop point:nnEven though I believed that working hard and suffering was virtuous, nI now choose to believe that life flows easily when I am happy and in tune with God. nnThen the tapping sequence is done in three rounds. In the first round, we tap on the negative statement to release the emotions associated with it.nnI believed that working hard and suffering was virtuous.nnIn the second round, we tap on the new choice to establish it in our consciousness. nnI now choose to believe that life flows easily when I am happy and in tune with God. nnIn the third round, you alternate. For instance, tap on the eyebrow with nn I believed that working hard and suffering was virtuous.nnThen tap on the side of the eye withnnI now choose to believe that life flows easily when I am happy and in tune with God. n nIt is important to have an even number of tapping points so that you always end on the positive choice statement. nnWe don’t have to live with Grey Life Syndrome. We don’t have to settle for feeling okay. We are allowed to be happy. We are allowed to have things we want. We are allowed to live our dreams.nn ...That is, if, at some point, we decide to do something about it. nnn© 2007 Chip Engelmann nn