The Power of Doing EFT on Wishes and "Wants"

One of the best ways to identify parts of ourselves that need healing is to work with wishes and "wants". Let's say you're giving yourself a session about your relationship with your partner. You're upset about a fight that you had, and want to clear out as much painful emotion and as many limiting beliefs as possible, but you're feeling stuck about exactly what to tap on. Ask yourself this: If I could have anything in my relationship with my partner, what would it be? What do I WISH would happen here? Be sure to allow yourself the inner spaciousness to receive answers that you think are impossible. Remember, EFT is not about what's possible, and it's not about facts, it's about finding your emotional truth, and if it hurts, tapping it out. So if your emotional truth is: "I wish my wife would appreciate how hard I work to support our family" and when you say or just think that, you experience an emotional charge, then that is a good statement for you to tap on.

Simply asking yourself the questio
"What do I wish would happen in this situation?" enables you to identify a place inside yourself that hurts and needs healing, and this can lead to other powerful tapping statements, such as, "My wife will never appreciate how hard I work to support our family." So once you've tapped the first statement about wishing she would appreciate you down to zero or close to zero, if the similar statement "She'll never appreciate how hard I work..." has a charge to it, then tap on that next. Most likely, the session will continue to unfold organically like that, with one statement naturally leading to another and then another. However, if it doesn't and you find yourself getting stuck, just ask yourself the same question: What do I wish would happen here?

If the word "wish" doesn't resonate with you about a particular issue, then use the word "want", and ask yourself "What do I want in this situation?" or "What do I want from this person?" Then notice the thread that emerges when the answers to those questions arise within you, and follow it until you feel that you feel that the issue you're tapping on is totally healed, or until you've tapped out and healed as much as you can in the time you've allotted yourself for the session.

Working with wishes and wants works just as well for the past as it does for the present. For example, if you're working to heal a childhood trauma, ask yourself: What do I wish had happened in this situation? Perhaps your answer would be: "I wish my parents had never gotten a divorce", or "I wish my parents had had a happy marriage." Then you notice how you feel when you say or think these statements, and if it hurts, tap on it until it feels neutral.

This way of using EFT has four basic steps:

1) Ask yourself the question: "What do I wish had happened?" or "What do I wish would happen" or "What do I wish I had in this situation" or "What do I really want?" or something similar.
2) Notice whatever answers are coming to you in response to that question
3) Ask yourself: How do I feel when I say or think these answers?
4) Tap out any answer that hurts when you think or say it out loud.

An important thing to note is that we're not tapping on wishes and wants to make them go away, we're tapping on them because they hurt. So after you tap down a "wish statement" to neutral or nearly neutral, you may still have that wish, only it won't hurt anymore when you think about it. Again, this is all about your emotional truth, and your healing. Wishes and wants are wonderful things, and they're even more wonderful when they're not causing pain inside you!

Asking yourself about wishes and wants is a great way to begin any EFT session, and it's also a great way to help you figure out what to work on next when you have no idea where to go with the tapping. We all have wishes and wants inside us, and looking for them can be a very effective way to discover the parts of ourselves that are hurting and ready to be healed.