Judy showed up late for her appointment in a state of agitation. She had been referred to me by her doctor, who felt that Judy’s emotional suffering and intense negativity might be helped with EFT. From the moment we shook hands she began talking rapidly and with intensity. She kept running her hands through her rather wild hair and I was afraid she might actually start pulling it out! As her story unfolded a whole catalog of traumas emerged:
After surviving a rare and especially aggressive form of breast cancer (and the accompanying chemotherapy and radiation treatments) she discovered that her husband of 23 years had become a meth addict. He had been using and lying to her for years, was cheating on her and, as soon as he found out she’d survive the cancer, became
increasingly abusive. He had also somehow ‘lost’ more than a hundred thousand dollars of the equity in their home!
During the incredibly bitter divorce that followed, Judy’s mom died unexpectedly. Judy was unable to get there in time and was suffering terribly from guilt, unexpressed grief and rejection (turned out that her mother hadn’t wanted her there, a harsh finale for a lifetime of really cruel negation).
Shortly after her mother died, Judy’s best friend suddenly ‘dumped’ her and refused to talk about it, or to talk to Judy at all. Next her oldest child went off to college—a good thing in itself, but another source of grief for Judy. Then, at the end of the divorce, Judy bought a house that turned out to have serious undisclosed problems. After a fire broke out she sued the sellers for damages and was still involved in a stressful lawsuit.
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Finally, Judy was experiencing intense grief over losing her old house, which she had helped build. She missed it terribly and really hated her new place. After nearly a year she hadn’t unpacked.
This avalanche of traumatic events, mostly falling within the past year and a half, had left Judy emotionally devastated, bitter, unstable and socially isolated. She came to me for relief and was ready to get right to work.
We began with the divorce and her rage at her ex husband rage, betrayal, rejection and bitterness—clocking in at 9 or 10 on the intensity scale. Even though I have this intense anger I deeply love and completely accept myself. It took about 20 minutes and many rounds of tapping to get the intensity down to a 2 or 3, and our time was just about up.
At the end of that first session Judy reported feeling much much better. One of the greatest things about EFT is that results are usually immediate, leaving no doubt about whether “it worked or not”. Judy enthusiastically booked another session for a few days later.
Over the next five weeks we tackled issue after issue, with Judy doing plenty of “homework” in between. Judy was finally able to divorce her ex husband emotionally, despite his on going efforts to ‘get her goat’. She was able to reconcile to having lost her friend and work through her grief at losing her old home. In fact, Judy was able to actually celebrate her one year anniversary at the new place, by unpacking some of her more beloved artwork and hanging it up.
The day we began working on Judy’s grief over her mom’s death was a surprise. The grief resolved very quickly, but also opened out into childhood memories of rejection. She and her sisters were told explicitly and repeatedly that they were worthless and would never receive a penny from their parents, or any other support. Only her brother was prized. And as Judy was smarter, stronger and more capable than her brother, she was singled out for abuse and rejection. When her brother died in his early 20’s from an accident, Judy’s mom made a special point of declaring she’d wished it had been Judy instead!
This toxic upbringing had set up an unhealthy foundation for all of Judy’s later relationships. We tapped on feelings of being unlovable, competitive, isolated and rejected. We did this using specific memories and also directly naming the emotions. How do you know when it’s working? Judy would go from tears streaming down her face and almost too choked up to speak, to being able to calmly recount what happened—peacefully open to new insights, compassion and even forgiveness. Also, by the third or fourth session, Judy started laughing! And she said she was dreaming again--she hadn’t remembered a dream in two years.
Our very last session we tackled the cancer. Specifically, her fear of remission. This was the only issue this brave woman ever flinched away from. It was a dreadful fear, buried deep inside and covered up with layers of denial. Bringing it up was like a cold wash of nausea and despair. I felt it too! But we tapped our way through every dark and terrible aspect of that fear and we both felt a great weight lifting as we progressed. By the end Judy was visibly relieved, feeling better than she had in years. (And I would speculate—less vulnerable to actually experiencing remission!)
I heard from Judy about a month after our last session. She was quite happy, feeling herself to be firmly on the other side of a bad time. And she was actually dating someone! That was unexpected.
This case study was written up with the kind permission of my client. And of course the name and certain other details have been changed.
