The Swamp Monster

In the midst of her divorce and the death of her mother, Judy’s best friend essentially dumped her. She also found her supervisor and co-workers becoming increasingly un-supportive. No one wanted to hear about it and she began feeling increasingly isolated.

This was no surprise to me. Judy’s frustration, bitterness, negativity and sheer intensity were hard even for me to take. And it’s my job! She was alienating people left and right and just couldn’t help it. She couldn’t understand why no one was ‘there for her’. She was in too much pain to have empathy for their feelings.

So I gave her the analogy of someone who had been thrown into a swamp. An extremely yucky swamp, full of noisome smelly slimy green muck. Judy had gone in over her head and was trying to struggle back out onto solid ground—asking everyone around her to give her a hand and pull her out.

Unfortunately, they couldn’t recognize her. She was coated with muck and she stunk! And all that wild thrashing about! And she was roaring at them! She was a Swamp Monster and all they wanted to do was get the hell away!

So we used EFT—the emotional pressure washer—to start sloughing off the yucky emotions. It took a few sessions, but soon enough she was back on terra firma and ready to stop scaring people away. The day she began laughing in our session, I knew she’d made it.