More About Scary Moments

Last week I accompanied a dear friend to the doctor to lend support while she had an invasive diagnostic procedure. She was very anxious. I was allowed to be in the room with her while she waited for the doctor. I did a gentle relaxation exercise with her and asked her to use EFT to allay her anxiety. The doctor allowed me to remain during the procedure and praised her for going through it well even though it was painful.

Afterwards she was fine, but was ordered to rest. A few hours later I looked in on her and found that she was pretty wiped out but feeling OK. As we talked I realized that, as I stated in Scary Moments part 1, the brain retains the memories of scary moments. What occurs in our present lives often triggers the body to relive the past.

I have known my friend for many years and have seen her through a number of medical emergencies, surgeries, biopsies, and painful illnesses. It dawned on me that her exhaustion might be from the body memories of all the punishment it had tolerated. I suggested that she tap, “Even though my body has endured many painful, frightening, invasive traumas, I survived and deserve to heal.” I encouraged her to tap, “Even though all the procedures were done with good intent to heal me and keep me well, I am now releasing all the times and all the ways my body has been traumatized.”   “I am now letting go of all the times and all the ways I have been in pain.” “ I am freeing my body from all its memories of being invaded, injected, cut, cauterized, prodded, and bruised.”

As she tapped, she felt a release of anxiety and sighed. Her shoulders relaxed. It felt good. I suggested that she do a minute or two of tapping every few hours, talking lovingly to the body that has “taken a licking and keeps on ticking. “

Everyone has had many experiences with medical  and dental visits that helped us while asking the body to tough it out. We usually forget the experience and let it fade in our memory, like women comparing their bravery in childbirth, how many hours of labor they went through. Let’s thank our bodies by giving them an EFT treatment to release all the wounds we’ve accumulated over time.

 

 

Gloria Arenson is a Southern California based psychotherapist with a private therapy practice in Santa Barbara. She helps people to recover successfully from eating disorders, compulsive spending, anxiety, fears, phobias, PTSD, panic disorder and other problems. Gloria is a licensed hypnotherapist and is trained in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Psychosynthesis, and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). She specializes in cutting edge energy therapies such as Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), an acupressure based therapy method, Thought Field Therapy (TFT), and Tapas Acupressure Technique (TAT).