Emotional freedom technique - A Method of Repression, Not Freedom.

Emotional freedom technique (EFT) is a technique developed by alternative medicine practitioners, whereby negative emotions and feelings are supposedly relieved by following certain steps that involve 'tapping' various 'acupuncture points' on your body. After the procedure, you no longer feel the negativity your felt before commencing the procedure. I am naturally skeptical of using such strategies to quell pains and negativities, because I believe that ridding oneself of negative feelings requires careful understanding of why those feelings exist and resolving them through understanding the root cause. Without understanding why we're afflicted with the negativities that we may be affected by, those feelings can re-occur and create depression and hinder your growth/happiness in various aspects of life.

When I first learnt about EFT, not only was I skeptical, I felt caution towards this technique for I don't like doing things that can supposedly alter your mental state without there being a relatively scientific basis behind it. For example - if you take psychedelic drugs, you know you will be chemically affected and so this explains why your mentality could alter. But with tapping, there is no clear explanation behind why it works. However, in the name if science and evaluation, I tried the EFT technique once and guess what - it worked. Whatever it was that I was feeling negative about, that negative feeling was no longer accessible. Pay careful attention to what I just wrote - I didn't say the negative feeling was no longer there, I said it was no longer accessible. When I tried to think about the negative memory that I used to experiment with, I felt a blankness, a nothingness towards it.

EFT is a method for repressing, not solving negative feelings and experiences. It alarms me that I come across more and more web pages that endorse it.

There seem to be people out there, very unhappy/depressed people who found EFT and experienced what they believe is a 'cure' for their negative feelings, and as a result they went and became 'trained' in EFT in order to make money from coaching others as though they are providing a counselling service.

People who use EFT don't solve their problems, because logic and reason will tell you that solving a problem requires careful evaluation. EFT is a form of conditioning. I hypothesis that the way it works is this: You think of something that makes you feel bad, and whilst you focus on that bad feeling you use tapping to stimulate parts of your body that would normally be stimulated if you were happy or calm (such as tapping facial muscle points that would be activated when you're naturally smiling or naturally relaxed). EFT most likely attempts to trigger muscle groups that would be relaxed when you are genuinely/naturally relaxed. So say if you feel sad about the death of your dog and you focus on that memory/feeling during EFT - afterwards, because you trained your brain to respond with relaxed muscles at the thought of that memory, from then on whenever you think about your dog dying, instead of sending your natural response, your brain will signal to your body to react with relaxed muscles. It trains you to react in an unnatural way to that specific negative memory/feeling. So with the dog example, instead of feeling sadness, grief and tension that may have been originally felt, the same memory no longer triggers those feelings, it triggers what you would feel if you were in a naturally calm state.

EFT does not get rid of negative emotions and memories - it blocks your ability to access them. Which means that within your subconscious, those feelings still exist. EFT uses physical manipulation to repress feelings/memories by cutting off access. If you use EFT over and over again, it is possible that the build up of repression that you subject yourself to could lead to an undesired explosion. I think EFT is very dangerous - if you're in pain or feel unhappy and want resolution for your pain, whilst finding personal answers may not be an easy path, it is far better for your emotional and psychological well being than manipulating your senses and your brain to react unnaturally.

This really reminds me of A Clockwork Orange. But instead of returning calm reactions for negative stimuli, in A Clockwork Orange they they succeed at returning negative reactions to stimuli that Alex would normally find positive.

Hello there. Since i cannot post PMs i'd love to hear some ideas from the OP (Dawn) about ideas on HOW to unleash/get back access to the repressed emotions.

I mean i did used EFT for SO MANY and fundamental stuff (like generally all feelings and all negative feelings and all feelings of anger and etc.)

Cannot explain how much time and stuff... happened since then.

But regardless i'm on a slow but healthy and still smart journey for elevating my lifestyle and sorta getting myself in sync/wellness. Experience thought me - best things come with enough time and effort.


I will of course search for other ways/sources of info on this but since i ACTUALLY AGREE with all if not most of your statement in the original post - i'd love to hear YOUR ideas/recommendation on how to tackle/unleash the deal with an already repressed emotions using EFT.

Oh, and btw - yes i actually came to the very same conclusion this morning about that EFT is simply a repressing/letting go of CONDITIONING.

Now i have something to add. Even if you try and get a hold of this a bit during the day - unless you target the main issue (the conditioning) - during the NIGHT it will do it's work so to speak.
So if someone else is reading - that's my input from personal experience.

Hi Mitizaro - thanks for posting and I appreciate you confirming my ideas using your experiences.

quote:

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I will of course search for other ways/sources of info on this but since i ACTUALLY AGREE with all if not most of your statement in the original post - i'd love to hear YOUR ideas/recommendation on how to tackle/unleash the deal with an already repressed emotions using EFT.

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Firstly, I am no expert and my suggestions here come from my own experiences and intellect, so I may be right or I may not be when it comes to how to unrepress your emotions.

If you are wanting to unrepress the emotions that have become repressed due to EFT, I think the way to go about it is bring back awareness to your conscious mind. Unlike plainly repressed memories/emotions, emotions repressed by EFT may be easier to unrepress as you at least know what topics you have used EFT on. So maybe start by sitting down with a notebook and pen and make a list of all the topics you remember using the EFT method on. One you have a list, go through each one and try to re-live the memory of the event (you don't have to do this all in one day but slowly over time). Maybe you can use meditation in conjunction with this where you lie down and focus on each topics and whenever you feel an emotion focus on it and try to unravel as much as you can about it. As yourself, how does this make me feel, why does it make me feel this way.

Another thing you could do is if the emotions you repressed relate to topics where you have memorabilia (like photos or items) relating to it, maybe go through those things to try to open up your feelings.

I hope this helps. If you have other ideas on how to unrepress yourself and you would like to discuss them I'd be happy to help.

Thank you, kind lady!

I actually read something similar in EFT journal/article about a risk of "undoing" EFT.
Basicly when a subject underwent a life-or-death experience she had her recently "cured" problems with EFT be back active so to speak.
The article gave two possible ways of undoing EFT - one was remember the emotional event that you worked on (to try to bring it up as clearly as possible) and to tense the throad and diaphragm in reverse breathing pattern. This would simulate life-death experience while the you've remembered and brought the emotional aspect of your targeted thing with EFT to awareness.

The other "method" was to do the same first part but then remember some life-or-death experience and bring the sensation/recall it clearly too.

Personally to me - yesterday that served well. I managed to really unleash and free some of my emotions and sensations that i had obviously trapped in the past.

But as experience has shown me - good results come with patience - great ones come with smart approach and a LOT of time in abundance. If i do this thing right - in a year i might be really functioning wonderfully and some day - even more freely than i was ever before .

A year sounds too much for such of a little topic. (i mean c'moon... if all i have to do is recall them for 5min i can do it in a week, right?)

But a year to me right now seems so little...
...if what's to follow is this awesomeness i experienced partly yesterday.

Not that i haven't been happy already with my life - but it's liberating to unleash yourself .



Hope this gives some more tips for others if someone is interested.

P.S. - Damn i wanna get to CTL1...