11 Jun The Family that FEELs Together Heals Together–The Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT)
Family life can definitely be stressful. Whether it’s the daily stress of activities, learning, problem-solving, emotional support, and the exhaustion of it all, or the bigger stressors, like illness, death, divorce, job loss, and financial concerns, all families need a little healing from time to time.
When stressful times come, they bring with them powerful emotions, and it can be a challenge to know how to handle both the stress and emotions, and especially how to help our kids and families do the same. As I wrote in This is How We Grow:
“Powerful emotions can make even the sanest feel on the verge of crazy. Grief, anger, sadness, pain, fear, can feel intense, out of control, and downright scary. Like caged predators, we box this emotions up and stuff them deep in an effort to prevent the frightening consequences we envision if they were ever to escape. We fear powerful emotions, because we believe they will overtake us. We fear that that once they are free, we may never be free of them again.
‘All emotions, powerful as they may appear, are simply that—emotions, like the clouds that float across the sky, which never stay for long. Though they appear threatening the most they can do is rain or hail or snow for a little while. In raining, hailing, snowing, the clouds lose their power. They literally dissipate. So it is with emotions.” (Chapter 15 Intro)
There are many ways to deal with powerful emotions–to help them lose their power, and to help our families heal. One of the most
helpful tools I’ve learned is something I call “FEELing” emotions. To me, FEEL means “Freely Experience Emotion with Love” (This is How We Grow).
That last part is especially important–with LOVE. Too often, we try to force ourselves to feel something other than what’s really going on inside, or we ignore our emotions, or we deny them outright. But none of these will lead to emotional healing. And none of these is loving.
When we love ourselves through life’s challenges, and through the difficult emotions that accompany those challenges, we find peace. As we sit with each emotion, recognize it for what it is, let the feelings come, and remember that the FEELINGS are not US, we find that they do dissipate. We do find we do become free. (Read more on how to FEEL, and watch a video on it, here.)
Emotional Freedom Technique
Another tool for dealing with stress, trauma, and difficult emotions is something I just learned about in 
my “Motherhood” radio show interview this week with my new friend, Elizabeth Mary Hancock–Coach & Host of The Happy Family World Summit. It’s called the Emotional Freedom Technique/Tapping (EFT). In this show, titled “The Family that FEELs Together Heals Together,” Elizabeth Mary and I discuss how this technique helped her overcome birth trauma and led to a beautiful birth experience with her second child, and then she teaches me how to do it, too.
When stress or trauma comes, your nervous system reacts, leading to the “fight, flight or freeze” responses–raising your heart rate and blood pressure, making your breathing quick and shallow, and so on. We also tend to have thoughts about the stressful situation–thoughts like, “I can’t handle this,” or “I’m going to die!”
The Emotional Freedom Technique uses tapping to help you release both the physical response to the trauma and the thoughts associated with it. The idea is that EFT switches off that nervous system response, and it can work very quickly. Of course, very traumatic events will take longer to heal, but this technique is a simple, potentially powerful way to help yourself and your family.
During our interview, Elizabeth Mary did EFT with me, to help me release the stress and trauma of a recent car accident I was in. I found it very relaxing, and I especially enjoyed the positive messages she helped me create to replace the negative, stress-based thoughts I’d been harboring about the accident. It did make me feel calmer, and I actually did it with myself the next day when feeling stressed, and it calmed me again.
Below is the chart we promised, in the interview, to share, so you can see exactly where the tapping points are and follow along as Elizabeth Mary “taps” with me. You start by tapping on the “karate chop” part of the hand, as she explains in our radio demonstration, and then, you tap on these specific areas while you express what you really feel and create a new “script” for yourself that’s more helpful and peaceful.
Family Healing
Because it’s simple and focuses on six (or 7) simple “tapping points,” the Emotional Freedom Technique is something you can also do with your children, and you can teach them to use it
Our family christmas photo, 2007, taken just three weeks after I gave birth and inherited my two nephews, going from 3 to 6 kids. I wrote about this in “This is How We Grow.” Don’t I look “fine?” Look closer. I definitely wasn’t. But thanks to hard work and FEELing, I am now, and so is my family.
themselves. It’s just one of many “healing” tools you can add to your emotional health toolbox. So, check out this important show, here, and then try the EFT technique yourself.
My hope is that, whether you use the EFT technique, the FEEL technique, or whether you focus on your own techniques, that you will make your family’s, and your own, emotional health a top priority.
Be willing to look at tough emotions. Remember they are just emotions–they are not you! Feel them, and then, choose to let them go. Then, repeat again and again, until you feel the healing begin.
More about Elizabeth Mary Hancock: www.elizabethmaryhancock.com
Be sure to check out my New show, “Motherhood,” on WebTalkRadio.net!
Link for this episode: The Family that FEELs Together Heals Together!
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And be sure to check out my interview on June 15, 2015, “Growing through the Motherhood Experience!” (You can even download it and listen later!)
For More Strategies on FEELing and Healing, check out these posts:
FEEL: How to Cope with Powerful Emotions (plus video)
Fear Does Not Prevent BAD; It Prevents GOOD: How to not let fear get the better of you
5 Steps of Overcoming: Depression, Grief, Anger, PPD, hormones, etc…
5 Tips to Turn a Rainy Day Sunny: Overcoming Feelings of Depression
Understanding and Overcoming Anger: “I do not want to be an angry person!”
Thought Management Part 1 & Part 2 (plus video)
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