I haven't blogged for a while. I think I have been through a kind of hiatus during which i have just needed to float.
On Thursday I went to a group workshop on the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) at the Mulberry Centre for Cancer support. At first i thought it might be bit bunkum as there is no actual evidence that it actually works to help heal people. I learned that it consists of tapping a series of points on the body called meridians. If you tap these in turn, you can start to feel calmer, breathe more deeply, deal with anxiety and phobias. It also works wto release anxiety stored in the body as tension, which leads to illness.
We began by tapping each meridian point on our body in turn. The first is the "karate chop" point on the side of each hand. You tap this with the first and second fingers of the other hand. You then progress to tapping in the same way, where the middle of the forehead between the eyebrows, joins the nose, then under your right eye, then under your nose, then your chin, then your chest, then the crown of your head. At the same time, you say a series of affirmations such as: "Even though I have cancer, I completely love and accept myself". Or in my case, "Even though I have been bereaved twice from cancer, I completely love and accept myself". Whichever is appropriate for you. As we did this, a weird thing happened. I felt a tingling at each point, wherever I tapped I felt it. The EFT workshop facilitator then went on to tap each person's meridians in turn. Another weird thing happened. Some people started to cry. We then changed the affirmations we were saying to focus on our emotions in that moment. I found that I felt angry and heartbroken and said "Even though I am angry, sad and utterly heartbroken, I love and accept myself" This made me pretty teary. When the facilitator asked me what I though I had learned from this, I said I thought I had learned to detach what was happening around me and to me, from what I thought of myself. That is to say I realised that my self-regard or self-esteem did not depend on what was happening to me. That was comforting in a way. Later on, we did even deeper work, and the facilitator worked with me one-to-one with the rest of the group tapping their meridians as she tapped mine. I had enormous difficulty getting to say what I needed to say, which is that the deaths had not been my fault. I simply could not say: "It's not my fault". I could only get as far as saying "I .. er ... It's ..... It's not .... It's not my ...."" I simply could not get it out. The facilitator told me it was ok and to give it time and that it was ok not to really know how I felt, and to say it.
It was the first time I was conscious of really working to help support other people in a group using this technique. I found it better than any group bereavement counselling from that point of view.
After me, the facilitator worked with a lady one-to one who had just found out she had cancer and who felt terribly ashamed about having to tell people about the diagnosis and very embarrassed becaause she was causing everyone to worry about her. She was encouraged to say she didn't understand how it could have happened when she had always been a well person before. But at the end of it, when she was asked if she felt better, a big smile came out, which was wonderful.
After this came another cancer carer, who had taken on enormous personal responsibility but who felt totally unsure about how much collective responsibility to take, for family and so on, as opposed to looking after herself. During the tapping that the facilitator was doing for her, she broke down and admitted that she wasn't sure where everyone else left off and she began. As this person is usually very strong and sure of themselves, this was a kind of shock for everyone to behold and as she talked, I looked around the group and we were all tapping for England! She said afterwards she had felt us helping her.
It was all stuff we were meant to go away and think about and do the tapping for ourselves.
Also, When I couldn't decide something yesterday and could feel myself growing anxious at the dilemma, I did do some tapping of my karate chop point and felt better.
I already wrote one comedy sketch about EFT ("Ooooh, tapping, missus! Eh!") andt it is fertile ground for further comedic shenanigans. But it somehow works on a personal level for people as well.
