This looks soooo weird
Those were my first thoughts, quickly followed by the shocking realisation that I may have unwittingly joined a cult, as I scanned the room of 30 other curious souls all tapping on their heads and murmuring phrases simultaneously on a cold wintry day in Alcester. I was on a training course with an EFT legend, Karl Dawson and I was slap bang in the middle of one of the darkest winters of my life.
I’d already experienced some periods of depression and angst during adolescence, but this was monstrous. Black, foreboding, lonely and seemingly endless. In my desperate search for help that didn’t involve dropping a pill every day (no judgments here by the way, but this also frightened me), I had come across this energy therapy called Emotional Freedom Technique or Tapping as it’s now frequently known, and had noticed a significant shift in the intensity of the terrifying panic attacks I was experiencing. When I say terrifying I mean that it was like staring death in the face every.single.time. So convincing were my thoughts, that my body responded accordingly and I ended up being blue lighted to hospital on many occasions. Mostly I got sent home with the ‘it’s all in your mind’ shame..
During these days I wasn’t in the space of asking ‘what are these panic attacks teaching me?’ and more in the question of ‘why me?’
Well, my suggested diagnosis from a wonderfully compassionate paramedic on my last hospital visit was Post-natal depression.
Whatever it was, it was a depression so powerful that it zapped me into early menopause.
Validation.
So here I am, sitting in this meeting room tapping along with the rest of my cult, barely able to sit, stand or concentrate. This was mainly because the moment I arrived in Alcester my hip had decided to go into spasm, mmm yes, ideal you may be thinking. I definitely wasn’t. Karl however was thinking exactly this. On day 2 I told him I hadn’t slept and was in agony, so I had decided to go home, at which point he shared with me that today was…drum roll, pain day. Would I like to be the patient, at the front of the room, with all the eyes on me, with a looming panic attack?
Looking back on it I can see the huge milestone in my recovery in evidence in that moment, being away from my family for the first time ever, and then being in front of a bunch of strangers about to be tapped on, in public, with all my fears standing about with their arms folded waiting, goading me into meltdown.
But I didn’t go into an attack.
We tapped.
We focused on the pain, my words.
Within minutes, and I mean MINUTES, I was quite literally high kicking in amazement. Not because of the height of my kicks you understand, I’ve always had nice long hamstrings but Oh, the joy, the crazy speed of healing and the consuming wonder of how my body responded so positively to the words. Oh and the love I felt in that moment. Ahhhh. The relief. The validation. THIS STUFF WORKS!
Wind forward 14 years and here I am.
Do I still experience panic attacks? No
Depression? No
Do I still have fear? Yes sometimes
Anxiety? Yes sometimes
That’s because I’m human. But I now have an armoury of tools which I whip out ninja style. They are free to use. They are literally at the tips of my fingers, in the careful and specific use of my words, in the ebb and flow of my breath.
As I write this, and gaze back along the twisting path that brings me to this moment, I’m reminded of the Albert Camus quote;
‘In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
And I can finally acknowledge the gratitude I have for the journey that set me free.
