Thoughts on Facebook: Self Care Post # 6

Years ago I felt the pressure to join Facebook, not so much by family and friends, but by my professional affiliations. I felt resistance to joining this social media site but thought at the time that my resistance might be due to overwhelm caused by learning new technology. At the time, I was teaching at a community college while developing my practice as an emotional wellness coach and so was spending a considerable amount of my time on the computer. Because of work pressure, I gave in and joined. After participating in this inconceivably huge social medium for a little while, I felt my resistance to the platform increasing. While it would take me a couple of years to understand my resistance thoroughly, eventually I came to the conclusion that my porous boundaries and sensitivities to others’ energies made it an unhealthy place for me to exchange ideas and information.

Before I joined, I had seen the film The Social Network, and while I didn’t believe the film was without bias, I did feel that it accurately portrayed the contentious birth of Facebook, with lawsuits, acrimony, and adolescent reactions to opposition. Now, more than a year after I closed my account, I feel my decision was a protective one: first, from frustration at the overly stimulating energies the site carries; second, from distress over what people were actually putting out into the world (as opposed to what they thought they were posting); and, third, from our collective lack of awareness regarding how some users were intentionally using the platform to spread hate and disinformation.

We live in shoot-from-the-hip times that include playing for an audience. My work in the world is diametrically opposed to this reactive, retaliatory energy. In my community college classrooms and in my coaching sessions, I do what I can to support self-awareness, reflection, contemplation, and strong boundaries. Asking questions has always been my path into deeper understanding, of literature texts, and, of the emotional challenges we face when we have been traumatized. After a couple of years of experience on the site, I saw Facebook’s advantages, but I felt its potential for traumatizing its participants as well.

Now, as the social media giant struggles with boycotts over hate-groups and political messaging, my resistance to the site feels prescient. Some part of me that is always attuned to peace, understanding, and respect, resisted becoming involved in the collective energies of what is often the worst of our human behaviours. Researching other forms of social media connection has been revelatory. So far, I am in social media infancy, but my self care activities require that I move slowly into the online world of global connectivity.

I am fine about this slow, steady progress. Just as I choose to eat local and regional foods whenever I can, I choose to communicate directly with people. This means that I put myself out there as an EFT coach on reputable websites whose purpose and practice aligns with my own values. Because of this choice, I hear from people who want what I have to offer, not because of random marketing on a site that has no curating principles, but because these people have chosen to look for someone with my skills, education, and approach.

Living with the energy of violence, racism, hate speech, and rampant commercialism takes its toll, even when this influence is subliminal. Anxiety, critical self talk, and false comparisons are but a few of the side-effects of social media dependence. The 2019 Forbe’s article (see link below) is but one of many exploring the potential dangers of Facebook and social-media dependency. Because Emotional Freedom Techniques practitioners are in the business of raising our and our clients’ energy vibrations, it is especially important to choose our social media platforms thoughtfully.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jessicabaron/2019/01/08/is-facebook-harmful-to-your-health/#7c86fbb46436

Energy work is highly gratifying, and at the same time raises our levels of sensitivity to reactive behaviours such as fear-driven bullying, false representation, and cynical marketing. We have an opportunity to create more coherent, supportive, and positive platforms that are sensitive to the harm we can do in the world simply by going along with something we believe will benefit us monetarily. These are highly volatile times. Choosing to support peace and justice in the world is always good for self respect, and self respect is an essential aspect of self care.

Be Safe. Be Informed. Be Just. Be Love.

Until next time, Jane

Self Care during Challenging Times

Please Note:  Winter Blooms is an educational website in no way meant to replace building a relationship with a trained EFT practitioner, counselor, or therapist.  To find an EFT Practitioner, visit the AAMET website, the Gary Craig website, the EFT Universe website, the Tapping Solution website, or contact Jane for EFT coaching support.

With polarizing influences screeching in our ears like nails on a blackboard, it is easy to be caught up in the drama and forget to turn off our devices and sit in silence as we invite the natural rhythms of the world to bring us back to centre.  One of the most effective techniques for building resilience in the long term and self regulating in the moment is to step outside onto a grassy patch, focus on a tree, and simply offer our appreciation for its being present to us.  Resilience and self regulation are the secret to joyful longevity, loving and respectful relationships, and successful, sustainable business enterprises.  Tapping to clear all resistance to daily resilience and self regulation practices helps us to develop nourishing self-care practices that ensure positive experiences in the moment and positive experiences over time.

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The Longest Journey

Please Note:  Winter Blooms is an educational website in no way meant to replace building a relationship with a trained EFT practitioner, counselor, or therapist.  To find an EFT Practitioner, visit the AAMET website, the ACEP website, the EFT Universe website, the Tapping Solution website, or contact Jane for EFT coaching support.

Many cultures, including our own, tell us  that the longest journey we ever make is the journey from head to heart.  Anyone who has spent time living in thinking mode knows the truth of this statement.  We spare ourselves the work of feeling when we crowd out our emotional responses with constant information gathering, analysis, and judgment.  The truth is, our emotions distress us, because they often come with an awareness of our vulnerabilities.  It feels much safer to give ourselves over to thinking about our lives and the world.  And yet, without the guidance of our hearts and emotions, we are nothing more than machine-like problem solvers and problem creators.  Given the number of crises we must address address today, it is easy to conclude that very few people have made the journey from head to heart.

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Seasonal Blues – The Cultural Connection

Please Note:  Winter Blooms is an educational website in no way meant to replace building a relationship with a trained EFT practitioner, counselor, or therapist.  To find an EFT Practitioner, visit the AAMET website, the ACEP website, the EFT Universe website, the Tapping Solution website, or contact Jane for EFT coaching support.

This time of year, many of us feel the anguish of being alone, not because our solitude is painful or undesirable or the result of accident rather than choice, but because our materialistic, ad-driven culture emphasizes family connections in its hard-sell of goods that bespeak waste, environmental degradation, and the conflation of need and desire.  Linking these goods to a return of Light is an irony hard to miss.  The altruism of giving, something naturally linked to the celebratory feelings of Illumination and Rebirth, is nowhere more evident than it is at this time of year despite the commercialization of our lives.  Tapping can help to calm our frustration and helplessness in the face of rampant consumerism and at the same time help us to feel connected to the energies of Regeneration that are so potent as we begin our slow journey into
Winter.

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Loss and Pain

Please Note:  Winter Blooms is an educational website in no way meant to replace building a relationship with a trained EFT practitioner, counselor, or therapist.  To find an EFT Practitioner, visit the AAMET website, the Gary Craig website, the EFT Universe website, the Tapping Solution website, or contact Jane for EFT coaching support.

In the northern hemisphere as we enter the ninth month of the year themes of loss abound.  Although at this point the changes in colour are subtle, we know in our bones that slowly but surely we are losing our connection to the Earth’s green mantle, the vibrant quilting of plants, shrubs, and trees that makes us feel good to be alive whenever we take a walk down a treed street or set off for a taste of the wild on hikes in the woods.  The season of autumn, so poetically called fall, impacts us in profound ways because it mirrors the many personal, community, and world losses we are experiencing each day.  EFT, when used as a daily comfort tool, can help us to navigate the transition into this season of loss by helping us to lessen the physical and emotional pain that often accompanies this change in the seasons.

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Alive Inside: The Film

Please Note:  Winter Blooms is an educational website only and is in no way meant to replace experience with a trained EFT practitioner, counselor, or therapist.  To find an EFT Practitioner, visit the AAMET website, the EFT Universe website, the Tapping Solution website, or contact Jane at 802-533-9277 or jane@winterblooms.net for EFT coaching support.

Sometimes we get stuck in a go-to solution for life’s many challenges.  Tapping – like jogging, cleansing, yoga, meditation, and the other effective self-help tools we use to bring understanding, perspective, and peace into our lives – can leave us feeling let down because of overuse.  When this happens to me, I turn to story in one of its myriad forms.  Most recently that form was documentary film, specifically Michael Rossato-Bennett’s  Alive Inside, the story of Dan Cohen’s grace-filled efforts to bring music to nursing homes residents experiencing Alzheimer’s and Dementia.

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Tapping and Failure

Please Note:  Winter Blooms is an educational website only and is in no way meant to replace experience with a trained EFT practitioner, counselor, or therapist.  To find an EFT Practitioner, visit the AAMET website, the EFT Universe website, the Tapping Solution website, or contact Jane at 802-533-9277 or jane@winterblooms.net for EFT coaching support.

Failure can be a wonderful teacher, especially when we tap without seeming to shift specific issues.  Failure prompts us to think and intuit outside our usual patterns of cause and effect.  One of my favourite phrases when tapping on a particularly stubborn issue is “If I need to fail at understanding and resolving this challenge now, what are failure’s gifts?”  Seeing failure as a gift giver is a positive reframe that prompts us to look for the hidden benefits – what Gary Craig has called the Secondary Gains – in what appear to be negative situations.  We may be close to understanding something that requires special emotional support and the time provided by apparent failure allows for that support to materialize in our lives.  When our tapping failures are seen in this way, EFT becomes a process rather than a product, a journey rather than a destination; it takes the pressure off our problem solving efforts and brings into our awareness helpful forces beyond our control that support our intention to live authentically and with love.

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Death Part Two: Awash in Love

When my mother died in April of 2006, I had already discovered tapping.  In fact, it was because I knew she was dying that I sought out EFT Master Betty Moore-Hafter.  Although everything was right about my mother’s death, I felt I needed support to allow my mother to die without my needs interfering with her process.  I chose Betty, not because of EFT which I hadn’t yet heard of, but because she was both a hypnosis and age regression therapist.  I was curious to see if her approach would help me to resolve the last few energetic ties to a medical trauma my mother and I shared when she was thirty and I was two.  This surprise EFT session was magical – gentle and loving – and I left Betty’s office feeling this challenging early event had been transformed.  I have tapped ever since.  One of the earliest consequences of that session was an ability to be fully present to what my mother needed.  On my own, I could tune into my own need to celebrate her life in my own unique way.  Somehow, without writing about it directly, I wanted to express the essence of my mother’s approach to living in and leaving the world.  Awash in Love is that essence.

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Tapping for Others

Tapping for someone else is called surrogate tapping.  Many who use it,  me included, feel it is a form of prayer.  When I first heard about surrogate tapping, I was concerned that I might be intruding on someone who didn’t want my help.  Gary Craig, EFT Founder and creator of Official EFT sheds a more benign light on surrogate tapping.  When asked if he considered tapping for others intrusive, he compared it to prayer.  Generally, we don’t ask if we can pray for those we are moved to shower with love, he offered.  We do it whenever we are moved to send loving energy their way.

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Tapping and Authenticity

Sometimes, in our multi-media, Type A Culture, living authentically feels impossible.  We may discover this impossibility when we believe strongly in alternative medicine but we work, in one capacity or another, for Big Pharma.  Or, at our core, we may understand the threat of ecological devastation by human industry but take the only work available to us, in the oil or automotive industries.  More common still, we may understand the importance of organic, unprocessed foods, but our budgets and our neighbourhoods offer only inexpensive, processed foods whose primary ingredients – corn, soybeans, and wheat – are supported by government subsidies and allowed on our shelves without labeling despite containing killer pesticides and genetically modified organisms.  Authenticity, that is, congruence between our values and our behaviours, is a hard-won achievement in western culture.

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