Tapping and The Art of Knowing What to Say

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.

Last week, I introduced the concept of Blindsight, one I first learned of in Oliver Sacks’ memoir, A Leg to Stand On.  Sacks describes “losing” all sense of and connection to his leg after he injured it while hiking.  Even after successful surgery, Sacks couldn’t relate to his leg, for a time unable to see it as part of his own body.  Because he is a neurologist Oliver Sacks frames experience in terms of brain function, he relates his personal experience of alienation from his injured leg to people who suffer neurological damage who, quite literally, have a scotoma – a hole – in their field of vision. This hole may be likened to how we feel when we search for the words to say as we tap on an experience we can’t remember clearly.

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Tapping and Shame: PTSD Conclusion

Disclaimer:  PTSD  is not something anyone without training should face alone.  This blog contains descriptions that may trigger anxiety or fear, especially in PTSD sufferers.  If you suffer from PTSD and have learned tapping from your EFT Practitioner, counselor, or therapist, please tap while you are reading the following post; if you are unfamiliar with tapping, please postpone reading this blog until you have engaged a counselor, EFT Practitioner, or certified/licensed therapist who uses this technique.  Winter Blooms is an educational website only and is in no way meant to replace a trained EFT practitioner, counselor, or therapist.  To find an EFT Practitioner near you, visit the AAMET website, the EFT Universe website, the Tapping Solution website, or contact Jane at 802-533-9277 or jane@winterblooms.net for support in transforming your PTSD experiences.

Please see the August 3 and 10, 2014 blog posts for the introduction and second part of this three-part exploration of tapping to transform PTSD symptoms.

One of the most surprising discoveries I made during my PTSD recovery involved shame.  Logically, I understood the deep trust violations I had the opportunity to repair, but in my shame discoveries, logic couldn’t help me.  To be helpless and traumatized at any age did not appear to have any relationship to the two kinds of shame most of us experience:  productive shame and toxic shame.  We usually learn very early about productive shame.  It is that sick feeling in the gut that kicks in to support matters of conscience.  When we know something violates our code of ethics, such as stealing, but do it anyway, the consequential shame reminds us that we have gone against our inner guides concerning right and wrong actions.  In these uncomfortable situations our feelings of unease – in the gut, in the heart, in the throat – point the way back to feeling good by repairing what we have done wrong and doing what we think and feel is right.  We need what I call productive shame, especially when we are young and our values are untried or forming.  Toxic shame, on the other hand, humiliates and cripples us emotionally and must be neutralized before we feel free to develop lives of our choosing.  Tapping is very effective in neutralizing toxic shame.

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