When EFT is such a good self-help tool, why would anyone pay to see an EFT practitioner? Why would they not just save the money?
It is true that people achieve remarkable results working with EFT on their own and they do it even with only a very basic knowledge of EFT. It is fantastic that they do.
However, there are times when EFT doesn’t seem to work. You seem not to be getting anywhere. Or you are stuck. Or you feel you do not even know where to start. And we would not be human if we did not sometimes find things too uncomfortable, consciously or unconsciously, to want to confront them.
That is when we find other things to do to distract us or to make ourselves too busy. Or we suppress our negative thoughts and feelings. We say we are “fine”. We even manage to believe it. It is human nature not want to ‘go there’ if ‘there’ is somewhere that seems too uncomfortable or painful or even dangerous.
And we have got by by repressing or suppressing or denying or splitting off from all that negative stuff for a long time now. Why should we face up to it all now?
At some point, the defences we have put in place may crumble. We may find ourselves in physical or emotional pain. Or we may feel ourselves being drawn down into depression. Or feel anxiety is spinning out of control in our lives. Or we may find we are sabotaging ourselves or every relationship we get into.
We may be facing some new challenge. Or something may happens to bring us slap up against the realisation that we really need to make some changes and that we need someone with expertise to help us to create a strategy, to stay on track, to confront what we would rather sneak past, to challenge our demons.
That is when we realize we need someone to support us as we work through what we need to clear.
A therapist will have the advantage of being on the outside looking in. Sometimes the view is much clearer and more incisive from from that perspective than it is to the person caught up in the middle of it.
If you have a history of serious trauma
Sometimes people who have experienced severe trauma, especially if it is early in their lives, bury the memories so skilfully that it is years before something happens that triggers their conscious awareness of them again. They may come as flashbacks. They may be fragmentary. They may drive addictive behaviour or depression or severe anxiety.
Other people who have had severe trauma do recall it and have always known what happened to them and have become skilled at devising ways they can just get on with living with their memories – until something happens and their coping mechanisms desert them.
People who have had severe trauma are the group for whom skilled professional help is most strongly recommended. Going alone into a very painful past can be too traumatic to be in anyone’s best interests. It could even be dangerous.
Changing perspectives
Sometimes a skilled practitioner can help facilitate a different way of seeing and understanding issues as EFT clears their emotional charge. Or to help a client to know when they are caught in an inner conflict with one part of them wanting one thing – the goal they think they want to achieve in therapy – and another part resisting the change.
