Back In The Playground

Last time, I looked briefly at EFT's role in helping people deal with the emotional baggage we are often handed down to carry around with us through life – even if some of it doesn't belong to us.

This time, I want to go back to the playground to suggest how EFT can liberate us from the ghosts of the past. For some, the playground can be an early emotional battleground. My father, for example, was kicked as a child by another boy in the playground. The damage to his leg was so bad that, had it not been for the new wonder drug of the time, penicillin, it would have been amputated.

As it was, the incident shaped his life. The disability stopped him going back to school and the embarrassment he felt probably spurred his eventual success in business. It also left him in physical pain for the rest of his life, which probably explained why he became such a bitter and angry character.

My father never worked through the incident. And how many of us, I wonder, have suffered or still suffer from what happened in the playground? I had a young client recently, whose parents referred her to me because she was driving herself so hard at school that she was putting herself under enormous pressure. Both parents work in the education system, but no matter what they said to their daughter, she wouldn't ease off – even in the holidays.

I love the challenge of working with children and young people. They keep me on my toes and bring out my creativity. What's more, to act early enough is to help them realise their potential. My young client told me that she needed to be 'the best'. That meant perfection. The trouble was, if someone else also achieved 100% in a test or exam, she wouldn't be the best. Her fear, she told me, was that if EFT worked, she wouldn't see the need to work so hard and might therefore no longer be the best. It was a delicate balance; she might easily have chosen to sabotage our sessions. But she did confess that she felt constantly stressed – and didn't want to feel like this. So this was her point of departure.

I knew from talking to her mother that she wanted her daughter to achieve what she never had. So her daughter was no doubt carrying around a certain amount of emotional baggage that didn't even belong to her. But I try to avoid any preconceived interpretations and start instead with what EFT practitioners call 'curious questions' to fish for core issues. Why do you have to be the best? What would happen to you if you weren't the best?

We arrived at a moment in the playground as a five-year old: an incident of bullying by a friend who became a hated enemy. The bullying made her feel really, really bad about herself. She started working so hard because subconsciously it made her feel much better about herself. She could be the best at something. The bully was pretty, but she wasn't clever. So, effectively, her drive for success became a kind of act of revenge. Bingo! She looked at me as if to say, Oh my God! Is that the reason for me working like this?

Having identified the problem, we tapped together on the meridian points to bring down the intensity of the different aspects: shame, anger and finally hate. I ask people to gauge the intensity of the emotions on a scale from 1 to 10, and eventually we managed to bring it all down to a neutral level.

Subsequently, she has eased right up on the pressure she was putting on herself. She feels a lot less stress – but has discovered that she can still achieve very high marks.

There's nothing particularly unique about this story. It could be the story of any number of young people. But it does illustrate the simplicity and effectiveness of EFT. The difference between this story and others lies in the individual aspects and the individual's perceptions of a given event. All too often we tell ourselves, I can't change this; there's no way out of this situation. But often all it takes is a simple shift in perspective – to see something a little differently.