Crime And Punishment

Guilt. It's something that people rarely bring to us as therapists. It's generally easier to talk of what others have done to them rather than what they've done to others.

I had a couple of really interesting sessions recently with a young boy. As kids, we normally grow up knowing that there are consequences to our actions. If I'm bad and don't do my homework, I won't be allowed to use my Playstation. If I get caught stealing, my parents won't buy me a bike. If I'm nasty to my brother or sister, I'll get smacked. And so on.

We don't want to be found out. How many people can remember doing something naughty when they were little – and hiding the awful truth? My own husband still vividly remembers sneaking into the larder as a little boy and stealing a spoonful of icing sugar. It turned out to be pure Robin starch. Quite disgusting and punishment enough.

What happens when you hide it so well that you are never found out? Who punishes you?

You punish yourself. The punishment our parents inflict tends to be one-off. It's over and done with. But when we punish ourselves, boy do we do a good job. It's like a life sentence to the power of three – with no time-off for good behaviour.

The guilt, the guilt! The trouble is, it's unconscious. We don't always realise that the reason we are giving ourselves such a hard time goes back, say, to that stolen chocolate biscuit at age 4.

The little boy of seven who came to see me recently was the middle one of five children. He was harbouring lots of anger and making family life a misery. I used a combination of EFT and aromatherapy with him. The former encouraged him to open up, the latter gave him some 'softness'. Otherwise, coming to see me might have been perceived as a punishment.

The essential oils I chose were lavender and frankincense: a great oil for deep-seated anger and frustration and for spiritual release. He loved the combination of therapies and let go of a lot of 'stuff'. After this one session, the family reported back that things had totally changed for the better and that meal times in particular were calm once more.

During our second session, it was clear that there was something he didn't want to let go of, but I wasn't sure what it was. I asked him if there was anything at all that he felt guilty about. There was. In his case, his family knew what he had done at the time and had punished him accordingly. So why was he still hanging onto the guilt?

This triggered an emotional outpouring. It was something he couldn't forgive himself for, and he felt so awful that he couldn't tell me what it was.

So we started tapping together on the meridian points and repeating words like, Even though I feel really, really guilty and can't tell Deborah what it is, I'm a cool kid and my mum and dad love me.

Another great thing about EFT, as I learnt from my mentor, Gwyneth Moss, is that it can still work even if you can't actually bring yourself to voice what it is you feel so guilty about. So, I proceeded with something like, Even though I did xxxxx and it's unforgivable, my mum and my dad forgave me – and so did my grandad. He particularly respected his grandfather as a very truthful, upright person. If he could forgive him...

When we started, he gauged the intensity of the guilt as 15 out of 10. By the end of the second session, I asked him to test whether there was any guilt left. I asked him if he could imagine doing the same thing again. He looked at me aghast. Well no. It was a stupid thing to do, but I was only four years old. After punishing himself for three years, he had finally forgiven himself.

By the end of the session, there was a great big smile on his face and when his mum came to collect him, it was touching to see how full of love and joy he was.

He hasn't needed to come back.