Helena’s Accident

An EFT Case Study by David Hall

Helena’s knees had given her trouble for years. She was also experiencing a tearing feeling between her left shoulder blade and spine along with pain down that arm.

She dressed and carried herself with a great deal of style and grace. However, there was no rotation when she walked, so there was a held quality in the way she moved. She stood off balance, with her chest behind her pelvis and most of her weight on her heels. She was used to paying attention to her body and could feel the difference in quality of movement when I helped her realign herself. She relaxed a lot as we worked and her movement became somewhat freer with a drop in the level of pain.

I asked her if she knew of any emotional issue that could be relevant to the unnecessary holding she was doing. She said she was unaware of anything, though it could relate to a car accident that occurred 23 years ago.

I asked her to relate the story of the accident. She told me how a ‘54 chevy had ploughed into the beach buggy she was a passenger in. Her pelvis and left leg were broken and her shoulder and arm badly bruised. She remembered small details, such as thinking “That was risky”, when the driver crossed the intersection moments before the collision. She said she felt alright lying in the wreckage of her car because “they would know what to do”. However when a policeman said to her, “You might have a bit of a problem there with that leg” she realised her predicament. She looked down and saw her shattered left leg and immediately turned away. She didn’t want to see it.

As she related this to me tears began to fall. Helena was already familiar with EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) so I asked her to rub a tender spot at the top of her ribcage whilst repeating these three statements - “Even though I have had this accident and I don’t want to see it, I completely love and accept myself as I am” then “ Even though I did not want to experience the trauma of my accident and turned away from my leg, I completely love and accept myself as I am” and then “ Even though I have turned away from my leg and my whole left side, because it hurts, just like the shock of the accident, I completely love and accept myself as I am”

This helped her become very present to what she was feeling without any need to escape from it. There is often a link between emotion and long term pain and EFT is a powerful tool for working with this. It is based on a contention that the cause of negative emotion is not a traumatic memory or incident but a disruption in the bodys energy system.

To use EFT a person holds an emotion or issue in their mind whilst tapping on or near the ends of Acupuncture meridians. The particular meridians that were dysfunctional in the face of the relevant experience are stimulated into becoming functional and the negative emotion dissipates. The technique can be applied to anything that has an emotional component. It proved to be very useful for Helena.

I asked Helena to tap through all the points of the basic EFT sequence whilst she alternately held “The shock of the accident”, “The shock of seeing my leg” and “The accident” in her mind. As she tapped she repeated the words as a reminder.

The emotional intensity of the experience diminished quickly. She looked relieved and more relaxed. She remembered other details so we tapped a second round alternately saying “ I have turned away from my leg” and “The policeman’s face and voice” and “This fear of seeing my leg.”

The intensity dropped to zero after this and I asked her to tell the story again to see if she would have any reaction. There was no reaction at all with that part of the story even when I prompted her to remember other details. She said she felt more relaxed and open and looked at me with the relief one has after getting something off the chest that has been there for twenty three years.

EFT contends that Emotional experiences have many aspects. The issue as a whole may not trigger much response but specific details can. I asked Helena to continue with the story to see if there was anything else. Memories of experiences such as this can often be mixed up with other apparently unrelated experiences which can make them feel bigger or more daunting than they actually are.

We found another aspect of the experience that was even more intense than the seeing of her leg. This occurred when the ambulance man tried to put an oxygen mask on her. She saw the mask coming toward her face and was overwhelmed with fear “ Not the mask, please don’t give me the mask.” she said. The ambulance officer explained why she needed to have it and eventually she accepted it. Next thing she knew she was in the hospital. She was crying as she told this story and remembered that this fear probably came from having her tonsils out in Britain as a child. She remembered the fear she felt then; being overwhelmed by the operating theatre and wondering what would happen as she drifted into unconsciousness. Her last memories were of a satellite she imagined rotating around her and then waking up with a very sore throat.

I asked her to rub the spot on her chest and say - “Even though I was terrified by the mask and the whole operation, I completely love and accept myself as I am”. “ Even though the ambulance man tried to put the mask on me, I completely love and accept myself as I am” and finally “Even though I was scared by the sound and smell of the mask and wondered what would happen, I completely love and accept myself as I am.”

She then tapped on “I don’t want the mask”, “The sound and smell of the mask”, “The lights”, “I don’t know what is going to happen” and “They might hurt me”.

The intensity dropped completely in two rounds of EFT and she said she realised that the satellites were probably the operating theatre lights. I asked her to relate the story again and she was unable to get intense about it. We did some tapping on the pain in her shoulder and arm and she reported a significant drop in pain.

We finished the session with some movement awareness exercises to help her notice and reinforce the physical changes that had occurred as a result of the tapping. Her face looked very different and she was a lot more relaxed.

She came back two weeks later and said that the pain in her arm was barely there and her shoulder, hip and knees felt great. She had done more tapping on her own and had been paying attention to the way she carried herself and moved. She was more aligned than the previous visit though did not rotate as she walked. In this session it was much easier to enable her to rotate without EFT as the emotional underpinning of that habitual tension had already been removed.