Shelly Watson, LICSW 
Emotional Release Work with EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique)

Office Hours
Friday by Appt.
Shelly will be returning to the office September 5th

Contact Shelly:
508-887-2735
shelwatson@aol.com

For most of my life I was a yo-yo dieter. I went on my first diet at age 11, and spent the next 27 years either dieting, or rebelling from a diet – but never maintaining a comfortable weight. In my attempt to find peace from this obsession, I read every diet book known to man, learned the fat, calories, and carbohydrate grams of every morsel I put in my mouth, and generally became an expert on achieving permanent weight loss. Yet I couldn’t achieve permanent weight loss. Sometimes a lack of information is not the problem. Sometimes we know exactly what to do to improve our health or to lose weight – but we just can’t do it. Sometimes we need to uncover, heal, or learn how to manage the emotions that are unconsciously (or consciously) driving our unhealthy behaviors, in order for lasting change to occur. This is where Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) can help.  

EFT is a mind-body technique used to alleviate physical and emotional pain. It falls under the umbrella of Energy Psychology and Energy Medicine – and is based on the ancient principles of acupuncture. The process of doing EFT is quite simple – you tap on specific meridian points with your fingertips while saying (or listening to a practitioner say) the emotions or physical symptoms that are bothering you. In this way feelings are acknowledged, accepted, dislodged, and allowed to move through us – and a surprising reduction of intensity occurs. Repeating this process a number of times – the distress is often significantly, if not completely, eliminated. Most people are understandably very skeptical at first – but the beauty of EFT is that you don’t have to believe in it in order for it to work – you just have to be willing to give it a try.

Although the EFT procedure itself is quite straightforward, it can be utilized in a variety of much more complex ways. Its application can range from being a simple self-help stress reduction tool, to healing long-standing trauma. It can facilitate change of core, deeply engrained belief systems, as well as bring relief to chronic pain. It has helped such a huge array of issues that the recently released EFT documentary is aptly named “try it on everything” (www.tryitoneverything.com).

So how can EFT help someone who wants to lose weight or improve their diet?  On one level, it can neutralize the surface feelings propelling us towards an unhealthy choice. For example, many of us can relate to the experience of waking up every morning feeling really motivated and sure that “today is the day that I am going to start my healthy eating”. We’re rested, we’re not too stressed, and we’re sick of where our unhealthy habits have brought us. Yet somehow by three in the afternoon all that resolve seems to melt away….fatigue, stress, cravings, frustration, overwhelm, sadness, anger….somewhere between waking up and going to bed these feelings can derail even the most well-intentioned of us. But what if you had a self-help tool to shift you out of that bad mood, to neutralize that intense sugar craving, to sooth your anger, to relax your body…that is what EFT can do; and once back in that calm state of mind and body – making the healthy choice is a whole lot easier.

When we are aware of the feelings or discomfort that we are trying to self-medicate with food, EFT can easily be utilized in a clear and direct way.  Within only a few minutes we can ease our pain, reduce our discomfort – and thereby eliminate the need to overeat. It is often the case, however, that we are unaware of this connection. If, for example, we developed the belief early on in life that it is not safe to feel our feelings, or to feel particular feelings, then we may have also developed an automatic response of engaging in certain behaviors when feelings arise; if the behavior we are putting in place of our feelings is eating – then we will likely become overweight (if it is a different behavior – such as gambling, shopping, working, drinking, etc – then those behaviors may become excessive and problematic). This process may be completely outside of our awareness – so that the moment an uncomfortable feeling arises it goes immediately underground, and the only thing we are aware of is the urge to eat.  This is where EFT can be utilized on a deeper level than just simple symptom relief. It can help us to untangle the unconscious pairing of feeling and automatic behavior.

In the bigger picture, EFT can also help us to change the belief systems that may be causing us to stay stuck in our unhealthy behavior patterns.  Often the decisions we make about how we take care of ourselves (as well as many other decisions) are influenced by beliefs that we are not conscious of; for example, we don’t believe deep down that we are worthy of success – then despite the fact that our weight problem is causing us great pain – we may continue to sabotage our weight loss efforts. In order to bring about lasting change we must first bring these driving forces of our behavior into consciousness.  EFT is an extremely efficient and effective way to do this.  Without adding in this piece of the work, just knowing how to do EFT may not always be enough – because if there is unconscious resistance to losing weight, than we won’t choose to do EFT when we need it – it will just become another thing that makes us feel better (like exercise, yoga, etc) that we don’t do.   This more complex work generally requires working with an EFT practitioner – a professional who can utilize EFT to help uncover whatever unconscious processes are interfering with us reaching our goals.

What I love about EFT is its versatility.  In terms of nutrition and weight loss, it helps to uncover any root causes of emotional eating, while also providing an incredibly powerful tool for combating day to day stress and other uncomfortable emotions that can sabotage the best of intentions. It can be utilized to change belief systems, as well as heal emotional traumas, in a very gentle and time-efficient way.  EFT takes a little getting used to...it looks kind of strange at first – but I have found in my work with clients that any initial awkwardness they may feel is almost always immediately overshadowed by the startlingly  positive results they experience. So if you’re one of those people who has tons of great information about health and weight loss but have been unable to put it into practice; if you’re feeling like you have tried everything and are starting to believe that you just can’t change – EFT may just be the missing link to successful weight management you’re looking for. I know it was for me.