Are you feeling that your issues around emotional eating are now resolved and released? Are you now able to eat for nutrition instead of self-punishment? Have you explored every aspect of your resistance to change, and your secondary gains, and taken everything aspect down to a zero on the SUD rating?
Take time to sit and contemplate. Tap with a soft fist on your collarbone. Breathe and be open to what pops into your head.
These prompts are your final challenge. If you are clear of emotional blocks, you will know. If you have more to do to resolve and release your final, deeply buried issues, you will know that too.
You should by now be an expert in composing and ad-libbing your own EFT set-ups so now would be a good time to compose one based on anything that arises from this breaking-through step and then using PSTEC on any remaining negative feelings.
To download the A4 printer-friendly PDF version of the ‘Breaking through’ worksheet, go to www.your7simplesteps.com and click on the worksheets tab.
Gary Craig, who was instrumental in developing emotional freedom technique (EFT) to be how we know it today, also invented the run-the-movie technique. You can use this EFT protocol, supported by the worksheet on page 161, at http://your7simplesteps.com/book14 with any painful memories that you carry with you in your life. You will always have the memories. They will not be deleted, but the link with uncomfortable emotions can certainly be reduced if not completely eliminated.
Take one of your early negative recollections of an event or situation that led you to emotional eating and write it out on the next worksheet as a two-minute movie script, beginning by giving it a title. If you have numerous memories, then choose the one with the most emotional heat still attached to it.
Tap with a soft fist on your collarbone and breathe as you do this. Condense the memory to a two-minute film — who was there, where did it take place and how did it make you feel?
Slowly read through your movie script. If/when you feel any uncomfortable emotion, then stop and give this discomfort a number from zero, which is equal to almost no discomfort, up to 10, which represents intense discomfort.
Pause and then tap full rounds of EFT on the discomfort you feel as you reach that point in your film script, until your have reduced the discomfort down to either zero or a very low number.
Check that you are emotionally clear by beginning again at the start of your script, and when you reach that uncomfortable point in your story again, the aim is to be able to read it without any increase of pain or distress. If this is the case, then continue reading until you reach the next part of your movie script that you find distressing as you recall it and then repeat the process until you have no emotional load left for your entire movie.
When you have completed that, apply PSTEC to the feeling of your whole movie narrative until you have collapsed any remaining emotional intensity.
To download the A4 printer-friendly PDF version of the ‘Run-the-movie’ worksheet, go to www.your7simplesteps.com and click on the worksheets tab.
The depth of self-loathing and self-criticism associated with emotional eating can feel distressing. You are almost certainly harder on yourself than you would ever be on anyone else.
The processes described in this book will have revealed powerful insights for you to focus on and release. Use the guidance to compose your own tapping scripts using the tapping template to focus on self-love and self-acceptance. Work on the insights with the highest score of negative emotional intensity first as this often reduces, or collapses, the emotional intensity of the remaining ones.
Refer to the PSTEC section (see page 39) to formulate working with your key issues.
We have included some ‘set-up’ suggestions (see next) for EFT. Use them merely as inspiration on which to base your own work. Your own words are more powerful than anyone else’s words. There is also no need to aim for perfection here. Use PSTEC and EFT to knock out the key issues that have emerged so far.
Keep checking back in with yourself. The easiest way to do that is the zero to 10 SUD rating, so don’t forget to set a number for the related emotional intensity before you begin your work.
Relax. Breathe and let go.
‘Even though I hate my body and the way I look, I accept myself as I am now even though it is really hard for me.’
‘Even though I’ve been bullied and called names all my life, I am ready to speak to myself with kindness and care for myself with love and acceptance.’
‘Even though I have hurt myself and damaged my health in my past, I am ready to bring healing to me.’
‘Even though I find it hard to forgive everything bad that has happened to my body, I am tired of beating myself up and I’m ready to let go of all this guilt and self-blame.’
‘Even though I am not used to taking care of myself, I am willing to begin today to treat myself better. It begins here and it starts with me.’
As told to the authors and included here with Melanie’s permission.
At 35 Melanie was the heaviest she had ever been. The previous five roller-coaster years had taken their toll on her waist-line, and her confidence. When she and her husband celebrated their fifth wedding anniversary they tucked their children aged four and two up in bed before slumping onto the sofa with yet another take-away, and bottle of wine.
‘Sometimes I wonder where that ambitious young woman who had her career all mapped out and her life under control actually went. It’s as though I’ve lost sight of her under all the effort of working full time and taking care of my girls,’ she said as she began to explain her feelings. ‘Everyone thinks I’ve made a great success of my life. Wonderful husband, beautiful children, and I’m really respected at work.’ She paused. ‘That’s everyone except me. I’m terrified they’ll find out I’m not as capable as they think I am, and my daughters will grow up to realise I’m a rubbish mum, or my husband will lose patience waiting for us to have some quality time together, and go off looking elsewhere.’ Her eyes teared as she continued, ‘Especially as I’m four stone [56 lb] heavier than when we got married and I can’t even bear to have him touch me any more.’
Gently we began to unpick what was happening in her life, and especially what was happening for her around food. She talked about her comfort eating in her break times at work and eating sweets every evening in the car travelling to collect the children from their child-minder. ‘I just crave sweet things. It’s the only thing that keeps me going.’.
Working through the ‘Timeline protocol’ (see page 62), Melanie identified her reliance on sugary treats as beginning when she was 13 years old, when her family moved house and she moved from a small, rural school where she knew everyone to being the new girl at a much larger, city school. ‘I’ve always been a bit of a swot. I loved learning, and putting my hand up in class to answer questions made me the target for a group of girls who made my life a total misery. I remember going home unhappy every day for what felt like ages and my mum being really off-hand with me. She said I was attention seeking and causing her and Dad more trouble. Dad had been made redundant, which was why we had moved, but I had no real idea what effect that was really having on our lives. Now when I look back I realise they must have been worried sick about money, plus Dad, who never really showed his feelings, got quite ill with depression around that time, which made things even harder for my mum.’
‘Pretty soon I realised I was on my own. I became a bit of a chameleon at school. I remember making a conscious decision to fit in. I even trained myself out of my country accent. I stopped being a goody-two-shoes at school and sort of learnt to out-bully the bullies. I made myself fit in. Inside I still felt really lonely but I just kept that to myself. I started spending my lunch money on sweets and cigarettes with the other girls. If my mum or dad noticed any difference in me, they never said. When I noticed I was getting fatter I began messing about with laxatives and bingeing and purging sometimes, just like the other girls I was now friends with did. I carried on with that all the way through university.’
‘Oh yes, I made it to university. Right at the last minute I knuckled down and passed my exams. Inside I was still the girl who loved learning. I had just learnt to keep that a secret too.’
‘My boyfriend and I had only been going out together for about three months when I fell pregnant with our first child. We didn’t have to get married, we just chose to. The way things worked out, we didn’t even live together before the wedding. I suppose that was harder than I imagined. He wasn’t brilliant at sharing how he felt. I used to joke with him that he was even quieter than my dad. We were only just getting used to each other when shortly afterwards we were getting used to being parents. It felt like we hadn’t had a moment to really find out about each other, especially when I got pregnant with our second child so quickly.
‘My secret eating and bingeing really kicked off again after our second child was born. Six months after the birth I went back to work full time with a brand new promotion as head of department at an inner city sixth form college. I thought I could manage everything and keep all the plates spinning. I never told my husband, Vic, how overwhelmed I felt; I just hid it all. I was worried that he might be feeling under pressure himself as he had changed from single man to married man and father of two in just a couple of years. I was also afraid that if I told him how I really felt he might think I was being unnecessarily dramatic, just like my mum had.
‘So I just carried on with all my old coping strategies I’d developed when I was at school and university. I just kept all my emotions inside me, and drank way too much, and binged in secret whenever I had the chance. My mum broached the subject of me being under a lot of pressure during a shopping trip together. I must have been in a pretty bad way for her to risk saying anything to me.’ She paused and momentarily laughed before becoming very serious again. ‘Everything that should have given me so much joy just felt really hollow. Even my girls, who I adored, would be hustled through bathtime and bedtime with me in a bad temper so that I could get them out of the way and open a bottle of wine. I think my mum could finally see how unhappy I was. She had picked up a leaflet for Sally’s clinic and she said she would pay for the sessions. I didn’t even try to put on a brave face or deny anything. I think I knew I couldn’t keep going on as I was, which is why I accepted I had to see someone and sort myself out. It’s quite telling that although I could sort of admit to her that I needed help, I still kept the sessions secret from my husband for the first few weeks.
‘Learning to use EFT [emotional freedom technique] I realised how high I had set the bar for myself with the type of job I was doing while at the same time taking care of two young children. Initially, it felt like a big deal for me to consider the possibility that I couldn’t do it all. I also learnt in therapy how little of my own fears and doubts I had even admitted to myself, let alone shared with my husband. PSTEC [percussive suggestion technique] was brilliant in helping to free me from all those horrible old memories of being bullied at school, especially when no one at home wanted to listen to me. It was those old fears that I might not be listened to again when I really needed help that kept me from sharing how I felt with Vic.’
Melanie smiled broadly. ‘I may have married Vic, but in all honesty I had never really allowed myself to rely on him. When I was able to say to him that my life was all a bit too much for me he really understood and heard me.’ Melanie’s face softened. ‘I think our marriage properly began from around that time when I dared to share my real feelings with him.’ She continued, ‘In therapy I forgave myself for not being a super-mum and for relying on booze and rubbishy sweet stuff to keep myself going. Free from all that guilt I was able to go to my Head Teacher to speak with her about reducing some of my responsibilities.
Now, almost a year later even more changes have taken place. ‘I’m back to my pre-marriage weight. I’ve lost over four stone (56+ lb), and I’ve cut my work down to three days a week. Vic and I have monthly date-nights when my mum and dad take the girls for a sleepover at their house. I don’t drink at all during the week, and I don’t even miss it!’ She continued, ‘I thought admitting to my Head of School that I couldn’t cope would be the end of my career, but that hasn’t been the case. I’m still ambitious, but I’m willing to take things more slowly now and enjoy these precious years with our daughters. I’ve also learnt that it’s okay to ask for help. Vic is not my dad and I’m not that young girl any more who has to get by on her own. By asking for what I need I give myself the opportunity to be heard instead of stuffing it all down with crappy food, and I’ve also got closer to Vic as he gets to know the real me. I feel very lucky. I could scare myself if I dwelt for too long on how things might have turned out, but I’m too busy being happier to do that.’