How Healing Wounds Can Set You Free And How EFT Tapping Can Help

heal Past Trauma With EFT Tapping

In this article, you will learn about what trauma is, its causes, and how EFT Tapping Therapy has been proven to help individuals cope with trauma by healing the root cause.

"You're a very bad child" - That's all it takes to create a wound. 

If your heart and soul has been wounded, you are not alone! Many of us often go through a lifetime of wondering why our lives are the way they are.

Can there be no peace permanently? Is there always a struggle? Am I the only one? These are some of the questions that you may come across when you reach crossroads in your life, and it's completely okay and normal.

WHAt is trauma?

Trauma is a reaction to a very unpleasant or disturbing occurrence that overwhelms a person's ability to cope, generate feelings of helplessness, and reduces one's sense of self and ability to feel a full range of emotions and experiences.

It leaves you with long-term negative consequences for an individual's mental, physical, social, emotional, and/or spiritual well-being.

Trauma can leave you dealing with lingering negative emotions, memories, and anxieties. It can also make you feel numb, distant, and untrustworthy of others.

Traumatic events frequently involve a threat to one's life or safety, but any scenario that leaves you feeling overwhelmed and lonely, even if it does not involve physical injury, can cause trauma.

The subjective emotional experience of the event, not the objective conditions, determines whether or not an incident is traumatic. The more fearful and powerless you feel, the more likely you are to become traumatised.

According to the World Health Organization's World Mental Health Survey, at least a third of the more than 125,000 adults surveyed in 26 nations had experienced trauma. When the group was confined to persons with core illnesses as defined by the DSM-IV, the percentage increased to 70%. (the classification found in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition). However, those figures are only for cases that have been reported; the true number is almost certainly substantially higher (1).

Signs and sYMPTOMS OF TRAUMA

Many people have intense physical or emotional reactions right after they've been through a stressful event. Most people will find that their emotions fade away after a few days or weeks. And many people will experience symptoms after months, or maybe a year.

However, trauma symptoms might become greater severe and remain longer in some people. The nature of the traumatic incident, the availability of emotional support, past and present life pressures, personality types, and available coping skills may all contribute to this. The following are some of the most prevalent trauma symptoms:

Cognitive symptoms

• Intrusive thoughts about a possible incident
• Nightmares
• Visuals of the traumatic event
• Memory and focus skills weakening
• Disorientation
• Confusion
• Mood swings

Behavioral symptoms

• Avoiding activities or locations that bring up memories of the incident
• Isolation from social situations
• Lack of enthusiasm for previously pleasurable activities

Physical symptoms

• Easily startled
• Extreme tiredness and fatigue
  
• Insomnia
  
• Muscle patterns that are chronic
  
• Sexual dysfunction is a common problem.
  
• Sleeping and eating habits have shifted.
  
• Various aches and pains in various parts of the body
  
• Extreme vigilance - continually on the watch for signs of impending danger.

Psychological symptoms

• Anxiety and fear
• Anger
• Obsessive and compulsive actions
• Feeling of depression or despair
• Shame, guilt, and self-blame
• Feeling numb or distant
• Emotional shock
• Irritability (2)

CAUSES OF past TRAUMA

Trauma can be caused by a traumatic occurrence that has a long-term impact on the victim's mental and emotional well-being. Many sources of trauma are physical in form, but others are psychological in character.

The following are some common causes of trauma:

• Rape
• Domestic violence
• Witnessing an act of violence
• Death of a loved one, with or without warning
• Severe illness of injury
• Breakup of a significant relationship
• Neglect in childhood
• Living with a family member who suffers from mental illness or addiction
• Poverty
• Racism, inequality, and oppression
• Community violence, conflict, or terrorism (3)

why is it important to heal from trauma?

After seeing the indicators and what trauma does to people's lives, no one wants to go through it unless there is a secondary gain.

A traumatised individual is constantly depleted and fatigued, and unable to control his actions.

When a trauma is left unresolved and your sense of self is one of not being whole—of being shattered in some way—you're more likely to carry the imprints of that trauma into your life and relationships.

You must first have a good sense of yourself and your place in the world in order to have a peaceful living.

People who have experienced trauma may develop coping methods to assist them cope with the mental and/or physical anguish they are experiencing.

Dysfunctional habits, such as poor eating, tobacco usage, or drug and alcohol use, are sometimes used as part of these techniques.

Although these coping techniques may bring some relief, they can also contribute to anxiety, social isolation, and chronic diseases.

One thing that is certain is that untreated trauma diminishes quality of life for the trauma survivor and those closest to him or her and may lead to suicidal thoughts and actions.

Knowing how terrible trauma is for both the trauma sufferer and his or her family, friends, and coworkers, it is critical to recover from it.

The purpose of trauma recovery is to re-establish victims' sense of control over their life. This is the reason why it is very much important to heal from trauma for one's well being. 

Sometimes habits may form as a result of the 'trying to forget' and these habits can vary from cigarettes to alcohol, drugs, overeating and more.

One of the side effects is that we lose ourselves in the quest to find peace and harmony. This may manifest as failure in our lives, resulting in even more depression and wounds - And the cycle goes on.

On the flip side, these same wounds can become the road to our success and happiness. The media and internet are filled with such beautiful transformational stories where one has faced those wounds and made peace with them.

The question is, how can I face my wounds?

How to release past trauma by eft tapping?

Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) is an alternative technique for overcoming physical, emotional, and mental trauma. It has been proven to be effective and long-lasting. At the same time, implementation requires relatively little time.

EFT Tapping for Past Trauma helps the body's ability to let go of or release any trauma that may have been formed as a result of a previous traumatic experience.

EFT Tapping for Past Trauma treatment has also been proven to be successful and long-lasting in the treatment of patients who previously experienced large levels of stressful trauma but no longer do as a result of EFT.

EFT Tapping is particularly efficient in relieving the symptoms of Past Trauma. The following are the reasons:

• EFT Tapping reduces tension by making your body more relaxed. This aids your body in resetting all of its systems to a more relaxed level of functioning.
• EFT Tapping is a technique for reducing the severity of emotional trauma.
• EFT Tapping alters the way our brain interprets emotional signals that leads to Past Trauma.

EFT methods for working with past wounds and trauma are:

Tearless Trauma:

This is a gentle method of using double dissociation to keep the client safe from abreaction, and it is usually the ideal place to start when working with a specific traumatic incident. To summarise, find a specific trauma and project it onto a movie screen, then tap around it until the intensity decreases.

The Movie Technique:

The premise is the same as Tearless Trauma, but without the double dissociation. If the trauma isn't considered too severe, this is also a good place to start. In this step, you'll make a mini-movie of the occurrence and assess its severity. You can pause the movie and tap around it if the tension rises. Continue until the entire film is clear of any emotional impact.

Telling The Story:

This is a great technique to double-check your findings and eliminate any leftover issues. Use this ideally after you've reduced the intensity to a manageable degree or totally cleared it. However, as said above, there are situations when you will need to use it right away. You narrate the triggering event here and tap around it at each level. Ask yourself if you can recount the complete narrative from beginning to end. When you can do this while remaining calm, your work is done.

Trauma victims may relive their memories as well as endure other emotional and physiological symptoms. They may have also cut themselves off from normal life because they perceive the world as dangerous, causing them to detach and withdraw from both physical and emotional participation.

The following is a sample EFT Tapping technique to work with, or release past trauma:

does eft TAPPING really work for past trauma?

The participants for this study came from a facility where children are taken by court order if they had been physically or psychologically abused at home. Sixteen males between the ages of 12 and 17 were divided into two groups. Subjective distress (SUD) and the Impact of Events Scale (IES) were used to assess them. The IES measures two aspects of prior trauma: intrusive recollections and avoidance symptoms.

The experimental group was given a single session of EFT (emotional freedom techniques), a quick and innovative exposure therapy that has been shown to be effective in reducing past trauma and co-occurring psychological symptoms in adults but has not been tested in juveniles.

These findings are similar to those observed in adults, indicating the effectiveness of single-session EFT Tapping as a quick and effective treatment for reducing psychological trauma in juveniles (4).

Although Emotional Freedom Techniques can be administered on the self, it is recommended to consult a professional EFT Practitioner to get help for physical and/or emotional trauma you may be facing.

In conclusion, Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) is a highly scientific approach that can help with all aspects of past trauma, including the symptoms and after effects.

Trauma healing, like the healing of a broken arm, is critical to living a healthy, functional life. Moving toward a healed life and realigning with your own wholeness allows you to be more fully present in the moment, allowing for more connection, intimacy, and freedom.

Although it can be difficult to overcome past trauma, there is hope for a life free of trauma.

Cheers to the hope of leading a peaceful life!

Love,

Dr Rangana Rupavi Choudhuri (PhD)

P.S. Want to discover if EFT Tapping is right for you? Book a Complimentary Discovery Call. 

In summary, Past Trauma is very exhausting and gets you drained every second, but your life can get better if it no longer controls you and your well-being. You can overcome it by using a clinically proven method, mainly EFT. Emotional Freedom Techniques is a very powerful tool to deal with the symptoms and effects of past trauma. EFT Tapping can help you manage your past trauma, anxiety, depression, and stress by reducing tension and promoting a stronger mind-body connection.

References:

1. https://integratedlistening.com/what-is-trauma/

2. https://www.helpguide.org/articles/ptsd-trauma/coping-with-emotional-and-psychological-trauma.htm

3. https://www.traumainformedcare.chcs.org/what-is-trauma/

4. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1534765611426788