EFT For Dental Phobia

by Betty Moore-Hafter
http://www.holistichypnotherapyeft.com/ 

“Susan”, a woman in her late 20’s, was referred to hypnotherapy by her dentist because her severe dental phobia made it impossible for her to have dental work done. She had only had dental cleanings in the past, never needing fillings. But now she had some cavities, and the first time the dentist tried to work on them, she had gone into such panic, literally screaming and flailing in the dental chair, that no work could be done.

She didn’t know where the fear had come from — only that she was terrified of dental work and couldn’t control her panic. I suggested that she sit in my recliner (which might feel like a dentist’s chair!) and close her eyes and tune into the feelings. I asked Susan to describe how she felt. Then we started with EFT, as I tapped for her using her words.

(Set-up)

Even though I’m terrified of the dentist… and I feel like I want to cry… I don’t want to be there… I don’t want to go through with this… I still love and accept myself.

(Tapping the points for “terrified…feel like I want to cry… don’t want to go through with this”)

(Set-up)

Even though my whole body doesn’t want to do this… my whole body wants to get out of there… I forgive myself for feeling this way… and I honor myself for having the courage to face this fear…

(Tapping the points for, my whole body doesn’t want to do this… I want to get out of there… I feel it in my body…)

Susan felt a little better. The feeling of wanting to cry had subsided. I asked her to describe what she anticipated about the whole procedure step-by-step and we would tap for every detail.

Even though I don’t want them to put that swab in my mouth… with the local anesthetic… I hate that cotton in my mouth… I hate the taste… I’m still a good person… and I accept myself completely…

Even though I’m terrified of the needle that will inject the novacaine… I can’t stand to have that injection in my gum… I love and accept myself…

I asked her more about how she felt physically to think of these things that would have to be done in her mouth. She said, “My mouth is really tight. My mouth wants to close up and keep all this out. My mouth doesn’t want to open.”

So we tapped for,

Even though my mouth is all tight…doesn’t want to open… wants to stay tightly closed and keep those things out… I love and accept my body… I love and accept my mouth…. I know my mouth is doing the best it can to protect me….and spare me pain… but I want my body to know… I want my mouth to know… that the dental work is to help my teeth and protect my teeth and spare me real pain in the future…

We tapped the points for, “This tight mouth…doesn’t want to open…”

Susan reported that her mouth still felt tight, so I said, “Tell me more about what you’re feeling inside.” She said it felt like they were violating her privacy and forcing her to do something she didn’t want to do, and that really bothered her. So we tapped for those words:

Even though it feels like this is violating my privacy… forcing me against my will… forcing me to do something I don’t want to do… I deeply and completely accept myself…

This seemed like a good emotional theme to pursue, so I asked her if this feeling reminded her of anything else. First, she thought of some relationship issues where she had felt pressured to do some things she didn’t want to do… so we tapped for those and added some choice statements:

“Even though others may pressure me… to do what I don’t want….I know I have the right to walk away… I choose to be powerful… I choose to walk away.”

Then I asked if she could let her mind drift back in time and see if there was anything in the deeper past, perhaps in childhood, that this reminded her of. “Maybe being forced to eat things I didn’t want sometimes,” she said. I asked her, “Can you think of a specific incident?” “Yes,” she said. “I’m remembering a time when I was about 9 and my mother made a special stew for dinner. A small bowl was enough for me and I didn’t want seconds, but my mother really wanted me to have more. I wanted to say no, but I didn’t want to disappoint my mom… so I forced it down…but I got sick afterwards.”

I said, “Just be 9 now…be 9 in your mind… just be that girl… and we’ll tap for her”

It went like this…

Even though I don’t want any more stew… I’ve had enough… I want to say no… I still accept myself… and even though I couldn’t say no and walk away… and I ate the stew … because I really wanted to please her… didn’t want to disappoint her… even though I was forced to eat something I didn’t want… and I got sick… wish I could have just said no…. I was doing the best I could… didn’t want to disappoint my mom…. Now I will say no and walk away… if it’s something I don’t want… wish I could say no and walk away from the dentist…

Susan felt more peaceful about the childhood incident after that, but it was unclear if we’d made any progress on the dentist issue.

So I had her go back and replay in her mind the entire procedure… the local anesthesia… the needle… she reported quite a difference. She said that she still felt anxious but, even though she didn’t like it, she could imagine herself going through with it.

We continued for every part of the procedure, the drilling, the noise, the fingers in her mouth, the water squirting in, having to keep her mouth open, afraid her mouth was too small and would be painfully stretched — there were dozens of aspects! We tapped for them all. Finally, we tapped using her desire to “be powerful” to reframe the whole situation.

“Even though I don’t enjoy this dental work, I choose to face my fear and be powerful and do what needs to be done… I can be powerful and choose to face my fear… I’m the one choosing this.”

It was a marathon session, nearly 3 hours. And Susan still felt pretty anxious about the dentist when she left. We would see……

So I was relieved when her phone message several days later said, “The techniques really, really worked! I was still trembling, but I could tap, and was totally relaxed, so we were able to get the dental work done. My dentist was very pleased — he said it was like night and day.”

Whew!

Betty Moore-Hafter, MA, CHt
Author Of Tapping Your Amazing Potential
http://www.holistichypnotherapyeft.com/eft-store_EFTManual.php

EFT for Fears & Phobias

by Gary Craig www.emofree.com

About 10% of the population suffers from one or more phobias. They can cause intense fear and often severely limit the lives of those who have them. There are hundreds of possible phobias and EFT can be effective on all of them. I include below some of the more common ones:

• Public speaking
• Heights
• Snakes, spiders and insects
• Claustrophobia
• Dentists
• Needles
• Driving
• Elevators
• Flying
• Bridges
• Rejection
• Sex
• Water
• Speed
• The telephone
• Marriage
• Men
• Failure
• Disease
• Dogs
• Computers
• Bees
• Being alone

What is a phobia?

For our purposes, a phobia is any “excess fear” over and above normal caution or concern. Let me explain…. Our fears are essential…to a point. They are important to our survival. Without them we might walk off the tops of tall buildings, eat arsenic or play tennis on the freeway. They are automatic mechanisms that kick into place when danger is afoot. They step on the brakes for us and keep us from harm.

But sometimes fears overdo their function. They go well beyond the normal boundaries of caution and create an unnecessary fear response. It is one thing, for example, to be cautious when you see a snake or a spider. Some of them are dangerous and could cause you harm.

But it is quite another thing to experience a pounding heart, headache, nausea, vomiting, sweat, tears or a long list of other excessive fear symptoms. These latter responses are useless in that they contribute no more to your safety than does normal caution. They are “excess fear” and serve only to create misery for the phobic person.

It is that “excess fear”….the useless part….the part that is above and beyond normal caution or concern…that we define as a phobia.

What is fascinating about EFT in this regard is that it eliminates the phobic part of the fear but leaves the normal caution or concern alone.

People are often amazed at how quickly a lifelong phobia vanishes. But the process doesn’t make them stupid. They don’t suddenly jump off of tall buildings or kiss grizzly bears. What is interesting, though, is that people who eliminate a phobia with EFT tend to have less fear than the general public with regard to that phobic circumstance. Almost everyone, for example, has some phobic response to heights. Ask 100 people to look down from the top of a tall building and most of them will feel a little queasy. That’s a phobic response, of course, but for most people it is rather mild. It doesn’t cause them any real problem in their day to day living.

By contrast, those who completely eliminate a height phobia with EFT don’t even feel queasy. They are left only with normal caution and could spend the day calmly looking off that building. It doesn’t matter how intense the phobia is or how long you have had it either. That’s a big surprise to many people because conventional wisdom has told us for decades that long standing, intense phobias are “deeply ingrained” and must take months or years to eliminate. Not so with EFT.

Some phobias take longer to resolve than others but that’s not because of their intensity or longevity. Rather it is because of their complexity, i.e. the number of aspects involved. If a phobia is being “stubborn” with EFT, try using EFT on the specific events that may underlie the fear.

Examples might be….

Even though that snake bit me when I was 8….

Even though I fell off the school roof in the 4th grade…

Even though the class laughed at me when I forgot the words to my speech…..

And so on.

Please recall the discovery statement upon which EFT is built: “The cause of all negative emotions is a disruption in the body’s energy system.” All phobic responses are negative emotions and are thus caused by a “zzzzzt” in your energy system. That means the solution to your problem is conceptually very easy. Just eliminate the “zzzzzt” and the phobia will fade to zero. No headaches. No pounding heart. No problems whatsoever. The emotional intensity will be neutralized.

Our tool for this is The Basic Recipe. A few trips through it should eliminate the problem forever. How many trips you need, however, depends on how many aspects there are to the phobia.

Aspects are important. Aspects are different parts of the phobia that contribute to your emotional intensity. Let’s revisit the height phobia example for clarification on this idea. Most height phobics have had many specific events in their lives where they were up high and their phobic responses left them with distressing memories. For example, one gentleman I helped with a height phobia had a fearful memory (aspect) of sitting on a water tower when a little boy. There was no way to get down and it scared him to death. Memories like this are separate aspects of a height phobia if, when separately recalled, they produce a fear response.

Since most phobias only need one aspect addressed, just 1 to 3 brief trips through The Basic Recipe will usually do the job. You will be rid of the problem in a matter of minutes and, in most cases, it will never return. At this point, neither you nor I know how many aspects of your phobia need to be addressed. That Notwithstanding, we can still proceed very effectively. All we have to do is assume you have several aspects that need addressing and address them, one by one until you have no more emotional intensity. When your emotional intensity has vanished you will know that you are done and all relevant aspects have been addressed.

Questions and Answers

Q. Once the phobia is eliminated, is the result permanent?

Yes. However, if it appears to “come back” that is almost always because there are new aspects that weren’t properly addressed the first time. If you quiz the client on what is going on with them you will usually hear them speak about the fear differently. For example, the snake phobic might discuss his/her adverse reaction to the moving tongue of a snake. If this aspect didn’t come up while using EFT, then it remains a problem. Using EFT on the moving tongue should eliminate that aspect and provide complete relief from the phobia unless, of course, there is yet another unaddressed aspect.

In other cases, a brand new traumatic experience could start the phobia all over again. In this case, you need only repeat the process again as if it was a brand new phobia (which it is). Relief should be moments away.

Q. What do I do if I have several phobias?

Address them one at a time. For example, make sure your spider phobia is totally neutralized before you address your claustrophobia. Then make sure your claustrophobia is totally neutralized before you address your driving phobia, etc. Some phobias are labeled complex in that they are several phobias wrapped into one. The fear of flying is sometimes like that because it can also involve (1) claustrophobia, (2) the fear of falling, (3) the fear of dying, (4) the fear of turbulence, (5) the fear of taking off, (6) the fear of landing, (6) the fear of people, etc.

If you can isolate them in your mind, they qualify as different aspects and should be addressed separately. If you have a complex phobia, but are unaware of it, persistent use of The Basic Recipe should still do the job. But it may take many trips through the process until all “zzzzzt’s” are neutralized. The intensity may rise and fall as the different aspects are handled “behind the scenes.”

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