Losing Your Witness - Why Trauma Tapping Can Be Slow

EFT can really work miracles in clearing the effects of traumatic events. But sometimes you can run into a snag in the process, often when your intensity level gets low — after you’ve been tapping for awhile. I call it “losing the witness” resistance. It can be hard to recognize, but is easy to clear once you see it.

What Exactly Is Trauma

What we’re talking about here is anything perceived by you to be a trauma. One person’s trauma can be another person’s no-big-deal event.

For instance, one child could get separated from his mom in a store for a half hour and not even notice. He’s happily entertaining himself in a corner with something. His friend, however, might react by being really upset - crying and frantic. Clearly, the first boy wasn’t traumatized. But the second boy experienced his separation as trauma.

So it’s your reaction to something that determines whether it’s traumatic or not. Somebody else’s assessment of it doesn’t really matter here. It’s you who experienced it as really upsetting in the first place, and you who has crummy after-effects from it today.

Your Unique Witness

The response to the event you’re tapping on was uniquely yours. Even if others were present, nobody experienced it exactly the way you did. Your viewpoint and your feelings and your prior experiences add up to a one-of-a-kind reaction to the event. That’s just a fact.

So you experienced the event in a way that only you could. You also witnessed that event — and the feelings it triggered — from your unique position. Think about it:

• Nobody else knows exactly how it felt to see that other car coming.
• Nobody else felt that awful feeling of losing her forever.
• Nobody else knows what it took to hide your feelings and buck up.
• Nobody else knows how hard it was to talk about what happened.

Losing The Witness

It’s this “nobody else knows” element that can really slow down the EFT release process. I’ve seen it over and over again with clients and experienced it myself.

Some subconscious part of you feels like you’re abandoning yourself and losing the only true witness by completely letting go of the trauma. You feel like you’re dishonoring your experience of suffering, struggle, recovery, expense of whatever kind, etc. So you resist releasing all of it — just want to hang onto a little part of it. This often shows up when the intensity level is down to a 1 or 2. You just can’t get that last little bit to budge.

Now What?

Simply tap a few rounds on this very subject. Here’s an example of how it might go. Start with your setup:

• Even though I don’t want to let go of this last little bit because I feel like I’m dishonoring myself, I still want to love and accept myself.
• Even though I don’t want to release the rest of this because I don’t want to abandon my child self who suffered through that, I love myself anyway and respect my feelings.
• Even though I’m afraid to let go of all of this trauma because it was a big deal and I can’t acknowledge that AND let go of it, I deeply and completely love and accept myself anyway.

And now move on to some tapping rounds:

• I’m afraid to let go.
• It was a huge deal.
• I had to go through so much.
• Nobody will ever know how hard it was.
• I refuse to abandon myself.
• I don’t want to let go.
• I won’t dishonor myself that way.

Then shift to the positive:

• I would never abandon myself.
• I know that I’m here for myself.
• I respect all that I went through.
• That will never change.
• Tapping can’t touch that.
• So I choose to let go of this fear.
• I choose to honor my experience and allow myself to heal now.
• I give myself permission to release the rest of this trauma so that I CAN heal.
• I’m amazing and resilient.
• I’m so thankful for this opportunity to heal now.
• So I’m relaxing and releasing the last remeains of this trauma now.

Then check back in with your intensity level on the trauma issue itself. Chances are good that it has gone down. If there’s still a little bit left, continue tapping until it’s down to a zero.

Keep tapping and let us know how this works for you.

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