EFT Case Story: Ernest's Story - Anxiety Caused from Loud Noises

I started out by talking to Ernest in a calm but definite voice. I told him that I was going to try and help him to stop worrying about the noisy dog by doing some magic taping on him. I realized that on one level this was an ideal time because he was directly exposed to the source of his fear. However I had not had a real opportunity to introduce EFT to him and considering he was a little boy who was inclined to be nervous about new things, I felt this situation was not ideal. My intuition however encouraged me to persevere gently. I decided that I would pull back on proceeding with EFT if Ernest started to show either an increase in anxiety or show concerns around us doing EFT. As Ernest cannot see it was necessary for me to do the tapping for him initially.

However I showed Ernest the heart position and we both went through the set up using a set up phrase to help him relax. The set up phrase was "I am feeling worried". We then did one round with the reminder phrase "worried" Ernest's anxiety levels did not increase and he did not seem to unsettled with me carrying out EFT on him. After doing only one round to remove stress I could see that Ernest was relaxing and was quite comfortable with me continuing. At this point the dog started to bark again and I could sense Ernest's alertness to this. I decided to seize this opportunity, while the dog was still barking. I asked Ernest in a quiet but definite voice " Do you want to now do some magic tapping to help you to stop worrying about the dog barking?" Ernest stopped for a moment and pondered then said "yes". This was a good clear response from Ernest. I could tell from this response that he was calm enough for me to proceed. I knew that asking Ernest to give me a number on the SUE scale, for how worried he was, would not work as he would not understand the concept at his age. Instead I asked Ernest if he could tell me how worried he was about the barking at the moment. I asked him if he was a little worried, quit worried or very worried. He told me that he was quit worried. We started with the set up phrase "worried about the noisy barking dog" and then we did three rounds, with me tapping on him using my healing hands and the reminder phrase "noisy barking dog" which we both said together. I felt it important to emphasize my voice when using the set up and reminder phrase as I know that intonation is important to us all but particularly to Ernest, who relies on this to gain addition information that he might have otherwise got from my expressions. After doing three rounds of this I stopped and was about to ask him how worried he felt now. He giggled and with a liberated voice shouted "it's gone! it's gone! I am not worried about the dog anymore, how strange". At this point I decided to take it more towards the healing event and we did another two rounds on "dog barking" but are voices this time were quite jolly and we laughed as we said it. By now the dog next door had stopped barking and Ernest was asking for more barking. I realized at this point we might have reached the healing event.

I observed, over the next few days, Ernest's response each time he heard the dog bark. His energy had changed significantly. Now he got pleasantly excited when he heard the dog bark and continually asked the grown up around him to play 'dogs barking'. Ernest has not shown any sign, since the day we did EFT, of being unsettled by the sound of barking dogs. He has however been very keen to hear the sound again and still today enjoys playing 'barking dogs'.

Penny Wright,

December 2012