Healing Abortion Trauma using EFT Tapping

Healing Abortion Trauma using EFT/ Emotional Freedom Techniques/ Tapping – by Tamara Donn

My client (lets call her Sandra) came to me after she met me at an EFT Level 1 workshop I was helping out on. During the demo, she ran out of the room in tears so I followed her and offered to tap on her. She cried and cried whilst I tapped continuously for about 20 minutes. Eventually she stopped and later, knowing that I specialise in pregnancy and motherhood issues, she shared with me that she had experienced 3 abortions several years ago that she was traumatised by.

A few weeks later, she booked 3.5 hours of EFT spread over 2 sessions to release this trauma. She also shared with me how she had never told her 3 children about the abortions and how she felt her children were at a distance and she never let them too close.

When I asked her what the intensity of the abortion trauma was on a scale of 0 to 10 (zero being no intensity at all and 10 being the most she could imagine), she said 2000. On questioning her as to which abortion memory triggered her most, she replied that the second one did.

I explained to Sandra that EFT is a gentle technique which minimises that pain of the trauma and I used a method that allows the client to dissociate from the memory and reduce the intensity of the feeling without going into it. For those of you familiar with EFT, this is called the "Tearless Trauma" Technique. I asked her how far away the memory had to be in order for her to feel safe and she replied "On the moon". I then asked her to guess the intensity of the memory while it was on the moon on a scale of 0 to 10 and she said 100. I then tapped on her and the intensity reduced from 100 to 80 to 40. She was then able to bring the memory nearer and eventually onto her lap when she started feeling physical sensations of heart palpitations, shaking and severe pins and needles. After some rounds of tapping the sensations reduced. She then became aware that some of the physical sensations were due to the fact that she couldn't allow herself to cry. On questioning, it became clear that she felt she had to keep herself strong and in control so I tapped on her for that using phrases such as:

"Even though strong people don't cry..."

"Even though I can't allow myself to cry..."

"Even though I may never stop crying if I start..."

This helped the physical sensations reduce further until, at the end of the session, she came to a more peaceful space.

The second session was a week later. I checked in with her about how she felt about the second abortion memory and she rated the intensity of her feeling towards it at at 5 out of 10. Tapping reduced this to 2, at which point she experienced pins and needles and her heart started racing. Another round of tapping reduced the intensity to zero.

I decided to use Matrix Reimprinting, which involved her going into the start of the scene and getting a sense of observing it without being in it. I invited her to trust that while I was tapping on her, she was tapping on her younger self (referred to as her echo) in the scene. The scene started when her echo was walking into the clinic and feeling very alone. I asked her echo who she needed with her, and her echo said her mum. So Sandra brought her mum into the scene, which helped her echo to feel supported. Her echo then went to have a scan, and the nurse (who was not supposed to show her the scan) turned the screen around and said, several times: 'You've got twins'. In the memory her echo went into shock and there was a lot of commotion. Sandra tapped on her echo for all the feelings arising. Her echo also had unresolved issues with her partner because she really wanted the twins but she felt he was not emotionally supportive, financially responsible or sexually protective. So we did more rounds of tapping on that and then on guilt.

When she got to a place of peace around that part of the memory, I invited her to talk to her twins and let them know what was going on for her. This was very moving and she told them what was going on for her at the time that prevented her from keeping them. She told them how sorry she was and how much she loved them. I asked her if they had anything to say to her that they told her that they had accepted her that they had been trying to get through to her all these years that she had pushed them and the memory away. She said that for the first time she felt like their mother. When that part of the memory was completely peaceful, we moved on to the next part of the memory where she went into the operating theatre crying and the doctor asked her if she was sure she wanted to go through with it and she said yes. Again more tapping on this scene until the intensity dissolved and she felt the memory was completely peaceful.

To test the memory, I asked her to tell the story and there was one blip left to tap on which we did.

To finish off, I invited her to get a sense of a positive image of her with her twins and she visualised herself, having just fed them, them resting in her arms feeling love, happiness and peace. The image then moved onto the 3 of them by the blue sea so I invited her to reimprint this positive image, colour and emotions throughout the universe, through the crown of her head, into every cell of her body and into her heart reminding her that her twins would always be in her heart forever more.

Reflecting on the other abortions, there was no charge left although we did not have time to test that.

At the end of the session, she felt she wanted to eventually tell her eldest daughter about her abortions and to be more authentic with her children. She also felt the barrier between her and them had lifted. The belief that if I can't be a mother to my lost children/ twins then I can't be close to my other children no longer held. The new belief was " I can now work towards becoming a present mother"