About ten years ago I had an episode of tachycardia (rapid heart beat) lasting a few minutes. Since then, these episodes became gradually more frequent. Often, additionally, I would feel short of breath, weak, have cold sweats and low blood pressure, all of which I believe are symptoms of heart trouble. I visited doctors two or three times but did not feel confident that any of them were able to help me, and I was determined not to get sucked into a life of pill-popping or even worse, hospital confinement.
From about two months ago until last weekend, these symptoms became the norm in my life, and freedom from them just an island in a sea of varying anxiety. I’m not much afraid of death, but I have a young son, eight years.
A year ago I came across EFT - Emotional Freedom Technique, bought Gary Craig's videos and studied them with care, passing Dr. Pat Carrington’s “Advanced” exam.
EFT uses tapping on various points of the body, together with certain spoken phrases. It can be useful for an amazingly wide range of problems. Of course I tapped for these “heart problems”, and that seemed to provide temporary relief lasting a few hours at most. Sometimes it didn't seem to work well. Often I would wake up in the night short of breath, have to get up and walk around for a couple of hours until I felt well enough to risk going back to bed.
Last weekend I started tapping when I felt an episode coming on. Usually I used the phrase “Even though I have these heart problems ”, or “… this heart problem …”, but by mistake I used the phrase “Even though I have heart failure …”
As soon as I heard myself say this, it began to dawn on me that “heart failure” for me at that moment really meant “feelings of failure”. "Heart"="feelings". Three or four times in my life I have completely failed when attempting to achieve leadership roles, and they have been traumatic failures: failure to be accepted for a commission in the army; resigning my position as a head teacher in a primary school; being passed over for head of house when I was a senior schoolboy. I thought I had put these failures behind me, but I had the feeling that this Freudian slip was significant and that I should tap for this “feeling a failure in my life”, using the specific incidents as far as I remembered them. I did this, two or three times. I had no strong emotions while tapping, but the symptoms subsided. I have been free of them for five days now. It’s many months since I had five consecutive days of no symptoms.
No doubt this will seem quite ordinary run-of-the-mill stuff to most EFT practitioners, but it feels anything but ordinary to me.
Anyway, to say I’m relieved is putting it mildly. I feel as if I have many years to live (I’m now 75), whereas last week I wondered how many days I had left. Many thanks to Gary and those upon whose shoulders he has stood. Any interested reader can click the link in this post or email me.
Malcolm
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