I bolded the part that I found especially intriguing...
Breaking down a fear of snakes into specific events
Ray is a middle aged mental health therapist in the clinic where I work. He wanted to take his sons camping and hiking, but he had an overwhelming fear of encountering a snake. I reviewed the tapping procedure with Ray and had him imagine seeing a snake, he gave me a 0-10 intensity level of 9.5.
I started tapping with "even though I greatly fear encountering a snake". As we tapped, suppressed childhood snake memories arose to consciousness. Ray grew up in a rural area where there was an unusually high occurence of copperhead encounters.
His mother had great fear of these snakes and taught that fear to her children. He recalled a scary memory of his mother shouting to her children and at the snake as she killed a copperhead with a shovel and seeing the blood on the shovel.
We tapped for "even though my mother and I are scared....even though I hear her shouting to us to run indoors....even though there is blood on the shovel" until all aspects of that memory were at a zero intensity level.
He recalled being alone in the woods and coming across a large snake. We tapped "even though I'm alone and scared of this snake." When he got to a zero intensity level, he laughed and told me how the snake was scared of him and quickly disappeared.
He then recalled his brothers chasing and teasing him with a dead snake. He was at a 9 intensity level for this memory, so we tapped "even though my brothers are chasing me with a dead snake" and "even though I'm scared of a dead snake". Two rounds of EFT and the intensity level collapsed to zero.
Ray was shaking his head and smiling. I saw something else, though, and asked him what he was feeling. He said he felt sad for all the wasted years of fear. We tapped using the affirmation "even though I wasted so much time fearing snakes when I could have been enjoying nature." As we tapped on the spots, he said, "I could have been camping, I could have been having fun with the boys, I'm sorry I wasted so much time".
That round led to a sad thought that he adopted his mothers attitude and taught that fear to his own children. We tapped for that sadness using the affirmation
"even though my mother passed on her fear of snakes to me and I passed them on to my children." As he touched each tapping spot, he expressed his regret and sadness in many ways. When the sadness disappeared at a zero intensity level he told me that he still had plenty of time to enjoy nature with his kids and to teach them healthy attitudes and was looking forward to planning a trip.
This session took a mere 15 minutes. He also said "You should charge more for this therapy." He's now enjoying camping, hiking and fishing with his sons ... without the fear of snakes.
Ann Reed
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