Relaxing or Healing?

The word “healing” does not go down great with some Veterans. It has a feeling of new age, woo woo, and is not acceptable. For the sake of rapport, I often start a conversation by replacing the word “healing” with “relaxing”.

“Healing” the unspeakable seems to bee quite a stretch for some, but if they could relax about it, that would be desirable and appropriate. I understand that. Relaxation is a feeling we all know, and we are used to incorporating it into our day: “I have a cold beer and relax!”, “I need to relax in front of the TV!”, “I just want to relax and not talk!”, …

We are used to find relaxation strategies.

Finding Healing strategies feels different: “We only heal when something that is broken.”, ” I can deal with it, I just want to relax!”, “I am not sick, so I don’t have to heal!”, are some arguments we hear.

So why not just “relax” about what happened in the past?

With EFT, these are very powerful set up statements:

Even though I am quite overwhelmed just thinking about what happened that day in Iraq, I choose to feel surprisingly relaxed about it.

Even though I get very angry remembering what they did, I choose to relax in a way that feels safe and right to me.” Even though I am upset and angry that I couldn’t stop this from happening, I allow myself to relax in a surprisingly appropriate and good way.”

These set up statements feel appropriate and freeing, as we don’t connect with a specific outcome, but  rather with how a good outcome is going to feel. In the end, the tapping has to work with the Veterans, with what is true for them and what they experienced.

If after 40 years of flashbacks, a veteran can finally relax about what happened in Vietnam, I think we did our job well.