Releasing hyper vigilance

Releasing hyper vigilance with EFT can be a threatening idea for many Veterans. Understanding and respecting this goes a long way. Many Veterans come home from war with a keen sense of always having to have their guard up, carrying a weapon, sleeping with guns under the pillow and on and in the nightstand and being ready to protect themselves the way they were trained before and during deployment.

This is a tricky thing to tap on, as while in the military, hyper vigilance was a skill that often saved their lives, a positive and hard earned ability to detect danger from a mile away, to be hyper aware of their surroundings and scan their environment for the worst possible danger.

As EFTers, it helps to be aware that hyper vigilance is a survivor skill, and “releasing” or “removing” it, or “letting it go”, would be highly undesirable and inappropriate wording for many.

Instead, I like to ask: When was the last time you actively needed your skills to protect yourself? In most cases, we find out that Vietnam or Iraq was the last time, and that, even though the skills were always present, they were not used in every day life anymore.

I reassure my Vets that they will not use their skills by tapping. What you have learned is yours, and available whenever you need it. If you need to protect yourself or others, you will continue to be more capable to do so than most, and that’s a good thing, there is nothing wrong with that.

What the tapping does is allow you to realize when you are safe, when you don’t need to feel hyper vigilant, so that you can relax and feel safe when appropriate.

If you haven’t  used your defense skills in 40 years, it would have been nice to be able to relax and enjoy life the way others did, instead of expecting the worst around every corner.

When we tap from this perspective, we can usually help our Veterans to appreciate themselves and their skills while relaxing and feeling safe.

I have seen astounding reactions of relief and gratitude after this kind of tapping, as none of the Veterans I have tapped with have been able to relax at will. This approach also shows that we honor them and respect their skills and training, which is important to prove ourselves trustworthy and create rapport.