One Session Wonder!
February 15, 2015
In the EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) world, there is a term we all use called a “one session wonder”. This happens once in awhile, when a client’s issue is completely resolved in just one session. Please keep in mind that no practitioner can ever promise this to anyone, and it only works out this way with a small percentage of clients – most require multiple sessions over weeks or months. But every now and then, wonders happen, and happen fast!
Last month, four weeks ago to date, I worked with a woman who had a serious drinking problem. She did not approach me as an alcoholic, but rather told me that she had sleep issues and “needed a couple of glasses of wine at night to sleep”. At first, I thought we would be working on sleep issues. But the more in depth I spoke with her, I realized quickly that she drank far more than a couple of glasses of wine every night, eventually passing out intoxicated.
I helped her to pinpoint when she first began this behavior, and she had difficulty remembering. She is a single mother to a college aged son, so we used her son’s age to help her remember different time periods in her life, and if she had been drinking nightly during each of those periods. We finally managed to trace the addiction beginning approximately 10 years ago based on her son’s age around the time it began.
When I asked her what was happening in her life when her son was that age, she began to describe a very difficult situation. Her son was in a private school because she felt the public school where they lived was unsafe, and his father had been paying the tuition but was talking about discontinuing this and putting him back into public school. As a result, she was terrified for her child’s safety. The father had also stopped other means of financial support, and she was struggling horribly with home finances and was afraid of losing their home and of having enough to eat.
We tapped on all of this while she talked about it. We did several rounds tapping about the fear for her son’s safety, the fear for having a safe home, and fear around paying other bills and buying food. This brought us to an underlying limiting belief, that she had been a bad mother. Her son is currently doing very well in college, has top grades, and has grown into a very responsible, caring, and intelligent young man. There was no logical basis in her current life or her current relationship with her son to suggest she’d been a bad mother, but that past situation 10 years ago had made her feel at the time as though she was, and she hadn’t even consciously realized she’d been carrying that feeling all of these years. She was very surprised at the outpouring of emotion she had about this feeling as we tapped through it.
Once we’d tapped enough that the feeling of being a bad mother was completely down to a zero, we were able to move forward. She had begun drinking wine nightly while going through that very difficult time in her life, because otherwise she would lie in bed thinking about the situation and feeling highly stressed about it, unable to relax or sleep. Once that past situation was neutralized by our tapping, we approached the idea of her being afraid now that she would not be able to sleep without drinking.
We tapped on the current fear, “Even though I have this fear that I can’t sleep without drinking wine, I choose to remember that my situation now is completely different from 10 years ago when I was so scared for my son. I have enough income to pay my bills with some left over, my son is doing great and we have a wonderful relationship, and I am a good mother. I choose to realize that with this new situation I’ll be able to sleep deeply and awaken refreshed without a hangover if I don’t drink wine…” At this stage, we were also able to add “and I deeply and completely love myself anyway” whereas prior to clearing out her buried feeling of being a bad mother, the closest we could get to that was “I would like to love and accept myself”!
We were getting closer. She had a few other aspects about drinking wine; she enjoyed its taste, she enjoyed the feeling of relaxation and letting the day go. But once the bigger issues were released, she realized that it wasn’t worth the feeling of drunkenness each night or the hangover feeling every morning. We were quickly able to zero out letting go of tasting wine, and to zero out the idea of relaxing and letting the day go without wine.
When we finished our 90-minute session, L was feeling excited and ready to embrace a new way of life. She realized she had no desire to go and buy wine, and in anticipation of our session she had not purchased any to keep in her home ahead of time.
In the past four weeks, L has completely let go of this addiction! She no longer feels like she needs to drink wine or any other alcohol, and has not tried to substitute another addiction (a common problem for those trying to quit addictive behaviors) for the alcohol. Twice she has had one or two glasses of wine in a social setting, but did not feel any desire for more – unlike prior to our session, when she described that she would often intend to just have one or two glasses but once she started drinking, she could not stop until she finished the bottle.
I was delighted to hear of L’s results! I was a bit concerned the first time she mentioned having had a glass of wine, because while I’m no expert, I’m familiar enough with addictive behaviors to know that it often starts back up as one or two, and rapidly escalates back to the same level as before. I initially thought we would have to have several follow up sessions to keep her from falling back into the same destructive behavior, but she is so excited to awaken feeling so refreshed each day, and loves being able to go to bed clear-headed each night. An added plus that I snuck into our tapping session was that not buying wine would save her a great deal of money each month, which would help her save for a vacation she’s been wanting to take, and she is enjoying seeing her budget’s changes without buying wine as well!
I feel honored that I was able to help L to make these changes in her life. I also feel excited for her!
If you are ready to make major changes in your life to live to your full potential, please contact me to set up an initial consultation. I look forward to many more success stories, including yours!
