"Even the best of parents who provide their children with a loving environment don´t always get it right. Parents themselves are only human after all and are themselves a product of their own upbringing with their own ´writings on the wall.´ An off the cuff remark can have a major effect on children and the parent is not even aware of what they have done. This is not an excuse for parents to beat themselves around the head for being a ´failure´ as a parent. It is a simply acknowledgment that this is part of the human condition.
In the meantime, the child has been deeply affected by the remark. The traumatic event may be a one off incident or it maybe a whole series of incidents. The child will interpret that incident according to their development and level of understanding. EFT can help the children to reframe those incidents and put a new meaning to what happened. It allows them to break patterns that while formed years previously, are continuously replayed with all the original emotional charge. It allows them to forgive the parent and understand that the parent was doing the best they could but didn´t always get it right.
To illustrate this I will give example. It involves an incident which upset me so deeply at the time that despite tapping on myself, I needed to do EFT with a fellow EFT therapist. To set the scene, a friend of mine was getting married and she had asked me to be a witness. I was deeply honoured, as this was to be a small wedding with just the bride and groom, the groom´s brother as one witness and me to be the other. As often happens with weddings, plans changed and the wedding grew to be a large ceremony with a bridesmaid and the full works. I was totally shocked and devastated when I discovered that somebody else had been asked to be bridesmaid and I was no longer required.
I was so emotional about the whole thing and I realised that I needed to do some serious work on myself so that I could face the day with equanimity and not spoil the bride´s day and the relationship between us. Why was my reaction so over the top? The word that kept flashing in my head was ´rejection´. I felt rejected and cast aside but I couldn´t understand where the rejection came from. I tapped on as many aspects of it as I could think. This helped somewhat but not completely. Eventually I enlisted the help of an EFT colleague of mine.
She asked me ´When was the first time you can remember feeling rejected?´ I thought for a while and suddenly the memory of an incident with my father flashed in my mind. Using the Movie Technique, I told her the story of how when I was about 5 or 6 my father had gone away for several months on a course for work. When he was due to come back, my mother and I went to the airport to meet him. I could see myself standing in the arrivals hall feeling so excited and waiting for him. Then this strange man with a beard and smoking a pipe came up to us, kissed my mother and went to kiss me. I had no idea who he was and I hid behind my mother. I didn´t recognise my father with a beard or with a pipe because my dad was clean shaven and smoked cigarettes. I now realise how upset and rejected he must have felt and unfortunately I can now pinpoint the unhappy relationship I later came to have with my father. I rejected him and then he rejected me.
We tapped until my SUDS level fell to zero and I then faced the ultimate test. How was I going to behave on my friend´s wedding day? I am happy to say that I felt calm and glad for her. I was truly happy for her and I also enjoyed her wedding day as an ordinary guest.
In conclusion, while not all core issues are rooted within the family, many of them are. Because of this, I believe it is important for practitioners to have an understanding of how families work as well as acknowledge that there are many forms of family."
