(This article assumes a basic knowledge of EFT. If you need a quick primer, download my free eBook, The EFT Quick Start Method.)

Q: When I first learned EFT it worked really quickly on everything. Now it is not working as well. Do we build up a resistance to EFT?

Gene: Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) is a wonderful and powerful tool, but just because we know how to do EFT doesn’t mean we are going to heal. I often use the example with clients, just because we know how to do sit-ups doesn’t mean we are going to have washboard abs. EFT is no different. It is a tool that only works when we take the time to use it.

We have all experienced the obstacles people unfamiliar with EFT put up to trying it. (Ex: That can’t work. It is too easy to work. It is too weird. That is just new age mumbo jumbo.)

Recently I have come across two thoughts that cause my clients who have used EFT for a long period of time to stop using it.

Expecting the “One Minute Miracle”

I still get great joy the first time someone I am teaching experiences a quick relief to something that has gripped them for years. Often times it is something they have tried everything under the sun for relief. EFT is the first thing to provide lasting relief. It is just unbelievable that it could happen so fast.

Then as they try EFT “on everything,” they start to understand the breadth of the power of EFT. Quickly they are finding relief to both the physical and emotional. But they hit a wall. They find some pain or emotion that won’t go away (or scientifically reduce) in one round of tapping. They reason, since EFT didn’t work in 60 seconds, it must not be worth the trouble to keep on trying.

In these cases it usually just takes a cognitive reframe to get them back on board to using EFT. I simply talk them through their own experience. Many times they had invested months or years to get relief. Sure in this case it didn’t happen in 60 seconds, but it might be worth their time to give it 15 or 20 minutes. Usually this is all it takes.

More Than They Expected

It is a phenomenon that I have noticed mostly with the clients that I work with regularly, especially when we are working on an issue that has many aspects that require multiple sessions (like weight loss or multiple traumatic memories that are similar).

Typically what happens is during the third or fourth session the client will start to get very overwhelmed by the amount of work that remains. Because (in many cases for the first time) we have been looking so closely at the roots of a particular issue, the client is starting to understand how many different aspects there are to the problem. In the past they had only thought about the surface issues. Now because they are doing healing work, they are facing head-on what is really at the root of the problem. Many times this means issues and memories their conscious mind had been ignoring.

It is like when we are cleaning a bedroom. After cleaning the room, we decide to look under the bed and find all sorts of dirt and dust we had no idea was there.

When this happens I remind my clients that right now they are taking the short view and are forgetting all the work we have done to this point. And we start to tap:

Right now I am overwhelmed with how much work is left.

But I know I am. [How to use these tapping phrases]