Although “core issues” are talked about frequently within the EFT Community, they are not clearly defined. In Gary Craig’s tutorial on Finding Core Issues he states, “Sometimes a client’s ‘presenting problem’ is nothing more than a symptom of a Core Issue–a much deeper, much more important underlying problem. Once the Core Issue is discovered, it can usually be broken down into specific events and handled routinely.”

Therefore, for purposes of this article, we’ll consider a core issue to be a significant emotional event from the past that has in some way altered or reinforced unwanted emotional responses or unwanted behavior today.

While no one expects handling a core issue through EFT to be as simple as the “one-minute wonder,” what I am seeing in clients and on the online forums is an overly simplistic notion that if only the person could root out a significant past event, their life problems will evaporate.

Of course, sometimes finding one core issue does solve the problem. An accident victim afraid to drive may feel substantial relief after eliminating all aspects of the accident trauma. A client hated the taste of water. It turned out that when she was young a larger friend of hers panicked while swimming and nearly drowned her. By eliminating the aspects of that trauma the woman’s taste for water returned.

Unfortunately, as human beings we are more complicated than that. We typically harbor dozens of core issues based upon multiple traumas. These core issues interweave and play off of each other and are the basis for our decisions about life and the promises we make to ourselves – which then become the “rules” by which we live our lives. These rules by which we live can be so rigid that when we attempt to violate them we become anxious or compulsive.

For example, if a father berates a daughter for getting a “B” in school, even when the rest of her grades are “A’s,” the daughter might decide that she has to be perfect in order for her father to love her. She may become a perfectionist. She may constantly struggle to prove her worthiness and beat herself up internally, often calling herself the same derogatory names her father called her: stupid, lazy, etc.

She may take it a step further and vow to be perfect. In this scenario, the more she deviates from perfection the more likely she will develop anxiety and panic attacks. She may also develop irrational behavior, such as compulsion or obsession.

The irrationality of the behavior should not be judged against outer life circumstances, but rather the behavior indicates that a vow is being violated. For instance, a person whose mother was angry and destructive might vow “never to become angry like my mother.” Then, when a situation occurs when a normal person might naturally become angry, this person becomes anxious because anger violates the vow.

Change the vow, and the behavior can change and/or physical healing can occur.

Some examples of vows are:

I vow never to let this happen again.

I vow to make this marriage work no matter what.

I vow never to let anything happen to my mother.

I vow never to let anyone get close to me again.

I vow to be perfect.

If you are to become unstuck, you first have to find your core issues and take the emotional charge out of them before you can change the vow. One way to change the vow is to use the Choices Method (explained in Part 2). In the case above of the girl who got a “B,” the set-up phrase might be something like this:

Even though I vowed to be perfect, I release that vow

and choose to see myself as a beautiful spark of light and love.

However, before you change a vow, it is extremely helpful to diffuse the emotions that caused the person to make the vow in the first place. This process usually involves locating a core issue or series of core issues and tapping down the intensity of the emotional aspects.

Basically there are two general types of core issues: those based upon incidents you can remember, and those based upon incidents you can’t remember. The latter can be further broken down into incidents that were pre-verbal (you were so young you hadn’t learned to talk) and incidents you have blocked from your memory.

An example of pre-verbal issues might arise just after childbirth. Typically there is a psychic bond between mother and child. The child cries and the mother responds with care. However, suppose the mother is experiencing a traumatic event - say the death of her father. She may be so grief-stricken that she is emotionally unavailable to the child. The child only knows that where she once got love, she now receives sadness and perhaps resentment when the mother tends to her. If we can determine that the mother was in such a state, we can tap on, among other things:

Even though I’m frustrated that I can’t get my mother’s love…

Even though I’m frustrated that I can’t figure this out…

Even though I’m desperate for my mother’s love…

Even though I’m angry at myself because I can’t figure this out…

The baby may conclude through “emotional logic” what, roughly translated, feels like “I must be bad.” Later in life she will most likely have unexplainable emotions of shame.

Shame could also have arisen even earlier. If a child was an unwanted pregnancy and/or the pregnancy created unwanted stress in the mother or father’s life, where the parent harbored thoughts of wishing the baby was not coming, then strong feelings of shame can become fixed prenatally. If you even suspect this was the case with your parents, you can tap on,

A child can feel this shame even if both parents were loving and supportive after the child was born. If you are in doubt, tap on it. No harm will come from tapping on something that doesn’t exist.

But now let’s work with those incidents you can remember. Fortunately, when you locate one incident and begin to tap on it, more memories are often triggered. This process will lead you on a merry path of self-discovery.

Typically, everything you remember is relevant to your emotional well-being in some way, but not everything is related to the specific issue you are working on. When I work with a client, I help them remember multiple incidents and look for recurring patterns. Evoked memories that do not fit the pattern are also recorded, since they may fit in ways not yet determined. We then choose the most significant event and use EFT to eliminate the emotional aspects.

Once started, we don’t leave an issue undone even if a new incident is revealed. If you leave an incident before all aspects are cleared, the remaining aspects may still serve to lock the issue in place. After the issue is cleared, we can examine any new issues or incidents that have become uncovered.

So how can you do it? Perhaps the easiest way is to look at the emotion or behavior you don’t want and ask yourself when it has happened before. More than likely you will find several incidents. Behavior and circumstances tend to repeat themselves until they are resolved. Feelings triggered by a spouse can often be traced back to similar feelings triggered by parents.

Most core issues, but not all, can be traced to early childhood. You will have much better luck finding the core issue if you look for incidents that occurred before the age of 5 or 6 than if you stop looking after you find an incident that occurred as an adult. Even if a pattern of events seems to have started at a later stage of life, the emotions, attitudes and “rules” that set up the circumstances of the incident may have come from early childhood. Resist the urge to stop looking ever younger.

Often physical pain or body sensation can give you a clue as to what type of event or emotion you are looking for. We will cover more of this subject in a later installment, but for now see my article, “How to find the emotion that may be causing the pain.”

Once you find a key event, it is important to tap on every aspect of the event no matter how insignificant it seems. Be thorough. Get it all. This is so important that I am devoting the next installment to it.

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All the content here is given freely; however I appreciate your contribution to continue this work to the extent that you derive more value from the experience.