EFT Case Story: Chronic Back Pain & Morphine Addiction

Current EFT Master Practitioner distance learning course student Carole Gordon writes: The client was a woman, aged around forty. She had two young children, a working husband, and she worked part-time herself and was undertaking a training course at a university. Her pain came to light when she kept missing appointments, or mistaking times. One day she explained that she lived constantly with chronic back pain. She had completed the medical investigations some years ago, and tests and scans had failed to positively identify the cause of the pain. She became a constant user of morphine patches, which she expected to be using for the rest of her life. She monitored the level of morphine herself, and at high levels, she was aware that she became a little 'spaced out', and it was at these times that she might become forgetful of other commitments in her life. This distressed her since she regarded herself as a reliable sort of person.

Using EFT with this client was a challenge, since her negative beliefs about anything working were quite strong. On the other hand, she was willing to 'give it a try'.

I explained EFT to her, and we did a round of tapping partly to familiarise here with the tapping procedure, and partly to de-stress her. The pain was fairly well localised in her back, which she rated as minus 6 on the SUE (Subjective Units of Experience) scale, so that became the focus of the initial EFT setup. Subsequent setup phrases then became:

I've tried everything

I'm tired fighting

My back won't support me

I can't pick up my children

O God, it's like D... again

The client at this point disclosed that several years earlier she had worked as a nursery nurse and been on duty with children when a gun-shooting had taken place in the school. She had been first on the scene of the shooting in the classroom, and had rushed to warn staff and pupils to keep away from the area, and to hide. She was in a controlled panic, picking up children and escorting them to safety. She said that although she had received counselling shortly after the incident, she still sometimes had flashbacks.

After recounting this traumatic incident, I asked her to tell the story again slowly, and we tapped on each part that appeared to have an emotional charge. Then I asked her to rate her back pain, and she had moved from minus 4 to plus 2. She said her back felt good at that point in time. When asked what she thought would enable her to feel better still, she said that really believing she had done all she could in the situation would help. We tapped on this belief, and the experience of pain disappeared, her emotional experience now being plus 4.

She seemed quite amazed at making the connection between her back pain (picking up children) and the shooting incident (picking up children).

At a one-week follow-up, she reported feeling better, still using morphine patches, but at a reduced level.

Carole Gordon, 2013