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Shadow Emotions & EFT
As you might know, I am particularly interested when things don't work as the theory says they should, for it is my supposition that in the anomalies in any system, technique or theory the step up to the next level of understanding lies hidden.
Here is a jig saw puzzle piece for those who are interested in using EFT for far ranging personal development and sweeping, global changes in their lives; who have experienced the effectiveness of EFT to release emotional entanglements with certain subject matters; who have done a lot of work but for whom, mysteriously, their actual lives seem quite unchanged from where they started out.
When I use the term "actual lives" I mean measurable, physical, hard data. Such as increased effectivity at work which should have resulted in promotion and a pay increase by now. Or increased ability to make close and loving relationships which one might measure in dinner invitations per calendar month or such. To me, it is important to use such "hard" feedback devices for there are many ways to feel quite happy even when sitting on death row that are available to the human mind and I rather like to distinguish between effective *hard* strategies for change as opposed to mind changes that stay confined to the mind space and have no further repercussions than that.
It was interesting to observe that a percentage of people who use METs regularly, with a will, for personal development purposes were not actually getting the kind of cataclysmic shifts they had been looking for. I have been wondering about this for a while, and it occurred to me the other day what a problem might well be, and how to go about solving it.
Treating Present Emotional Entanglements
It is a fact that unless an emotion or problem presents itself, we can't treat it.
Even the techniques that pass such things over to the unconscious mind for the sorting rely on a starting point where one would say, ok, this *is* the problem I want to work on.
To name the problem, one would, of course, by needs have to be aware that *there is a problem* - if one was entirely unaware that there was a problem, one could obviously not set the actions in motion needed to resolve this.
So what we are generally treating, either by ourselves or with a therapist, friend or a client, for that matter, are problems we are aware of and that have presented themselves.
I put forth the proposition that in some cases, the actual problems are not present at all and thus cannot be resolved and that the reason they are not present is because *the individual has structured their entire life in such a way that the problem need never be experienced*.
Hence the term "shadow emotions."
Holographic Emotions
A hologram doesn't show you a picture of what is there; rather by inference it shows you a kind of shadow of what must have been there in order to create this pattern you are actually seeing, much like a stone being dropped into a pond and even after it has disappeared, the ripples would tell you clearly exactly where once it was; if you were to dive there, you would find the exact stone.
Consider, for example, someone who suffers from agoraphobia. If severe enough, they won't leave their house - ever - in order to not have to experience the intense panic this would cause. This is a simple and blatant example. Such a person organises their entire life and that of their dependents and carers too around this problem to avoid having to feel that feeling. All forms of addictions are of course also examples of that category, as is the person who will take the stairs because they will have panic attacks in the lift.
However, they are of course well aware of "that feeling" at the conscious level and can thus present themselves for treatment. What I call "shadow emotions" are the emotions we actually don't experience because we have constructed lives that protect us from ever having them in the first place, to the degree that we are entirely unknowing of their existence or of the terror we have of their experience in consciousness.
Tracking Back To The Original
Here are some questions to help elicit or track back towards someone's shadow emotions:
* What is unusual about your life compared to that of others?
* What do you do much more than other people?
* What do you do much less or even never at all?
* What decisions and behaviours don't make any sense about you to others yet they seem quite normal or even "the only possible way" for you?
* What is blatantly illogical about the way you have constructed your life across time to this where you are now?
* What areas of change are either seemingly entirely resistant or you haven't even ever considered to try and change at all?
And the final question is:
* What emotions must you never, never be allowed to experience (again)?
Likely Candidates
With a little bit of backward engineering and detective work, as you consider your own timeline or that of others in its totality, you come up with likely candidates for these holographic, super-scary shadow emotions that really must not ever be experienced (or else ...).
I might make a short note that the or else ... is of the order of, or else I would die immediately, or else the world would stop, or else judgement day must arrive that instant.
So, we will have some likely candidates.
Failure perhaps, shame. Terror, grief, - any description an individual would give of these "unbearable emotions". I have found so far that there are probably two or three likely candidates, with one standing out clearly and drawing attention towards it strongly.
In the country of holographic emotions, that might well be the *least* frightening of them all, and that is alright because you have to start somewhere, and our neurology always looks out for us and wants to be sure that this is safe to do before letting us get any deeper into heavier territory.
Releasing Shadow Emotions
There are many ways to accomplish this. You can EFT throughout the process and on whatever on the fear of this emotion first, then the emotion itself. Of course, you can use EMO or abstract and metaphorise the whole thing into numbers, shapes, landscapes - feel free to use whatever energy based approach seems the most natural.
It is possible that memories pertaining to the holographic emotion emerge; I am pretty certain that in order to basically censor these emotions out of a person's standard repertoire altogether and then to construct an entire incarnation around not having to experience them again, we are looking at some very highly charged memories indeed, probably from quite a young age (or also, if the timeline has taken a major kink with a very noticeable "before" and "after" at any time in a person's life).
* We now call these highly charged memories "events." It is important to note that events can be positive (Guiding Stars) as well as negative (Trauma); it is the highly charged nature of these events in the energy system that bring about the huge changes in a person's incarnation.
Results and Repercussions
Bearing in mind that I am talking about extreme emotions here and that shadow emotions may well set the boundaries and limits as what an individual can ever hope to be, do or achieve (like the house would set the boundaries for the agoraphobic), I would propose that the restoration of the abilities of an individual to know that they can cope with future occurrences of these emotions will result in a measurable widening of their mental territory and correspondingly, their behavioural flexibility. What I mean by that is that a person who has successfully treated a holographic or shadow emotion would find that they are behaviourally *and* mentally able to contemplate actions that were simply out of reach for them before - out of reach as in, entirely incomprehensible, entirely impossible, or simply not there at all as an option, like a missing hyperlink on an index page - the other page is there but you wouldn't know it and can never reach it.
I would close this with a health warning.
As I said already, the original causative processes that cause an entire set of feelings to be dropped from a person's life forever need to be very highly charged.
You are dealing with very volatile material that needs to be handled with great care and concern, especially when working with clients.
The Shadow Emotions intervention should not be undertaken with a client unless they are absolutely ready and willing and the concept has been explained. I would personally not even start with a Shadow intervention unless I was sure the client responded readily and positively to MET treatments to get them out of trouble if the original causative processes were highly traumatic, probably had not been available to consciousness for many years, or if the client was still too stressed.
Silvia Hartmann
September 2000
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This is a precursor to Events Psychology 2009
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