Carer's guilt is often oversighted. Mary was no exeception and despirte doing her best to support her husband, she still felt guilty.

Nearly 4 years after her first encounter with EFT, 4 years since that time when even pronouncing the word “Alzheimer” was not possible. Mary has faced nearly all the situations you could think of in that scenario. She went through each and every step. John is now in a specialised retirement home. She visits him twice a week.

Over these 4 years, Mary, on her own or during sessions used EFT to manage her life as a carer. By the same token, she eliminated a number of her own traumas, not necessarily linked to her current situation. She also changed a lot of her own limiting beliefs and old programs. One of these “programmes” was the “guilt programme”. She no longer feels guilty for having a husband with a disease. No longer guilty for not always reacting to the disease with love and a serene attitude. No longer guilty that she is in good health herself. The list is very long... However...

She keeps attending regular EFT sessions. During one of these, she tells me that during the previous week, she visited John as usual. But when she came home, the phone rang. It was a male nurse from the retirement home. John, usually very quiet, and physically “weak” (he had lost 20 kilos over the previous months), had such a violent fit that 5 people where not enough to restrain him. This is happening in France, and they followed the process Mary would have used at home if that had happened there. They called the fire brigade for help. The firemen came, and while John by then was much calmer, they followed regular procedures, called the SAMU (a medical emergency unit), which in turn got John transferred to the nearest hospital. I leave you to guess what your own reaction could be in that kind of a crisis!

But Mary is perfectly calm as she tells me the rest of the story : she called the hospital, where they were not aware of anything yet, then the retirement home again. Mary had been planning for a while to leave the next day to visit her son on the other side of the country. So, on receiving the phone call, she had immediately made the connection between her trip and John's reaction, and considered not going. But she eventually decided to go anyway. She had tapped and perfectly managed the situation on her own. I ask her if she'd had any guilt about leaving, and she said “No, I know there was nothing I could do, I was right to leave”. Since then everything came back to normal, John had been lovely with the firemen and the hospital staff. They actually wondered what he was doing there! The next day, he'd come back to the retirement home, and everything was fine. The day before that session, back form her trip, she'd visited John and they had a lovely afternoon in the sun.

So when I asked her is she wanted to tap on any potential guilt, just to be sure to be sure, she says “Do you think we should?”. The best way to decide was to ask her to think again about that phone call and assess her guilt on the 0-10 scale. She immediately answered “there and then, at least 8! But everything is fine now.” She trusts me though when I suggest that we tap anyway, “8” not being exactly “no guilt”.

Even though I still have this enormous guilt in me (“it's gone now you know” she says), I deeply and completely love and accept myself (biiig yawns!).

During that tapping, Mary keeps wondering out loud if really we should work on this. But her abundant and repetitive yawns, tell me something is happening.

Still, after the tapping, she comments : “Of course you think the guilt is still inside, but once I left for my trip, I didn't even think of it”. She was the one coming up with an “8” though, and I describe the phone call again for her, 5 people to restrain him, the firemen, the SAMU, the hospital, the violence. Since she finds it difficult to give her guilt any intensity. I ask her to close her eyes, feel the guilt in her body, and guess a number. “4” comes out immediately. I don't usually insist that much, but my intuition told me to keep going.

Even though I still have this remaining guilt in my heart and chest, I am grateful that John is well taken care of. And I am grateful for our lovely afternoon yesterday (the visit after the trip and before the session).
Even though I still have this remaining guilt in my heart and chest, I now choose to let it go with love and gratitude, and I am proud I dealt so well with the situation.

That's after this tapping that it becomes interesting. Again, Mary insists that once she was on her trip, she really enjoyed it. Once I describe the phone call for her again, she rates her guilt as 1-2. You, know, that guilt that “didn't exist” but was an “8” a few minutes ago?!?

I ask why it is suddenly so low : “well, because we just worked on it. Plus, it all worked out nicely, there are no remaining symptoms, they changed his medication, all is well.” None of this has changed in the last 20 minutes. We really are only talking about her perception of it all.

So, since all is well, why is the guilt not a 0? “Well, if you put me back in the chair by the phone, hearing all this, it could hardly be a 0. I did receive this guilt after all!”.That was calling for a last round!

Even though I did receive this guilt, it will NEVER be a 0, I completely love and accept myself.
Even though they sent me this guilt, I was FORCED to absorb it in every cell of my body, it could NEVER be a 0, 1-2 is already much better then 8!

We were finishing on :

Maybe I don't have any guilt left after all. Maybe I feel really well without guilt...

and before I could come up with the final “thank you”, Mary comments, still tapping “and maybe this round was required to finish it off!”. And after we stopped, she adds “It was good that we talked about it, it really is a 0 now” !

By the way, this last tapping round was the basis for a free tapping sheet you can get here.

In conclusion...

This session did not exactly provide an extra-ordinary transformation.

But isn't life made of ordinary moments?

Small joys and small hurts.. which in the end add up. Many small joys, that's very good, but many small hurts can add up into a big hurt! When you tap daily for yourself, if you feel that a negative feeling is cleared, but you find yourself thinking and talking about it, ask yourself “is it really solved?”.

This session also shows how useful it can be to work with another person, as they will see in us what we don't see in ourselves.

Any comments? Contact me there.