Core Belief Reprogramming Through EFT

“I don’t deserve to be happy.” Millions of people suffer from this kind of involuntary, negative self-talk. While doubts and fears may be a natural result of negative experiences, they can also lead to disastrous emotional and physical consequences. Emotional Freedom Techniques® (EFT) offers a holistic solution: a way to reprogram the mind and cleanse the physical body.

What Are Core Beliefs?
Core beliefs are the long-standing views that people hold about themselves and the external world. Core beliefs serve as filters with which people judge and evaluate their lives, situations, and relationships; it is a way of using experience to make sense of the world.

Often formed during childhood, core beliefs are affected by personal experiences. Positive experiences generally reinforce positive core beliefs: “I am loved,” or “I am valuable.” Negative experiences, particularly those associated with unusual stress or trauma can have a more devastating effect: “I am bad,” or “People cannot be trusted.”

Consequences of Negative Core Beliefs
Negative beliefs often lie dormant, surfacing only in response to some crucial new life event. At these times, they may thwart efforts for personal growth, happiness, or success. Too often people heed their negative inner voices, which may urge them to react to new opportunities fearfully and ineffectually. Promising relationships are sabotaged; hopes and dreams are dismissed as fanciful or impossible.

The effects are insidious. Negative inner voices urge caution, withdrawal, and self-protection. Negative core beliefs accumulate and form a self-fulfilling foundation of pessimism, skepticism, bitterness, and negative expectation.

Worse, this belief system often becomes closed and absolute. People may become so accustomed to negative associations and negative beliefs that they are no longer open to new, positive experiences. Their view of life may become skewed and distorted; the negative core beliefs coloring everything that they experience. The hypercritical view of self and the constant stream of negative thoughts lead, inevitably, to unhappiness and destructive life choices.

Over time this pattern of thought may also lead to illness, both physical and mental. Nahoma Asha Clinton, PhD and clinical therapist states, “Negative core beliefs underlie many pathologies…because core beliefs are integral parts of the character structures of the psyche, transforming destructive or negative core beliefs to a constructive, positive state is crucial to the healing of any pathology…it is as important to treat core beliefs as it is to treat the traumas that spawned them.”

EFT Helps Solve Core Emotional Issues
EFT is a revolutionary healing modality that shows great promise in its ability to dissolve the emotional and physical barriers that lock people into negative belief cycles.

Negative core beliefs are often formed over many years or decades. EFT practitioners believe that these traumas result in physical effects, and that those effects are directly treatable using a combination of mind and bodywork and acupuncture. Instead of using needles, however, EFT is practiced by gently tapping specific, key points (chi or energy points) in the upper body, face and head.  The preferred mode is to use counseling to help identify emotional issues, then use the bodywork (tapping) to assist in releasing the physical manifestations of those issues.

While the technique may be unorthodox, the results have been remarkable. Many peer-reviewed studies have been published, demonstrating EFT’s efficacy in a wide range of psychological conditions, including eating phobias, post-traumatic stress disorders, anxiety, and depression.

By addressing the root cause of these problems and by releasing the physical energy blockages which the traumas have caused, EFT has demonstrated the ability to correct chronic issues swiftly. A 2005 study conducted by Dr. J. Rowe (Counseling and Clinical Psychology Journal, 2(3):104) suggests that EFT positively affected a range of long-term psychological symptoms. Furthermore, the effects appeared to be lasting, still evident six months after treatments were applied.

Reprogram Negative Core Beliefs
The EFT approach to reprogramming negative core beliefs involves a merging of Western counseling and Eastern energy work. First the practitioner investigates to discover the underlying cause (or causes) for the negative belief. For example, a patient may fear closeness, resulting from the abuse of a trusted family friend. The negative core belief is stated as: “Everyone wants to hurt me, I can’t trust anyone.”

The patient holds this belief as a form of self-protection; unconsciously she may believe that her caution, her negative core belief, is keeping her safe.
To begin the healing, the patient is given a focal statement, which positively addresses the negative belief: “Even though I fear others may try to hurt me, I realize that I am worthy of love; I still love and accept myself.” The self-acceptance and self-love is a crucial element in the healing process. As this statement is spoken aloud, the patient is gently tapped on specific body meridians. This process helps release the physical effects of the negative associations while simultaneously promoting new, positive associations. The results are often extraordinary.

The Role of An EFT Therapist
EFT can indeed resolve certain issues in as few as one or two sessions. Certain deeply held beliefs, however, could require more persistence to identify and overcome. Here the role of a trained EFT therapist takes on special significance.

Often a person layers rationalizations and beliefs atop one another, creating a hard shell, which the therapist must slowly chip away at, gradually and gently exposing the underlying negative core beliefs. Only once a belief comes to light can the therapist and patient work together to gradually release the layers and ultimately to neutralize or eliminte the core negative belief.

During this time of release, a patient may be especially vulnerable, and the guidance of an experienced therapist is invaluable, both to provide support and to assist in the formation and installation of new, positive beliefs. In a safe and loving environment, the patient and EFT therapist work together to bring about true healing.

Nearly everyone harbors some negative core beliefs. Not only are they limiting, to opportunities, relationships, and overall general happiness, they can cause psychological and physical illness. EFT offers a compelling solution; a way to release the caustic bonds of past traumas while reestablishing healthy, positive emotional associations.