How to Overcome Emotional Barriers
You now know one of the most important steps you can take to prevent disease and optimize weight is to eliminate processed grains and sugars from your diet. “But wait,” some of you may think, “that means no more loaves of French bread. No more English muffins or bagels. No more cakes, pies, and cookies. I don’t think I can do that.” That type of thinking is an emotional barrier. For some, there is the demon of self-doubt and resistance lurking inside you and, even though you know this crucial step would benefit your health, your self-doubt makes you feel like you couldn’t possibly succeed. So where did that little demon come from, and why does it seem in control of you?
You may think you lack willpower if you have cravings for and addictions to food, but that is not true. It’s not that you lack willpower, but that you never learned the tools for how to address your addictions and emotional challenges. In my clinical practice, attending to emotional issues is central to the program. The majority of these emotional barriers can be traced back to childhood. For instance, in our society we reward children by giving them junk food such as birthday cakes, cupcakes, ice cream or McDonald’s Happy Meals. In addition, children are inundated by junk food marketing on TV. This emotional patterning remains with them into adulthood, and so it may
initially seem “impossible” to some to abandon processed grains and sweets. Other common emotional blocks leading to self-defeating behaviors include deep-seated traumas such as abuse, low self-esteem, chronic high stress, depression and anxiety, dysfunctional childhood, mimicking behaviors of parents, and self-medicating with food.
Over the years, my clinical staff and I have researched and practiced a wide variety of therapeutic methods to address these blocks. The technique that we have had the greatest success with is called Emotional Freedom Technique, or EFT, and it is remarkably easy to learn and do. When people do EFT for the first time they are, though, sometimes a bit skeptical. At first glance it may look strange as it involves tapping on specific acupuncture points while speaking affirmations of self-acceptance aloud to acknowledge the issue at hand. But EFT really works because it heals disruptions in the body’s energy system. Everything we see, hear, feel, taste, and smell is transmitted along our nerves to our brain through electrochemical messages in our energy system. If you touch a hot stove, you feel pain due to the nerve endings in your hand sending instantaneous electrochemical messages through your nerves to your brain. Our body’s electrical system is essential to our physical health and without it we die.
The electrical system of our body has been known about since the Chinese, 5,000 years ago, discovered channels of energy flowing through the body. Chinese medicine refers to these channels as meridians, and the energy that flows through them is called “Qi,” pronounced “chi.” The Chinese discovered that by superficially inserting tiny needles into specific acupuncture points on the skin, they were able to release blocked energy in the meridians and therefore restore a person back to equilibrium.
EFT works in a similar manner; instead of using needles, EFT is performed by tapping with fingers on acupuncture points at the end of the meridians. As people tap on these points, they tune into their emotional problem by repeating affirmations about the problem such as, “Even though I eat junk food to help me cope with stress, I deeply and completely accept myself.” Effective affirmations follow the same general format—they acknowledge the problem and create self-acceptance despite the existence of the problem.
EFT is based on the premise that the cause of all negative emotions is a disruption in the body’s energy system. When a person experiences an emotional trauma, the intense emotion causes a short circuit somewhere in the electrical system of the body. Picture what would happen to the television screen of a show you are watching if you went behind the set and started to pull the wires apart. The picture would eventually turn snowy because you short-circuited the TV. The snowy picture is an analogy for a negative emotion. The same effect occurs when you experience negative emotions—there is a short circuit somewhere in your body’s energy system. By tuning into the problem and tapping on multiple points, EFT stimulates the meridians, sending pulses of energy down the channels that heal the negative emotions that are blocking the energy flow in the channels. The most common responses people have after doing EFT are an elimination of pain, a feeling of peace and relaxation, and a feeling that their unwanted negative emotion no longer affects them.
While it is easy to learn, though, the one drawback with the Emotional Freedom Technique is that it can’t be easily learned by reading about it. On Mercola.com for a time, and in various publications, the attempt was made to provide a “how-to do EFT” in the two-dimensional form of screens and pages, but it’s something like learning the right golf swings from a page: not very effective. We found that people frequently did not understand how to use the affirmations. Therefore, while you will find it is easy to learn and use once you see it, it is highly recommended that you learn from a source where you can see it in action. The best options for learning doing so are either with a trained EFT therapist or a live seminar or video training course. To find a qualified EFT therapist in your area, go to the Mercola.com homepage and at the bottom click on “Find a Health Practitioner in Your Area.” To locate EFT seminar information, you can enter the keyword “EFT” on Google.com. The most inexpensive option is to watch my six-hour EFT Training Course, available on DVD or VHS. This course can be ordered from the Mercola.com homepage under the “Recommended Products” section. In this video course, I teach you step-bystep all the information you need to use EFT for your emotional healing. I provide live demonstrations of EFT with real people and show how long standing emotional issues can disappear within minutes with this wonderful tool. For those who are skeptical and think this sounds too good to be true, the EFT Training Course comes with a full 12-month money back guarantee.
EFT is not the only way to overcome emotional barriers. Conventional one-on-one therapy, acupuncture, group therapy and a host of other approaches have certainly helped people. I have also heard that many people have experienced success with The Sedona Method, which is available in an audio program by that name by Hale Dwoskin, and it may be worth your while to explore it as well. But overall, EFT has definitely proven to be one of the most effective ways. If you find yourself confronting cravings, addictions, depression, self-image issues or other barriers to implementing a healthy diet and lifestyle, though, don’t let those barriers hold you back: seek some form of therapy as soon as possible as it is fundamental to reaching your ideal health.
Dr.Mercola
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