Ellie's story
From cravings to compassion
I listened as Ellie spoke.
An intelligent woman in her mid-forties, Ellie found herself eating way too much. She was trying hard to be healthier and she came to me to see if EFT could help. “I know it’s emotional eating,” she told me. “I can feel my brain saying, stop, I’m full but my stomach says, No, no, you’ve got to keep eating! But I don’t know why.”
The amazing thing about tapping is that it acts as a retrieval tool, gently tapping into the subconscious and bringing up the underlying reasons influencing our behaviour. I never know where a session will take us. We just start with whatever the client gives me, and see what comes up.
For Ellie, she quickly came up with a powerful darkness around her that was driving her to eat. We tapped on the darkness and discovered emotions within it: sadness, anger, loneliness.
When we gently asked what all those emotions were about, she had the distinct feeling of a scared little girl. We had reached the root.
We connected to that little girl. We asked her for a color and a shape for her emotions. We tapped through the ‘orange circle of sadness’ until it changed to green and joyous. We showered her with love and gave her whatever she was lacking. By the end of the session, the little girl was happy and ready to go and play.
As for the adult Ellie, she felt a deep sense of calm alongside an intense exhaustion. Shifting energy and changing subconscious patterns that are deeply enrooted in our psyches is hard work! Without really understanding what or why, she felt that something inside her - that she had never known was unsettled - was finally at peace.
At our next session, Ellie was excited to report that she already felt some difference. We carried on exploring what that ‘gnawing’ was inside her that was pushing her to eat.
It only took a couple of rounds of tapping for Ellie to say, “It’s trying to stop me feeling something, but I don’t know what it is.” As is common, Ellie was turning to food to protect her from feeling an uncomfortable emotion.
The next round of tapping brought up ‘compassion’. Ellie felt a deep lack of compassion flowing through her. We tuned into this sensation as we carried on tapping and Ellie looked at me with sudden recognition. “I’m eating because I’m hungry for compassion,” she said.
It was an ‘aha’ moment for her. She was starving for compassion so she filled up her emptiness with food.
Ever so gently, we carried on. Where does this lack of compassion stem from? We quickly went back to her childhood, where she was always being corrected and criticised. A memory came up. When she had been six, she tried to help her mother by polishing all the wooden furniture - with an abrasive spray that ruined it all.
Now, as an adult, she laughed when she thought about it. But then, as a child, she had been crushed.
Individual memories are how we shape our view of ourselves and the world. Sometimes we only need to clear one memory to alter the entire structure of beliefs based upon it. So we reached into this memory, reached out to that child. We comforted her, gave her space to express the emotions she felt then that went unvalidated. We reached across time and space to that broken little girl and gave her the hug she so desperately needed. We told her whatever she needed to hear and brought her home, inside Ellie’s heart.
This session was a real eye-opener for Ellie and brought tremendous healing. When she came back the next week, the ‘gnawing’ was gone and she had gained significant control over her eating. Most meaningfully, she recognized herself having more compassion to herself and to her husband.
This is actually extremely common and is an incredible bonus. When we heal a root cause, many other issues - which we never even worked on - are suddenly resolved.
We don’t always tap into the inner child, and every person - every session - is very individual. Ellie’s story is unique to her. Your story will be different.
Change is easier than you think. Are you ready to create your story?
