In over twenty years of EFT practice (including ten years training practitioners), I've found few things as useful as working with parts. In this detailed case study, I offer an example of using EFT for procrastination using parts work to gently and patiently bring some relief and resolution to a deep-rooted struggle.
Identifying parts
When I'm working with parts, either with clients or in my workshops for EFT professionals, I'm coming from the perspective that all parts are trying to help us. Even when that seems like it can't be true, if we can approach parts with curiosity, we'll usually find good intentions behind what they do. Each time I do parts work with someone, I'm assuming nothing, but curiously discovering whether and how that perspective bears out for this person. In this example, my client Maya and I discovered together how a 'lazy rascal' part and a 'strict discipline part' were each, in opposing ways, trying to help Maya avoid severe emotional pain she'd experienced during a difficult period in her teens.
Working with parts
I'd worked with Maya on many things over the years, including considerable childhood and adult trauma. Spiritual practice is a core, important part of her life, and she wanted to tap on her struggle with getting up early to meditate. I began by inviting her to think about getting up early the following morning - how strong was the feeling of 'don't want to' or 'can't [because…]'? It was 10/10 'don't want to', and we tapped over a few rounds, letting that feeling speak: I don't want to! It's too hard! Why do I have to? I need a break!
The don't-want-to feeling was now 5/10 at the thought of getting up early the next morning. Maya remembered that when she'd begun on her spiritual path at the age of 16, the leaders had been very rigid and strict. As she said this, Maya felt she was opening up something sensitive, and it was quite painful to be in touch with memories of that time. I wanted to remind Maya that we could go just as slowly and gently as she needed to, so we tapped with wanting to help that 16-year-old part of herself, and doing it at whatever pace was possible and safe. Maya chose to pause there and come back to it in a future session.
The lazy rascal
The next time Maya raised the struggle with getting up early to meditate, I wondered whether she had a sense of the part of herself that didn't want to get up early, and Maya said it was a lazy rascal. I knew it would likely be helpful to hear from this 'lazy rascal' part, but first, to check for any additional, perhaps even larger barriers to getting up early, I invited Maya to vividly imagine that she was as 'on top of everything' as she wanted to be, including getting up early to meditate. She made a 'yuk!' face, and said 'Too much discipline! I just want to enjoy life!' We tapped with 'part of me doesn't want discipline, just wants to enjoy life,' and I asked if that was the lazy rascal part. Yes, it was.
I work on the basis that to proceed most effectively with parts, we need to feel some kind of curiosity, compassion, or at the very least neutrality towards them, so I asked how Maya felt towards the lazy rascal. She said it was a chaotic mess, and she didn't want to know it.
One route might have been to tap with the part of her that didn't want to know the 'lazy rascal', letting it say all the reasons why until it had been fully heard, at which point some curiosity/compassion/neutrality often begins to emerge. Remembering what she'd said in that previous session, though, and knowing Maya would let me know if it was too much, and that we could back off if it was, I asked if anyone else had not wanted to know that part of her.
Continue reading in part 2 and part 3.
Article by Roushan Martens, Accredited Certified Advanced EFT Practitioner
Photo by Maks Styazhkin on Unsplash
Share Your Comments & Feedback