Untangling Facts From Feelings

Sometimes tapping issues can be a little tricky to sort out. There are the feelings you have and the plain old truthful facts about it. If your emotions on the topic are strong, the separation between facts and feelings can be hard to find. Or you may think it’s all feelings, or even all facts.

Maybe you’re thinking, “So what? I’ll just start tapping and it will all sort itself out.” That is one approach, and it may be successful. But it can help to at least be aware of the facts-versus-feelings components of your issue.

In The Beginning

Tangling up facts and feelings can cause resistance to tapping on the issue in the first place. Let me give you an example. A client (“Ben”) was extremely uncomfortable at networking events. He mumbled, avoided people and felt nauseous. He felt ashamed that he didn’t know how to clearly describe his coaching practice.

Ben saw no point to tapping on this issue because he was sure he just needed to come up with his perfect 30-second intro speech. But the fact was that his dread of networking came up any time he thought of writing his speech. And that fear stifled his ability to think creatively to write a good intro speech. With this tangled knot, there was no way out of his dilemma.

What’s The Answer?

Here’s what we did: We acknowledged that it is a fact that he could benefit from writing a good intro speech. We acknowledged that he had strong feelings of fear and shame when networking.

We tapped away the fears and shame and limiting beliefs and here’s what happened: He went to a networking event the next day and had fun! He still didn’t have a good intro speech, but he wasn’t concerned about it. He was able to connect with people anyway, which is the whole point of networking.

So the fact that he needed a good speech didn’t change. But we untangled it from the feelings. Now Ben has the confidence that with some focused effort, he can craft a good speech. And it’s still a fact that when he does, his networking will probably produce better results.

Check For Self-Blame

An important consideration: Self-blame about an issue like this can be easily overlooked. But it can anchor other emotions so that they’re hard to clear. So when you untangle your own knots of facts and feelings, be sure to check for that. In Ben’s case, the self-blame was strong related to his unwritten intro speech. We cleared the other feelings and beliefs more quickly by starting off with eliminating that blame.

Janet Hilts
California, US
www.janethilts.com