My history with EFT is linked to my own encounter with grief. Two years after losing my husband and having experienced the healing power of tapping myself, I decided to pursue EFT certification. To gain practice, I proposed free tapping sessions to members of the online grief group I belong to. All in all, I held more than 60 sessions with grieving women over about two months. What I learned from these sessions included three key lessons.
Women Wanted Relief
The death of a spouse can put the nervous system in overdrive, resulting in high anxiety, restlessness, or emotional overwhelm. Tapping sessions provided clients with time and space to find relief from these intense experiences in a safe, body-based way within a supportive relational context. Frequently, my primary focus when working with grieving women was to gently hold this intensity while tapping.
Rounds of silent tapping and “sneaking up” in neutral language were key tools for lowering emotional intensity and helping clients find calm in the body. Phrases like “Even though this is how it is for me right now, it's okay to be here” were effective in continuing a gentle hold and orienting both of us to what was emerging in the shared emotional space. Using more traditional language like “I deeply love and accept myself" or even “I’m OK” was often rejected by the women I worked with. In fact, an important part of finding relief seemed to be the acknowledgement that they were not okay—and that not being okay was welcomed and could be held, witnessed, and cared for.
Women Wanted to Embrace their Grief
Western cultures tend to view grief as something to get through or get over. Perhaps as a result, many of the clients I worked with came to sessions seeking a safe space to be with their grief. This desire became apparent after the calming techniques reduced initial intensity, allowing other, more specific experiences to emerge.
At this point, women would articulate deep sadness, loneliness, yearning, confusion, or new unsettling beliefs about identity. They were not interested in getting through or over their experiences, and I did not hold the mindset to “clear” what they wanted to be with. Tapping into these emotional aspects provided the somatic and relational resources needed to name and be present to them, which might be overwhelming if borne alone.
Rarely were sadness or yearning completely gone at the end of sessions, and clients would tell me directly that they didn't want it to be. However, they would describe a lightness accompanying their grief, a sense that it had been dispersed or metabolized in their bodies, as if grief had found a more hospitable home. Women often reported a sense of pride for having been with their grief and taken care of themselves through tapping.
Women Wanted to Continue their Bonds
Some bereavement research suggests that the ability of the surviving spouse to forge a new relationship with the person they lost, and thus continue the bond, can be helpful. Many of the women I worked with did this by revisiting their memories.
Memories of the day they lost their partner, memories of sitting in hospital rooms, and memories of getting the news are examples of what would emerge. Often, clients provided specific sensory details, as the tapping enabled them to be more fully present in these scenes than might otherwise be possible.
We worked with these details in rounds of tapping. It was remarkable to be with women as they entered these once-disturbing scenes and held conversations with their late husbands, in which they apologized, explained, asked for forgiveness, and offered it. Very often, they later reported feeling deep love during the session. Tapping into grief became a context for creating new relationships with those they had lost and reencoding disturbing memories with love.
Final Thoughts
Grief is a complex human experience. I have learned that tapping with grieving clients asks me, as a practitioner, to hold and witness more than to investigate and clear, and to trust the tool as I do my best to provide compassionate company to women as they use tapping to explore grief’s dynamic terrain.
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Judith Lysaker is a certified accredited EFT practitioner. Based in Indianapolis, Indiana, she works with clients virtually online and specializes in grief.
Image credit: Dennis Schmidt on Unsplash
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