What questions help you gain clarity?

When did my headaches started? This was a clear revelation to me .
Shame of a lifestyle that was totally against everything that I grew up to be . So now again , I deal with multiple pain and I don’t know how to
Or if I could help myself to end this cycle of feeling unworthy of having so much and dealing with everyday pain anyway . I should be over this by now . ???

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The Wolf is one of my animal guides/teachers and lately has been asking me to expand my limited view of the present situation…am I courageous and willing enough to look at new ideas? Am I willing to delete some old ideas? I tried (maybe even kinda succeeded!) during a recent FT conversation with my son who was berating his father for being the “prick that he always is” … shortly after they both learned that Uncle/Brother Jim is dying of Stage 4 Lung cancer that has metastasized. I asked my son to try and look at the situation (his father not picking up his calls) from another angle…maybe he has to be a prick to get the time and space to process or maybe … he simply doesn’t have the words…any number of things.

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Trauma sticks around, until it’s healed. There’s no “should by now” that fits, alas. I remember the expression: Time heals all wounds. Have to admit I was counting on that for many years… and it nearly killed me.

Fortunately, trauma can be addressed.

Is there a “wise being” way you might see your younger self and her lifestyle choice that might bring you compassionate relief now?

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Yes, when we get to a place where a re-frame can honor another person’s life challenges AND honor and include our own intense feelings about being treated a certain way, a lot of healing is possible.

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When did this start? What was going on in my life around then?

This is a “trauma informed” question, meaning it recognizes that sometimes a MAJOR change in how a body-mind processes life happens after trauma.

A client had chronic stiffness all through her neck and rib cage. She’d done lots of different physical therapies, yoga, and more. It had been 14 years.

“What was going on in your life 14 years ago?” The answer was the shock, out of nowhere, that her husband had been having an affair for many years.

Using EFT Tapping on the SHOCK to her system brought a profound shift in her body.

The theory we have, with lots of evidence, is that even though this wasn’t a “trauma” like a car accident that came out of nowhere, it was a psychological impact that caused her body to freeze. Ribs and neck brace for impact. Since the trauma of that had never really been addressed as it was held in her body, the body bore the burden.

Until it didn’t need to anymore.

A caution that sometimes there isn’t as clear a connection between when something started and even trauma(s) that when cleared will bring relief. The impact might not be felt for years, and sometimes impactful events are healed by time – but not always.

It’s a useful question.

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What secrets am I keeping?

I’d like to suggest that if you are keeping a secret that feels infused with shame or hurt, consider whether that might be deeply impacting your well-being.

Having kept secret the sexual abuse I had experienced as a teenage boy and then finding out in the healing process from ulcerative colitis that was, quite literally, eating me up from the inside… when the corrosive secret came out, in a space and with a person I trusted, my healing journey changed dramatically.

Please know, if you do not have a safe person and space for that yet, it’s okay. I certainly pray for you to match up with the right person for you.

I post this vulnerable question for my inner Ricky who felt (rightfully I would say) that at the time of the abuse conditions would have been horribly unsafe psychologically for him to reveal what was happening or happened. I’m so grateful there are so many more safer ways and people to share with, personally or professionally.

It’s part of the picture that perpetrators shame and threaten. It’s also part of the picture that it’s hard to get safe help and support if a person is both victim and perpetrator.

I’m inviting anyone whose healing process is stalled or collapsing to at least consider this question, and even if only acknowledging it for now to yourself, if you have a corrosive secret that being aware of it and accepting that it may be Impactful can open us up to next steps in the restoring freedom process.

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What’s That Like?

I’m very interested in ‘embodied metaphor’ and the question “What’s that like?” or the open ended questions “And that’s like…?” or “It’s as if…?” are designed to elicit a metaphoric representation of an experience or feeling etc.

So a response such as “It’s like I’m really sad” or “It’s as if I’m super tired” are not quite ‘there’ yet. I would then ask “Sad like what?” or “You’re so tired it’s as if…?” And at some point a metaphorical representation will appear and will provide all kinds of tapping opportunities.

My sense of metaphors is that they reach REALLY deep inside of us…deeper than language does. My sense is that metaphors are the bridge between sensory experience and language. I have gotten a lot of benefit from using this approach.

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Interesting frame, and question! When conscious that the metaphor is a bridge between the sensory experience and how we describe it, feels like it adds the kind of fuller, deeper awareness that is so helpful in Tapping. Thanks @Glenn!

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I’ve found it to be a fascinating and really useful realm to explore. There are some very interesting therapeutic models that have been developed such as ‘Clean Language’ and ‘Metaphors Of Movement’ that use client generated embodied metaphor as the engine of change. Essentially ways of explicitly exploring and altering the metaphor from inside the metaphor so to speak. I haven’t found anyone who’s focus is on tapping and metaphor but I’ve found it to be readily useful to tap with.

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Feel free to guide it in that direction when you are I tap together on Circle calls, anytime that would be helpful!

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That would be great! Thanks Rick.

How would a Wise, Kind, and Compassionate Being see this situation or past experience?

Sometimes we need to cut through the self-hate and self-criticism. Bringing the perspective of a Being that offers a compassionate viewpoint on the situation can give us the direction for the energy.

What do I mean by that?

Consider the EFT Tapping setup statement. It includes how we’re feeling/thinking… and a direction where we’d like to go with all that energy.

“Even though I feel like a loser, I’m open to the perspective that I was doing the best that I could with no support.”

Our primitive brain can traumatize us, over and over, with harshness. It also tends to believe there is only one way to see a situation. Bringing in the possibility of a wise, or kind, or even slightly more compassionate view can start the healing process when it is stuck.

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I love a good, simple metaphor that further explains one’s point of view but again, I am not understanding the need to “explore and alter the metaphor from inside the metaphor” especially if it was successful in clarifying a point of view. That being said, I look forward to your bringing it to a Circle call ~ Thanks, Glenn

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Hi Noreen.

The type of metaphor I’m thinking of is not one that is offered to us by someone else, although that can be a very useful thing…really useful in fact and it is, for me, one of Rick’s many great skills. He often offers a metaphor that will just allow me to perceive in a way that I hadn’t considered before and I really love that experience. It can be profound.

What I’m talking about is a bit different than that. It’s what’s often called an ‘embodied metaphor’…a metaphor that arises naturally out of you from a sensation an emotion or an experience. It’s how we are metaphorically representing an experience.

So if you are having an unpleasant experience regarding a particular situation I could ask “And what is that like?” …and you might respond “It’s like I’m walking in mud up to my knees…I can’t run and I keep feeling like I’m about to fall down.”

That’s a metaphorical representation of the actual experience and we can tap and explore within the realm of that metaphor…explore the metaphorical environment so to speak and not step outside of the metaphor. We aren’t commenting about the metaphor we are exploring from within it.

I might ask “And what kind of mud is that? The colour, the smell etc”

Or I might ask “And what do you see when you look to your right?”…or left or up or down or in front of you.
“Oh, I see a wall right in front of me!”…what’s it made of? How high is it…how wide? How deep into the ground is it?

“And I’m stuck in the mud and can’t get over that wall!”

Etc.

Now the thing is all these aspects of the metaphorical environment have meaning…and not just meaning within the metaphor but literal meaning that is experienced in some way, big or small, in your non-metaphorical (if there is such a thing… :-)) ‘real’ life. These are symbolic representations that have a direct relationship with our real, day to day lives and give things a meaning or a feeling. When someone declares “I’ve got the world on my shoulders” they are speaking a sort of literal metaphor, as I call it. They obviously don’t have the actual world on their shoulders literally BUT they are feeling ‘as if’ they do and it will be literally represented by muscle tension, neck pain, fatigue etc. Or “I’m really feeling down lately.” If we explore the metaphor ‘down’ we shouldn’t be surprised to find a metaphorical representation of it…the person is in a hole or a ‘depression’ within the metaphoric environment and then we can explore the physical qualities of the hole or depression and the environment around those things as well. There are metaphorical clues are all through language and it’s really fascinating to me.

So using our original example of you having an unpleasant experience in a particular situation you may have had the sense that you were ‘stuck’ and ‘unable to move forward’ in the situation that had been problematic for you in real life. So, from the metaphor, ‘stuck’ is represented by the ‘mud up to your knees’ and ‘unable to move forward’ is represented by ‘the wall’ in front of you. Metaphors create experience and experience create metaphors…they’re inextricably intertwined. So if we can ‘get you out of the mud’ and ‘over/around the wall’ from within the metaphor then it’s very likely that you will experience a difference in your ‘real’ life. You will begin to feel less ‘stuck’ and more able to ‘move forward’ in a literal sense.

And while we are exploring the metaphoric environment we can be tapping.

So, that’s the basic idea. There are a number of modalities that use this sort of work with metaphor but I’ve never seen tapping incorporated and it’s always fascinated me to combine the two.

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Oooh, I get it…I think! Thanks for explaining. So here’s my question: Would my 9 totem animals with all their inherent meaning be symbolic representations of my own metaphorical environment/skinosphere? (Lol, I have no idea if my question has anything to do with what you’re saying Glenn! Guess that’s why I asked it!!)

Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness. _____Desmond Tutu

Sometimes I think I’m keeping secrets from myself.

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Margo knows things that you don’t…!!

That’s an interesting question…here’s some thoughts on that off the top of my head. (‘off the top of my head’ is an odd metaphor…!)

My first response would be to say that the totem animals are a sort of external symbolism that you are introducing or adopting into your internal ecosystem/cosmology…they and their symbolism were not unconsciously generated by you. So, to my mind, that would be one thing that would separate them from what the term ‘embodied metaphor’ typical describes.

I would guess that if you were a member of a culture that was millenniums old and the totems were a fundamental and integral part of that culture’s inner and outer life then those animal symbols would take on an unconscious, embodied life.

Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean the totems are without power and influence for someone who doesn’t come from a particular culture where those symbols were deeply embedded but I have to wonder whether they hold the same level of experience shaping power as unconsciously generated metaphors/symbols do. I suppose if you really have internalized them to the point where your unconscious mind identifies with them in a deep way…you have dreams that include them for example…then I suppose they could have the same power and influence as any other embodied metaphor.

It’s an interesting thing to wonder about…thanks Norene.

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That’s what I’m afraid of!

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I have come up with many metaphors over the years to try and communicate my feelings. Today my metaphor is like being at the ocean and the tide is going in and out. The water pulls back and I run up to it. Then as the water comes back in I run away. The tide is my trauma. I want so badly to get in the water and deal with it, but I get afraid and run. I’m afraid the waves of sorrow will overtake me again.

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