Cynthia’s house had always been a neighborhood favorite. A fun-spirited woman who loved children, she was close friends with several neighborhood moms, and always welcomed their kids into her home with open arms. Although childless herself, Cynthia often helped out by occasionally filling in on school drop-offs and pick-ups for her friends’ children.
It had therefore come as no surprise when one morning a couple of years ago, Cynthia got a desperate call from a close neighbor friend asking if Cynthia could walk her son to school that day. The boy’s sister was sick, and their doctor’s appointment was at the same time as her son’s school drop-off. Cynthia happily agreed to fill in.
On her way home from dropping her friend’s son off at school that day, Cynthia felt a sudden onset of anxiety. “It seemed odd at the time,” she recalled, “but I remember wanting to return to the school and bring him back to my house for the day.”
Later that day, Cynthia got a call that changed her life forever. There had been a shooting at the school, she was told, and her neighbor’s son, the boy she’d walked to school that very morning, had been killed in the crossfire.
Ever since that call, Cynthia had felt frozen. Rarely able to sleep, prone to panic attacks, and overwhelmed by survivor’s guilt, Cynthia wept as she repeated the phrase that had been continually running through her brain for nearly two years straight: “I delivered him to his death.”
Led by Lori Leyden, Director of The Tapping Solution Foundation, Cynthia did multiple tapping rounds while repeating that sentence. As tears rolled down her face, she realized that this guilt had been with her far longer than she’d realized.
Many years earlier, Cynthia had been forced to surrender her own newborn for adoption. The trauma of that event had been reignited by the tragedy that had happened at her neighborhood school.
Within just one session, Cynthia was able to use tapping to release that guilt, and began to regain her energy and reconnect with her desire to help her friends, as well as her larger community, to heal from this tragedy.
After that session, Cynthia’s panic attacks, insomnia, and depression all stopped. Instead, Cynthia has been able to use tapping to help those around her to heal from the trauma they all underwent the day of the shooting. Although those lost will never be forgotten, they are now creating a future that will honor their memory of the beloved little ones lost that day.
Are you holding onto guilt about something in your life? What might change if you were able to fully release that guilt? So often, guilt is an unconscious way of punishing ourselves. In so doing, however, guilt keeps us stuck in a past we can’t change. When we’re able to release guilt on emotional and physical levels, we can do what our guilt never could – support ourselves and others through the healing process.
Take a moment now to do some tapping on any guilt you may feel, and then allow yourself to release what is no longer serving you or anyone around you.
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