Anniversaries, Christmas Blues and Difficult Dates
Written by Alice Grange
For years I HATED Decembers, as Christmas in my family had often been fraught with drama and trauma. My Mom was hospitalized in a psychiatric institution one Christmas season when I was young, and another year both she and my dog died within three days of each other during the last week in December. Another year my friend Jeff killed himself, two days before his birthday – in December!
It took quite a few EFT sessions before I noticed that I actually felt quite neutral about Decembers and could even get a little into the holiday spirit, enjoy the parties and feel fine!
If there is a difficult date in your past, you may want to consider doing a little pre-emptive tapping on any remaining feelings you have about what happened. You too could end up feeling fine, or even fabulous, as you release and reframe the past!
Earlier today I had a phone call with a woman who has been a client for well over a year. (I give my regular clients permission to call or email me between sessions if they are having a tough time and need a little tapping pick-me-up. If I am not available immediately I get back to them ASAP).
She had had to cancel our last two sessions and hadn’t rescheduled, (so we hadn’t seen each other for over a month, but she had indicated that life was going well for her, so I was not concerned.) Earlier today she had emailed me asking if I had some time available in a couple of days. Less than an hour later the phone rang. She couldn’t wait!
At the beginning of our conversation she was in tears and terrified. Yesterday was the 2nd anniversary of the date she packed up her kids and headed to a transition house in a city 3 hours away, having left an abusive relationship with her now ex-husband. While she has accomplished much during the last couple of years – emotionally, logistically, legally, professionally, romantically… none of it mattered as her fear was ‘up’ and she was feeling ‘panicked, fragile and emotional’. After a few rounds of tapping on the fearful feelings, (she had noticed that she spent the whole day, ‘looking in the rear view mirror’,) interspersed with reminders of all she had overcome and achieved and how much she had changed, she calmed down considerably and was able to process what was going on for her and why. The big ‘AHA’ for her was that she hadn’t realized how traumatized she had been by the abuse she had suffered for over a decade. (It is not only Veterans who suffer from PTSD, but fortunately EFT can help release trauma, whatever it’s origins!)
Another regular client, Sarah, went AWOL for over a week last June. She didn’t show up for a Skype session we had arranged, nor was she answering emails or appearing on Facebook. I was concerned – to put it mildly – as her brother, with whom she was very close, had committed suicide 7 years prior. When she finally did respond to my overtures and reconnected, she revealed that the anniversary of her brother’s death had come up and that she had been transported back to many of the feelings from that time. (Her 18th birthday was a few days after his death, and her remaining family had continued with her birthday celebration as though nothing had happened).
I am glad to report that she is now emotionally considerably healthier than ever before, and I no longer feel reason to be concerned. (See Sarah Johnson’s testimonial video on the ‘Success Stories’ page at the tappingdetective.com website.)
After encouraging these women to process their triggered feelings that had resurfaced, I made an adjustment to my intake form: I now ask if there have been any suicides or significantly difficult events in my client’s lives and if so, what are the anniversary dates for those? I plan to track those on my calendar so that I can send a check-in email or make a call to ask how they are doing on those important dates in their lives. If you have had some difficult dates in your own life, perhaps you might consider setting up some EFT support for yourself, BEFORE the anniversary! Just because you suffered in the past, there is no reason to continue to relive it, year after year after year. It’s over, so let it be over. Tap it away and release it, once and for all.
In the case of the first woman I referred to in this article, before we hung up we made a date for one year from yesterday, to have an EFT session on the anniversary of her escape!
