Freedom From Chronic Pain - The Power of Metaphor

When I was first introduced to EFT at the beginning of 2004, I was desperate to alleviate the intense and chronic pain I was experiencing as a result of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). In particular, pain in my knee joints, thighs and neck, as well as the evening headaches which verged on migraines. One of the many symptoms of the illness is acute muscular pain and there were days when the pain was immeasurable.

As I gained confidence in applying EFT on myself, I realized that simply stating I had “pain in my knees”, for example, as I tapped on the meridian points, was not sufficient to achieve long lasting relief. The pains would return after the initial relief, in a few hours, or a day.

As I became more confident in using EFT, I started describing the pain in detail: how the pain looked in my mind’s eye, the size and texture of it, the colour, how it felt and most importantly, how it made me feel. Then I used these answers when I applied EFT and found the results were permanent: the pain either reduced drastically or disappeared completely.

When I work with a client struggling with physical chronic pain, I use this same protocol. Aside from it building rapport with the client, I have learned that if I ask the right questions, the client gives the answers they need to heal the pain. Therefore, after asking the client to tune into the physical pain, I ask the following type of questions:

“What is the shape of this pain?” This results in answers such as, “it’s sharp and jagged”, “long and oval” or “a round ball with thin strings attached to it”.

“What colour is the pain?” If the client cannot see a colour, then I’ll ask them to imagine what the colour might be. Usually, the answers are very rich, dark colours such as crimson, purple or navy blue.

“What is the size of the pain?” I ask if it is smaller or larger than my fist, which guides the client to answering “the size of a tennis ball” or “ the width of my body”, for example.

“What does this pain feel like?” I encourage the client to describe the quality of the pain in real detail and answers might be “grinding”, “pounding”, “pulsing”, “like a knife digging in”, “a solid ball” or “as though it wants to escape”.

Once I have noted down their answers, we apply EFT, verbally stating the specifics of the pain in as much detail as possible.

When the client returns her awareness to the pain, and we go through the questions again, the pain has usually become smaller, lighter in colour and the quality has changed. This is indicative that the disruption in the body’s energy system is straightening out, the pain is clearing, and we can apply more rounds of EFT until the pain is reduced or eliminated.

If we cannot express feelings easily, they are swallowed and pushed deep down inside of us. They later manifest in the body as pain and illness, yet the negative emotions remain unresolved. After the client has described their pain in detail, I usually ask:

“Could there be an emotional reason for this pain?”

When working with a client suffering diabetic neuropathy pain in the sides of his hands and soles of his feet, I asked him this question. Without a second thought, he answered he was raging with anger towards various members of the medical profession.

He felt ignored and could no longer trust them. The emotional intensity was very high and after I had asked further questions, we were able to address the emotion, the symptoms and the belief with EFT. We used the following set-up phrase as we tapped:

“Even though I’m holding all this anger in my sides of my hands and the soles of my feet because the doctors won’t listen to me, I deeply and completely accept myself.”

After the intensity level of the anger had reduced considerably, we tapped specifically on the pain itself, then the various emotions, and then the specific reason for the emotions. After only one 90-minute session, my client reported that apart from feeling calmer and more centred, the pain had reduced noticeably. In a follow up telephone conversation three days later, he informed me that those specific chronic pains had disappeared. It was the first time he had experienced relief in his hands and feet since becoming ill.

It can be difficult for some people to accept that emotional issues can contribute to physical pain and illnesses. Some of my clients are unable to access their emotions or express how they feel. In this case, I ask them to imagine. For example,

“If there was an emotional reason for this pain, could you guess what it might be?”

In answering this, the client may not feel so pressurised to access how she is feeling and can usually come up with a very accurate answer. Simply asking when she was first aware of the pain is also a great way of obtaining insightful clues to the root cause of the pain.

It has been my experience that most illnesses and physical pains are triggered by some traumatic event, such as the death of a loved one, divorce, redundancy (getting fired), or moving house. Once I have established the emotions and belief systems which are attached to the memory, we can apply EFT and start to neutralize those unhelpful, negative feelings.

Another effective way of identifying the emotional driver behind the pain is to ask the client,

“If this pain had a voice what would it be saying to me now?”

Answers, such as “I am so lonely”, “I can’t forgive him” or “I need to be heard” are given and can be used in the next set-up statements and tapped on. If a client starts to cry as she describes her emotional or physical pain, I love to use the following metaphor,

“If these tears could talk, what would they be saying to me?”

Only recently, a client was telling me how she had coped as she watched her mother dying of a terminal disease. She started to cry and after an appropriate time, I asked her this question. She said the tears would say how sad they were for her father because he had struggled with how to show his emotions throughout her mother’s illness. Using this information, we applied EFT and quickly my client was able to feel calm and reassured. Her sadness was completely eliminated.
Using metaphor when working on chronic physical pain is not only a more creative way of applying EFT, but injects a level of gentleness into the process, enabling long lasting, effective pain relief.