Using EFT when a specific word triggers you

Here's an interesting article from the EFT Insights e-newsletter, and while it has some 'new age' or non-Christian leanings; it has some good information. I'm going to quote the parts that are applicable regardless of one's faith (and it also ties in to some of the premises behind TPM or Theophostic Prayer which I'm going to write more about later).

By Jo Hainsworth

When I commented to a friend recently that I was struggling with reading a book because of the word ‘God’ appearing in it regularly, she suggested I try using EFT on it. Despite being a real advocate for EFT, after seeing amazing results for myself and others, I hadn’t even considered this as a possibility. This article details the process that I followed. It was just incredible how this netted amazing results in a very short time. I’m sure that you could use the same process with any other word that causes a negative reaction. If I had rated my reaction to the word when I started it would have been a level of intensity of 10 out of 10, and having done the EFT, I would now say it is a 0 out of 10.

I began by listing down all the memories I have of things that could have given me a bias against the word ‘God’. I didn’t think I’d have much to write down, as I was brought up without any religion at all, but soon had a list of 7 things that stood out as experiences with the word or concept of God that could have potentially left me with an issue with it. My intention at the start was to work through tapping each of the 7 experiences over a number of days, then trying some reframing using Wayne Dyer’s 7 Faces of Intention/God which I intellectually liked when I read them, but had been unable to really buy into because of my negative reaction to the word.
I next decided to tap the earliest memory, because experience working as an EFT practitioner has taught me that if we can collapse the earliest event that resulted in us taking on a belief, all the other events that simply reinforced that belief often tend to resolve soon after. The earliest memory I had was of being told about a man who lived nearby to us who was said to be doing something very cruel that resulted in a number of animals dying, who went to church each Saturday to Confession. As I started working with this event, a vow that I had made when I was about 9 or 10, and never consciously thought of again since, popped into my mind. I could suddenly clearly remember thinking “If God is OK with that sort of cruelty, so long as you go to church and confess it, I’m not having anything to do with God!”

I know from working with others (and from the Stephen Daniels in the Using EFT for Chronic Diseases DVD) that a vow made as a child or young person can alter the course of our lives, so I decided to tap not only on the event itself, and my memories surrounding it, but also the vow too. I started with tapping on the event, and while I hadn’t thought about it for over 25 years, found myself crying and feeling quite emotional. I tapped through all the emotions and words that came up for me, and by the time I’d finished tapping on the event, I realised that the person involve just didn’t know any better. No longer a monster in my mind, they became someone who simply lacked awareness. I then moved onto the vow, tapping on:

Even though I made a vow that day that if that's what God was like, I wouldn’t have anything to do with him, I now choose to recognise that God was misrepresented that day and to let the vow go. ... This was no longer an intellectual thought, after simply tapping the choices statement to set up my intention, the earliest memory and the vow that had come up as a result of it, my entire attitude towards the word ‘God’ had changed. As I couldn’t get any charge on any of the remaining issues on the list, it felt totally redundant to do any tapping on any of them.

I know I've had instances where I've blamed God, or been mad at Him and then tapped on it. Of course I also had to tap on feeling like it wasn't even o.k. to be mad at Him, but then I realized He already knows how I feel. Then after I tap on it I can see whatever the issue is more objectively or better yet, from His perspective (through scripture and/or prayer).