Brother’s Mystery Shoulder Pain

Here is a Tapping Tale is from Viv Hailwood who taps with her brother for a mystery pain in his shoulder that the doctors can find no reason for.

Viv thinks she knows the reason. Brother and sister have both been through a terribly traumatic time after the tragic loss of both their parents.  Notice how Viv asks simple questions and brings in humour with the names of the pain.  She keeps things light and does not refer to the trauma and grief untill her brother is ready to talk about them.

For me one of the blessings of EFT is that change can happen respectfully and without a person having to tell the whole story.  Though some of us are used to exploring and sharing personal experience many people, especially teenagers and older people are not.

Viv Hailwood writes:

My brother has been suffering with pain in his right shoulder for more than a year. I had wanted to help him, but felt the cause was tied up with the tragic and traumatic loss of both our parents and I was not ready to handle it for a while. Both my brother and I have been emotionally affected a great deal. I made no notes of the session, so this is from memory.

I explained the importance of being focussed because my brother rambles on when he is under stress. We have spent a lot of time together over the last 18 months, so I wasn’t sure how this might affect things. My brother injured his shoulder skiing. He was in a lot of pain and had had an injection into the joint although they could find nothing physically wrong. The pain was still there and limiting what he could do and stopping him sleeping.

I asked some questions to which I knew the answers to raise their significance in his mind.

Describe the pain – unable.

Where is it – could show me.

Give it a name – George

I started tapping on the karate point and motioned for him to follow me.  Then I asked him to repeat my words and change them if he wanted to:

Even though I have this pain called George…

He enjoyed the humour of this. Level of pain at this time – 3 Even though I have this pain called George which is at a level of 3 at the moment… Also another pain in his shoulder blade that we identified. Even though I also have this pain called Fred…..( this went before we had tapped a round.)

How did it start? When did it start?

Even though George started when I injured myself skiing and has been there ever since… Level of pain in George – about the same. I asked him to say anything that came into his mind. He volunteered that it had got worse when he was holding dad’s hand in hospital and dad had twisted his arm and clenched his hand so hard that his nails dug in. He said that dad must have been in so much pain. He began to cry at this point.

We kept tapping. Even though dad squeezed my hand so hard that it hurt me.. Even though he didn’t realise that he was hurting me..he was in so much pain.. Even though he was in pain I was there for him… Even though I couldn’t help him I was there…and that was what he wanted…he wanted me to be there as much as I could…. Dad wouldn’t have wanted me to be in pain.

I choose to let go of the pain…let go of George…

Level of pain. A bit less. Unable to say more.

He expressed his surprise at his realisation of the link. We talked about dad and tapped. We talked about relaxing and enjoying life.

The next day the pain was gone.

Two months later, he is nearing the end of a skiing holiday and has enjoyed it more than any holiday ever.

PS. While writing this I discovered that I needed to tap myself on specifics of my father’s illness and death. I cleared this in one round.