Stop Smoking EFT Case Study

Releasing Childhood Trauma Top Priority

By Suzanne Zacharia

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"Marcelle" is seeing me for stopping smoking. We are doing a gradual cut-down plan, which is great for smokers who have a large emotional element to their smoking and therefore cannot stop in just one session. To do this, we do as much treatment as we can fit into each session and assess at the end how free Marcelle is, cutting down accordingly. This is a relatively easy and pain-free process.

Marcelle was a 15-a-day smoker. In my experience, this implies deep emotional reasons for smoking. A 20-a-day or 10-a-day smoker tends to smoke one packet and when finished, simply have to stop for that day. There are packets of 20 for most smokers, which supply enough cigarettes to fit into the hours available normally for smoking. And the packets of 10 are usually used in Cape Town by those who cannot quite afford a packet of 20 and have to ration their cigarettes to last. For someone who is more physically than emotionally addicted to contain themselves and not smoke the 5 remaining in a packet of 20 is very unusual. And so, I was not surprised to learn that underneath that strong exterior, there was some past turmoil for Marcelle to release.

Marcelle had been the black sheep of her family of 7. She was blamed in childhood for whatever went wrong, and then given a hiding for it. She had recurring lower back pain in the coccyx or SI joint area, which in terms of energy healing means the need to let go of issues, an insecurity, and the need to belong or feelings of rejection. It transpired that the latter was indeed the case, as she had been picked on at school by snobbish children. The pain has been more prevalent in just over the past year without any obvious physical cause, which suggests that something emotionally significant has occurred just before a year ago. Marcelle also has had a few health scares in the past year or so, including a benign breast cyst, as well as challenges with blood sugar levels and high blood pressure for a couple of months. The health scares also indicate some emotional stresses at the time. Luckily, family members with problems that may have contributed to this stress have already been successfully treated, but it is something to watch out for anyway, in case Marcelle has any residual stress from that lurking about in her energy system.

Armed with information, we proceeded with the first session. EFT is my method of choice for releasing the underlying emotions to the urge to smoke. The muscle-testing helps me determine how successful we have been in an objective way, so than we can then plan the next step forward. EFT gave Marcelle a great deal of calm in this session. Like any other healing modality, EFT sometimes results in a gentle release, and this time the release was with a few tears, but this soon went away, and Marcelle was left with feelings of peace and calm, and  desire to move forward. She had seen how a relative had released with laughter when they attended their sessions, and so she knew she was safe and protected in her session. Although EFT can be self-applied, I find that tapping on clients whilst they are lying down comfortably is gentler for big traumas. And Marcelle had given me a big trauma behind her smoking urges. We approached this very gently, and in this session, I chose to only take the edges off it, so that Marcelle would be thoroughly comfortable with the process. But before we approached this trauma, we worked on a general fear and on an innocuous specific smoking issue. This was to help Marcelle ease into the treatment and feel happily confident about it. So, in this session, we made good headway with three emotional root causes:

1. The fear of stopping smoking.
2. Overeating, which was kept at bay with smoking.
3. Childhood trauma of physical and emotional abuse.

Marcelle reported a fear of stopping smoking of value 10 out of 10 before we started. So I started with "Even though there is this fear of stopping smoking..." and peppered it with statements that made it comical, like "Oh my God, what am I going to do" in a funny tone of voice, which also helped Marcelle feel more at ease. We then took a detour to tap on overeating. I started by tapping "Even if you didn't smoke, there is the fear of eating more, you can deeply accept yourself anyway". We tapped around on this theme, and then I asked her if she did not smoke, what would she most likely binge on? She said "Luxury". I asked her which luxury, to which she replied "Wholenut chocolate". This immediately implied a need for luxury, rewards, a treat, and feelings of deprivation. So we tapped on all those. And we tapped on "this Wholenut chocolate desire" too. The chocolate desire went from a 5 out of 10 to a 2 and ended at about zero. After that, the fear of stopping smoking was down to a 5 out of 10 - half its value just 20 minutes previously. Next we started working on the trauma. Marcelle had said that she was the black sheep of her family, always blamed for anything and given hidings. I asked her how upset she felt when I said "black sheep of the family", and she said 5. We tapped very gently on this statement and it went from a 5 out of 10 to a  then a 1. We used gentle EFT with some inner child work, helping the young Marcelle feel good about herself, exonerating her from blame and taking her to a safe nice place. After that, the fear of stopping smoking was a 3, although we had not worked directly on it again. I explained that this was because the childhood trauma was a root cause of the smoking, and that by releasing it, we can move forward with ease. At the end of the session, we used muscle-testing to objectively determine how many cigarettes a day Marcelle can cut down to. This was 12 a day, 3 less than usual. I gave her a simple EFT tapping to do only on the Karate chop as homework - ¨Even though if I didn´t smoke, I´d get irritable and overeat, I deeply love and accept myself¨ -  and we set the next appointment. The homework was based on some of the feedback as we were tapping.

Read on in this series of articles to see how Marcelle is doing. These are written as they happen, so that anyone who is looking for help can know that they are real, genuine treatments. Whether you are looking to stop smoking, or if you are a stop-smoking practitioner, I hope this article has given you useful ideas. And many thanks to my lovely client for permission to write about her case.

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Author's Bio:

© Suzanne Zacharia 2011.  My name is Suzanne Zacharia and I am committed to spreading the word about health options. I believe that the more and better options one has, the more choice there is. And of course, you are advised to consult with your medical practitioner before embarking on any course of alternative, complementary, or beauty therapy. My big passion is to to help others stop smoking, as in my http://www.stop-smoking-ebooks.com - You can find the latest updates on Marcelle´s progress in the articles section. Want to use this article?  You can, as long as you credit me with it and invite your readers to get my FREE "EFT How-to for You" and regular free EFT Tapping script samples in my newsletter at http://www.EFT-Scripts.com - New to EFT? No worries, just get your own copy of "EFT How-to for You" and start EFTing with ease very soon!

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