Cognitive Shifts

Lecturing a client instead of fostering his or her own development of cognitive shifts while tapping can be disempowering as well as ineffective. Clients shift when they are in the driver’s seat in terms of the choices that they make. Tapping is a powerful way to unblock any meridian which hence opens up the client to a new way of thinking. Let the tapping do the work. Once a client is open, it is important to respect that they get to choose the perspective that they want to stand in. Different ways of looking at an issue is explored, and the perspective that is chosen is one that feels right to the client. As an EFT practitioner, it is important to help clients make new cognitive shifts by supporting them as they wander down the path of sorting out what a specific event or life theme means to them. A technique that can be used to invite the clients to be in the driver’s seat is to ask, “What is coming up for you now?” or “What are your thoughts about this now?” at the end of a round of tapping. When they give a response that indicates a shift in their thinking, they can then be asked, ”Is this way of thinking different for you?” which allows them to recognize that there, in fact, has been a cognitive shift. The recognition can help them more deeply anchor it. Another technique to empower the client is that intuitive hits (insights that the practitioner has in the observer role which can also be new perspectives) may be offered throughout the tapping session. The client decides if those hits are true or not with regard to how they perceive an experience. One of the questions that can be asked after a hit is: “Is that true for you?” If the response is a negative one, then they can be asked: “What is true for you?” This may spark the client to remember and challenge a belief that may not be in their best interest. At times, the client’s physical rather than verbal responses indicate whether they are resonating with the intuitive hits that are being offered. Noticing the physical shift (sigh or facial expression) can be followed with a question like: “What just happened for you?” The response may be a new cognitive shift or insight which then may point in a new direction that needs to be explored. It becomes a dance between practitioner and client as new versions of their dream are explored and then expanded upon with these new insights. Again, the client gets to choose which beliefs land or not; and which beliefs they will stand in…or not. When a client has a physical response, for example, a release at a specific tapping meridian, it can be an indicator that a new experience has emerged or the client has shifted aspects. For example, one client had a fear of dentists. While being tapped, there was a visual release on the gall bladder meridian (SE), a heavy sigh, which indicated that a shift may have occurred. She was asked; “If there was something “rageful” about this fear, what would it be?”

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