The Life Cycle of an EFT Practitioner
Below are what I see as being very normal stages of development for the newly initiated to EFT. When I was going through these stages myself, I often felt isolated and thought it was just me, but when I reached out for support from a mentor or some other colleagues who also practiced EFT, it would help me to get back on track and keep going. See if you can identify with any of this and let me know what you think.
The “Curious Skeptic” Stage.
You try EFT and you FEEL the shift. You think “that’s freaky”, maybe it’s a one off? Is it placebo effect? Is the tapping just a distraction? How can this be working so quickly and so effectively and so simply, when all I am doing is saying these words and tapping on those points? This is amazing. You keep doing it on yourself and then you start trying it on others, and the same thing happens. Wow! This is FUN.
You are hooked. EFT gets into your blood. Nobody tells you this could be the healthiest addiction you will ever have. There’s no going back now. Put your seat belt on, it’s a wild ride of ups and downs, but it’s always fascinating working with the unconscious mind and the body together.
The “Excited Enthusiast” Stage.
You read and watch and listen and learn everything you can about EFT.
A switch has been flicked. You can’t get enough of it. You haven’t felt this excited about anything since…..well never actually!
You find a training in EFT, get the money together and take the course. It changes your life. You come away with all this newfound calm. You start your Personal Peace Procedure in earnest, and experience all these shifts around family members who you were holding onto lots of negative emotions around. Your relationships change as a result. You feel differently about events in your life that you remembered were hard, you feel more compassion for yourself and others.
Anything you tap on you feel better about. You don’t need to go the osteopath any more since you tapped on your back pain, so you’re actually saving money, you tell your partner.
This is a good feeling. You want more.
You watch Alina Frank’s “A - Z series” on Youtube videos in the shower, and listen to the Tapping World Summit in the car instead of music. The kids hate it. You try to weave EFT into as many conversations as possible, trying to talk about success stories without breaching the confidentiality of the people you use it with.
Nobody tells you that from now on, any spare money you have will go towards EFT trainings, books, resources. Or that you will spend lots of time tapping on getting the money to do more EFT trainings.
This EFT stuff is better than alcohol or drugs. You find yourself wondering “Why doesn’t everyone just do tapping when they feel stressed? The world would be a much better place. How can I get EFT out into the world?”.
The “Slightly obsessed (Slightly Annoying), I just want to share EFT with as Many People as Possible” Stage.
You are constantly talking about EFT, to anyone who will listen. Even strangers in shops, at school pick up.
Every conversation you are part of you find yourself thinking “you could tap on that you know”.
Every person who is talking about a problem to you, you think “you really need to tap on that”.
You approach your child’s school to tell the teacher about EFT, and to tell her that all of the kids in every school should be learning EFT, it’s more important than maths. But you realise when she asks you to explain what it is, you can hardly string three intelligent words together. Your explanation sounds stupid. She surely thinks you’re an idiot. You think to yourself “I need to learn more about the science behind EFT…” and you go back to re-read “The Science Behind Tapping” by Peta Stapleton.
You buy a membership to “The Science of Tapping” so you can send the link to as many people as possible, and you imagine giving all these presentations where you will show it. You listen to the interviews over and over again, and your kids look at you like you have really lost it now.
Your family and friends are getting sick of hearing about EFT and how awesome it is. They’re not even impressed with your new scientific explanations or the ever growing research you are telling them about. Idiots. Even the dog leaves the room when you start talking Tapping.
Your kids run in the other direction or roll their eyes when you ask if they want to tap on something they are complaining about. They stop telling you their problems for fear you will want them to tap. This is not all bad.
You realise you need to find some more friends who share this passion, just so you don’t feel weird and annoying because you want to talk about Tapping and share your stories all the time.
You decide to get certified and sign up with a mentor. Now more things to tap on, having to send in your session notes, showing that you don’t really know what you’re doing all the time. Strangely you don’t know it all already yet, and you know your mentor is going to be able to tell that this is the first time you have practiced “Tell The Story” since the training.
On your list your write “Must arrange more swaps” so you can be the client more often, and not pay for it, and learn about EFT with someone who enjoys tapping as much as you do. You attend a group mentoring session, and it’s so nice to be with other people who love EFT and understand all of the common joys and challenges. If only this was your main job!
You start to get frustrated with people who are constantly stuck in their problems, especially if they are not even willing to TRY EFT. How can you even still be friends with these people? How can you be from the same family as your siblings if they can’t see yet how good EFT is, and how well it’s worked in your life. These people are fools!
The “I want to quit my day job and do this forever” stage.
You find yourself volunteering to do EFT with anyone and everyone.
You love it so much you are happy to do it for free. And as part of your certification process, you are usually offering free sessions to write up and submit to your mentor for feedback.
These acts of service and the writing up of session notes eats into whatever spare time you have, and you realise it is at the expense of other important things like family, exercise and social life. But whatever, right?! You’ve found your calling! And the pull is strong.
You fantasise about quitting your day job, which now seems so boring compared to your EFT work, and you imagine just doing EFT all day every day and getting paid well for it. You really want this, but you’re not sure you could ever have enough clients paying you enough money to replace the income from dumb day job. This situation can get you down at times.
The “OK I’ve spent a lot of time and money, now I want to earn some money” Stage.
Even though I’m frustrated….
You have done so much training in EFT, and maybe completed your certification, but you’re still spending more on your habit than you’re making out of it. You find yourself repeating trainings just to be sure you are “doing it right”. And because you love immersing yourself in the world of EFT. And it’s cheaper as a repeater! But you wonder will you ever feel good enough at this EFT? You watch Craig Weiner do a demo in the training and you sigh, he makes it look so easy.
You’re still not as good or as confident as you want to be or think you should be.
You are now doing EFT with lots of different people, and find out that some people are less willing than others. You even work with some people who are not that keen at all, but maybe they’ve been sent by someone else to have tapping, like their mum or girlfriend? You think about screening out these non-believers, it’s hard work tapping with people who don’t want to be there, but you are still tempted to rise to the challenge. Maybe if you just show them how well it works, they will see, it will help them? They might be convinced and then tell everyone how wonderful EFT is and what a great EFT practitioner you are.
You work with some friends or their kids and it seems to change the dynamics of the relationship. Things are a bit weird after that. You now know more about their intimate family life and relationships than you wanted to really, and they feel embarrassed about having shared so much. These things cannot be reversed. It’s awkward.
Sometimes people say they don’t feel anything much when you do EFT with them. They refuse to acknowledge any shift, emotionally or physically, although you can tell they look calmer. “It’s still an 8/10” they say, and you want to say “REALLY? After three rounds? Nine set-up statements. I can see your shoulders have come down from your ears!”
Or when you follow up with them at a later session, they may put the changes they have experienced down to other things, which you find little frustrating. They say things like “No I am just feeling less angry because my mother-in-law moved out and my kids went back to school”. You know it’s the EFT and they’re showing classic signs of an Apex effect. Or are they deliberately diminishing the power of EFT? You over-think this, you kind of want them to say it is because of the EFT.
Or was your EFT not good enough? You ask yourself, “are secondary gains at play”? Was I specific enough? Could I have approached it better? It drives you a little crazy sometimes and you notice your partner’s eyes get that kind of glazed over look as you ponder such things out loud.
These sessions are not as enjoyable as working with other EFT enthusiasts. Note to self don’t tap with that person again! Especially not for free!
And definitely tap on those frustrating or disappointing experiences!
Other EFT practitioners you know seem to be doing better with their EFT businesses. They seem to be okay with charging reasonable rates and promoting themselves, but you feel weird about it. You’re not a therapist or mental health professional, how can you ask for that much?
You start to wonder if it’s ever going to be the full-time career you want it to be, and you get a bit disillusioned. You are starting to get cranky about the people who organise sessions and then cancel at the last minute. After you stressed out about sending your kids away, cleaning your house on your only day off, so you could be fully present to this client. And they didn’t even show up. Or they came but still haven’t paid a week later, and you send them the invoice again. And you’re sick of the clients who want to feel “good enough” now, in every way, but they do not want to even commit to buying a package of four sessions from you!
GRRR. It’s not all a bed of roses!
You don’t even want to think about how much money you’ve spent on trainings and certification and mentoring at this point, and you hope your partner never sits down to add it all up. You thought you would be further ahead with this by now, and be able to say EFT is at least paying its’ way in your household. But at the end of the day, you still feel okay about it being a labour of love. On a good day, sometimes you maybe love it more than your family.
You know you need to “get yourself out there” more, now you are certified, you should get a website and do more tapping on promoting yourself. But it’s all a bit overwhelming and it totally triggers all your self worth issues and lack of confidence. Which you thought you had done so much tapping on. Is there ever any end to the tapping to be done on yourself?
My answer to that, by the way, is a resounding “NO”. There is no end to it.
You’re not tapping on yourself anywhere near as much as you ought to be and you know it. You’re embarrassed to contact your mentor as you’re in a slump, even though you know they would help get you out of it. And you’ve stopped doing swaps for a while, as you’re feeling a bit fatigued after putting so much energy into this thing called your EFT career, yet it still feels like a hobby or a little part-time job that isn’t even breaking even.
But then you have an absolutely amazing session with someone, and it was so beautiful. The cognitive shifts were incredible, you felt your whole heart and body warming up as you watched this person in front of you releasing years of sadness and emotional pain, finding compassion for themselves and others, just from this single EFT session with you. You are hooked again. You remember why you fell in love with EFT.
You re-take a training to boost your confidence and hone your skills, and you feel re-inspired to just keep going. Because the feeling you get from helping others with EFT is just so good, you don’t really care if it’s never your main career. It’s such a fulfilling and worthwhile way to spend your time.
You look at the trainers and wonder how did they get there?
The “This is my job now” Stage.
If you are fortunate enough to get past all of those stages above and make it to the point where being an EFT practitioner (or trainer) is your job, you are amongst a fairly privileged but hard working minority I believe. I am one of those people. And I wouldn’t swap it for the world.
But I can tell you that it does change how you show up. I no longer offer to tap with anyone in my circle of family or friends, I wait for them to ask me. And they can see that I am doing it all day as my job, so they only ask if they really need it. And these days I will often refer them to one of my friends who needs the business, or someone I think will be perfect for them. If they want it enough they can pay for it. This just helps me avoid the awkwardness of the blurring of boundaries which can occur, and because I know now that I actually need to have what I call “EFT free days”.
But I still absolutely love what I do, and it’s the best job in the world for me. So if you are at one of those more difficult stages above, this blog is intended to help you see that it is just a phase, and a normal one in the life cycle of a developing EFT Practitioner, which will pass eventually. Sometimes you just need to have a break, get outside your house and get out of your own head. Get tapping again with yourself or someone else, (treat yourself to some sessions with a real pro!) and keep putting one foot in front of the other. And it will evolve as it is meant to for you.
Know that every single time you tap with yourself or someone else, you are contributing to the world being in a slightly better place.