WHAT FROM YOUR PAST IS LIMITING YOU?

An interesting development surfaced this past week. I have been working with an EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) practitioner and focusing on an incident that occurred when I was about 9 years old.  The most interesting part of the discovery was that it wasn’t at all what I believed to be true about the incident.  When I was nine years old (a long time ago), I was molested by an eighteen year old nephew of a neighbor. It was before child abuse and sexual predators were mainstream topics of conversation.  It was scandalous and an embarrassment to the family of anyone, especially the victim.  Thus it rarely became a criminal matter.

This teenage man dragged me out in the lake over my head and threatened to drown me if I screamed or told anyone what he was going to do to me.  He touched my body in ways I had never been touched before and stuck his fingers where they didn’t belong. When I fortunately escaped from him, I ran home and told my dad who then confronted his aunt.  From then on, the aunt screamed  “slut” at me whenever she saw me, and the incident was never mentioned again by my parents.  I never considered the sexual aspect as a problem.  I didn’t think that the incident had significantly affected me.  So for the past 58 years I have been unaware of the repercussions of this incident on me.

In the process of the EFT, it was validated that it wasn’t the sexual assault that was the problem for me.  It was the helplessness and the loss of control.  It was the injustice of the entire situation and the fact that no one really stood up for me and fought for my honor.  What has become apparent in this work is that situations that are out of my control and unjust severely activate me.   I made the decision to be a  crusader against injustice at age 9.   I always knew that it was something from my past that caused these over the top reactions.  I just never knew what the source was.  My former husband used to joke about me being a crusader and that I would be lost if I didn’t have something to be challenging or someone to be rescued.

I am not aware of the ways that this information has affected my success in the world, but I am certain that it has and am very relieved to no longer carry this emotional baggage.

What is exciting about this work is that it raises awareness of who you are for yourself.  It is the most important work that you can do when you are moving in the direction of relationship.