So called “free floating” anxiety often is not as amorphous as it seems; it is often based in very concrete fears. These fears are often masked by other secondary emotions and rationalizations. Anger is often a go to emotion that is a stand in for fear. And ideas cluster that steel one against fear. If my fear is that I am never quite good enough then I may write a canon of laws that keeps me from facing it. For example, I may decide that if I procrastinate forever then I will never have to face what I fear most.

Usually the present fear is linked to a coordinate in past experience, a charged memory that keeps the fear alive. By exposing and tapping on that specific event and remembered experience the charge is cleared and the present fear is addressed in addition. And then what seemed to be general anxiety dissipates as well.

Many times people struggle with pervasive, reoccurring, persistent, obsessive thoughts, ideas or images in their minds. EFT can be very helpful in clearing these.

On the one hand our minds are the containers through which thousands, millions of random neural fragments are firing then passing. These impressions, fragments and traces are much less important than we often believe them to be.

As a general tapping regimen used to clear these – or more specifically our preoccupation with them – we may tap repeating, “A thousand thoughts … passing through … a thousand feelings … passing through … a thousand images passing through …”

And then we tap on specific words, voices, fears, ideas and phrases that repeat and reappear. Remember – EFT is an exposure method so we always surface and name the troubling preoccupation.

If our reoccurring belief is “You will never be good enough” then that is exactly what we articulate as we tap:

“Never good enough … passing on through….”(repeat)

Close by reinforcing the general state of mind clearing: “A thousand thoughts … passing on through…”

Just working with some folks with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. One of the fascinating ways that EFT works with OCD is the way it exposes habitual ideas that are at odds with one another. As the opposites are exposed at the same time energy and paradox combine to quiet and clear them. In many cases the first wave of exposure brings the chaos to the fore. In successive sessions they slowly clear one at a time.