Week 11: Your Personal Peace Procedure

If you recall from your reading for week 1 (chapter 2 in EFT for Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue), the Personal Peace Procedure is a way to tap away your issues one event at a time. With this technique, you can clear a “forest” of unresolved emotions fairly quickly. You make a list of all the upsetting events you have ever experienced in your life and you systematically begin tapping them away. This is a different approach from targeting only the issues that contribute to specific problems, but the end result is often more complete. It may seem overwhelming at first, but when you read the next section, you’ll see how you can actually get through your list in a relatively short period of time because of an interesting phenomenon that occurs when you start cutting down your emotional “trees.”

EFT and Personal Peace

The forest and trees analogy is helpful in understanding how the Personal Peace Procedure works. Consider each of your negative emotions or specific events as a tree in a negative self-image forest. They might be reflective of things from your past like rejections, abuse, failures, fears, guilt, and so on. There may be hundreds of them and they may be so thick as to resemble a jungle. Let’s assume, though, that there are a hundred diseased trees in your self-image forest.

If you cut one of them down (by neutralizing it with EFT), you still have 99 left. While you will get some noticeable, and much appreciated, emotional relief from removing that one tree, you still haven’t made much of a dent in the self-image forest. But what would happen if you methodically cut down one tree per day? Gradually, the forest would thin out. You would have more room to move within it and it would be a freer place in which to reside. Eventually, with persistent use of EFT, all the trees disappear and in their place is a much more emotionally free you. The world looks different when the forest (or jungle) is gone and a new self-image emerges.

Fortunately, you will not have to cut down all one hundred trees to get your result. That’s because using EFT to neutralize a few negative emotions of a given type will tend to generalize over the remaining negative emotions of that same type. For example, assume that in your forest you have a clump of ten trees known as “abusive experiences.” Take the biggest (most intense) trees in that clump first and cut them down with EFT. Once you have done three or four of them, you will usually find that the remaining six or seven fall on their own. Balancing the energy system for some trees then spreads to other trees of the same type. You can then repeat this generalization concept with other clumps that might be called “failures” or “rejections.” In this way, a hundred-tree forest might be cleared by cutting down approximately thirty trees.

What do you have to lose? Try the Personal Peace Procedure for yourself and see if it makes a difference in your pain and fatigue levels.

Using EFT’s Personal Peace Procedure

Here’s how to do the Personal Peace Procedure:

1. Make a list of every bothersome specific event you can remember. It’s not unusual for this list to have a hundred or more items. If you don’t have at least 50, think again. It may help to start with your earliest bothersome or upsetting memory and move forward from there, but you can also list memories as they occur to you, no matter when they took place. The events you are listing are experiences you had at school with the other kids and with teachers; experiences you had with friends, siblings, parents, grandparents, and other relatives; experiences you had at work, with colleagues, bosses, and your own professional performance; and experiences with lovers, your spouse, and your children. In doing this list, you are conducting a structured review of your past, memory by memory, listing all memories on the continuum from slightly bothersome to extremely upsetting.

2. List everything. While making your list, you may find that some events don’t seem to cause you any current discomfort. List them anyway. Just the fact that you remember them suggests a need for resolution.

3. Give each event a title as though it is a mini-movie.

Examples:

• I kept the quarter I was supposed to put in the collection plate at church.
• My fifth-grade teacher yelled at me in front of the whole class.
• My grandfather spanked me for picking one of the watermelons in the garden.

4. Tap for the big ones. When the list is complete, pick out the biggest redwoods in your negative forest (the ones closest to 10 on the 0-to-10 scale) and apply EFT to each one of them until you either laugh about

it or just can’t think about it anymore. Be sure to notice any aspects that come up and consider them separate trees in your negative forest. Apply EFT to them accordingly. Be sure to keep after each event until it is resolved down to zero. After the biggest redwoods are removed, look for the next biggest, and so on. If you don’t feel comfortable starting with the biggest tree, start with something else.

5. Work on at least one event preferably three on your list daily for three months. It takes only minutes per day. At this rate you will resolve 90 to 270 specific events in three months.

So let’s tap on your first event. Choose your biggest emotional tree or start with another if you prefer.

What was your memory? Write it down on a piece of paper.

Before you start tapping, take a moment to assess your feelings as you remember this event. Use the 0 to 10
SUD scale. (0 = no discomfort and 10 = extreme discomfort) How strong is your emotional reaction to the memory right now? Give it a number, and write down that number.

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 or 10

Also, identify a place in your body where you feel that emotion most strongly. It might be your forehead, your shoulders, or your heart. Write down the location in your body of this strong emotion.

So far, so good! Here’s your Setup Statement:

“Even though (name the problem), I deeply and completely accept myself.”

Say this three times while tapping on the Karate Chop point on the side of your hand.

Now look at the illustration showing EFT’s 12 acupoints, and tap lightly 7 to 10 times with two fingertips on each point. While tapping, focus on the problem.

A Second Helping of EFT

Now let’s do EFT again, but with a slightly different Setup Statement. Most people experience a reduction in the intensity of the problem, so we’ll modify the Setup Statement accordingly.

“Even though I still have some strong feelings about (the memory you wrote down), I deeply and completely accept myself.”

Say this three times while tapping on the side of your hand.

Now tap lightly 7 to 10 times with two fingertips on each point. While tapping, stay focused on your problem.

A Final Round of EFT

You might still have some remaining SUD intensity (0 = no discomfort and 10 = extreme discomfort), so for good measure, let’s try EFT again.

“Even though I still have some remaining feelings about (the problem you wrote down), I deeply and completely accept myself.”

Say this three times while tapping on the side of your hand.

Now tap lightly 7 to 10 times with two fingertips on each point. While tapping, stay focused on your problem.

Measuring Your Results

Think about the problem again. Using the same scale from 0 to 10, with 0 being no emotional intensity, and 10 being the highest possible, write down the number below that represents your number:

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 or 10

Congratulations! Your level of emotional intensity just went down by ___percent. (Divide your second number by your first number, then multiply your answer x 100.)

Peace Every Day

Continue to tap away the troublesome events on your Personal Peace Procedure list, using the instructions above. Try to clear at least 1 (preferably 3) daily.

To keep from adding to your list of traumatic events that you have to tap away with the Personal Peace Procedure, before you go to sleep each night, think about any upsetting incidents that occurred during the day, and tap them away. When you wake up, tap through the points three or four times before you even start your day. This will help balance your energy, and give you more resilience to face the day ahead.