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Any Future You Want

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Childhood Pain

How to deal with a misunderstanding at an early age that has lead to a negative self belief

Many of the things we believe as truth are things that we learned at a very early age. For example, we may believe that we're not worthy of love, or that we don't deserve to be happy.

Ask yourself this: If a four year old child came up to you on the street and said "you're horrible", would you listen?

Of course not, you'd laugh, maybe pat the child on the head, and walk away.

So why do we believe these things so strongly when it's our four year old selves that have told us these things?

Often, as children, we've experienced things, reached a (wrong) conclusion, and then ended up believing that for the rest of our lives.

A lot of the deepest hurts and most destructive self-beliefs have come about from things that happened to us as very small children.

The important thing to realise is - if, as adults, we experienced the same situation, we would respond completely differently. As a result, our beliefs would also be completely different.

So why not remove those destructive beliefs now?

The key things to do here are:

a) forgive our childish selves for mis-interpreting the situation
b) forgive the other players in that situation (whether parents or other authority figures) for their part
c) re-interpret the situation as adults

The amount of relief and freedom this can bring has to be experienced to be believed.

In a general format, here's how I'd suggest resolving these early misunderstandings, and removing these negative beliefs.

 

Preparation

Think of the earliest negative memory you can. Perhaps being told off, or a bad day, or when someone you loved let you down. This is your "situation".

 

The setup

While continually tapping the karate chop or collarbone points, say the following phrases, and as you do, pay attention and pick out the one that has the biggest effect on yourself:

 

Tapping out the negative and in the positive

[tapping with two fingers, 5-10 times each of the points in turn, saying one, any or all of the phrases below. You're looking for something that brings up a reaction inside you. Once you get that reaction, keep saying that phrase at each point until you feel the reaction fade away. Either continue with that phrase, or the other phrases until you finish that round (ie, you end up at your crown)]

[now you want to resolve the issue, release it, and replace it with an adult understanding of the situation.]

then take a deep breath, and let it all go

Note that you may not even know what your "adult understanding" is when you start. Often while tapping you may discover new understandings, new ways of viewing the situation that may not have been present before.

So, to a specific example. When I was about 5, I fell off my bike, and skinned my knee (lots of blood, very horrific). On the way back up the hill, I stopped at my best friend's house, whereupon his mother doted on me, made a big fuss, and put a plaster on me. When I went home to mum, she brushed it off, saying "unless there's bone poking out, don't worry about it, it's not so bad.". Of course, as a 5 year old, I took this quite badly. I figured that I wasn't worthy of being loved (or maybe just that I had the meanest mum in the world).

As an adult, I can see that really, she was teaching me to be resilient, and not to fuss over minor incidents (which worked, that's exactly how I am now).

 

Anyway, that's the back story, here's what I tapped on:

The setup

While continually tapping the karate chop or collarbone points, I just said the following:

 

Tapping out the negative

While tapping around all the points, I just said the following:

I continued tapping, alternating these last two statements, until I cried, then kept going until I calmed right down again

 

Tapping in the positive

While tapping around all the points, I just said the following:

then I took a very deep breath, and let it all go

As always, don't worry too much about the exact words. Don't worry about repeating yourself. If what you're saying is affecting you, or it feels right, then it's the right thing to say. Only you can know exactly what the best thing to say is. I've only given you these personal examples so you have an idea of roughly what to do.