Unresolved shock, fear and other emotional stress from medical procedures – big or small – can sit in your nervous system and body causing unexplained but puzzling anxiety, unsettledness or other symptoms. They might lie there for months, even years or decades. You may think you’ve “gotten over it” because the treatment period is well past. The good news is that EFT tapping therapy can really help clear this once and for all.
Take a recent client who was feeling fine after knee surgery last week, all her pain from her sports accident was gone. But she wondered why she’d been feeling “needy” and wanting to be reassured and comforted since then. We just started tapping “Maybe that affected me more than I realised”. And she started to acknowledge what she’d actually been through – general anaesthesia in her body, a few images in her mind of the operating theatre, and realisation that it had triggered unresolved memories from a previous similar experience. We were able to tap through all of these so she got more clarity and felt calmer.
A Threat To Your System
Any part of a medical procedure, treatment or surgery can take your system by surprise – even though your adult thinking brain is seeing it as “not much really”. Your system picks it up as something out of the ordinary – a threat to your survival. It sends you out of being in the relaxed “social engagement” coping mode into fight/flight or freeze mode.
These states don’t usually resolve at the time unless you have extremely reassuring and supportive care so that your system can downregulate into calm again. Otherwise the flight/fight/freeze stress response sits as unresolved biochemical reactions somewhere inside of you. They’re just waiting to get re-triggered when something similar happens.
And so recognising symptoms that suggest they’re still lurking is important. Luckily, EFT Tapping is one of the somatic therapies that can resolve these for you and release them from your system! You will feel relieved, happier and healthier as a result.
A Personal Story For All
Let me share my story of a small procedure that is increasingly common. Maybe you’ve even had this done, or are thinking about it. Even if this isn’t directly relevant to you, read on. Because as EFT Founder Gary Craig says, we don’t all have the same experiences but we DO all have the same emotional issues: unresolved shock, fear, anger, disappointment, grief, feeling uncared for, etc.
So, the procedure that is my context was a thorough check of my skin for any skin cancers that might be starting up. In Australia where I’ve now lived for over 35 years it’s pretty common. In fact it’s essentially the “skin cancer capital of the world”. In the UK, skin cancer rates are also projected to rise by 9% over the next 15 years. Add to that that I’m fair skinned and blonde, and getting older, and my risk level increases. Thankfully, many of these cancers are preventable and recovery rates are high. So I thought I better get a full body check by a specialist centre.
The First Check
Of course, I was hoping that they’d find that everything was OK. But, after a detailed check, they recommended I have a cream and blue-light preventive treatment to clear away some pre-cancerous cells on my face and scalp. They booked me in for two months’ time and gave me some home-preparation to do. This involved applying specialised prep creams to my skin in the preceding week. Even though my treatment was not complicated, it felt quite involved. Tapping really helped me during four stages:
- initial diagnosis,
- fears before the treatment,
- calming me during the treatment, and
- coping with the recovery.
Shock Of the Initial Diagnosis
The cells they were targeting were not dangerous at this stage. But as I got in the car to drive home after the first check, I realised I was actually feeling a bit numb. I was shocked at the thought of needing a procedure! I’ve hardly had any medical interventions in my life! So I tapped rounds on these thoughts and reactions:
Even though I’m shocked that I need this treatment that I wasn’t expecting to need, I accept myself anyway … (That tapping brought up some other aspects that were more about how my body felt): ie
Even though my body feels shocked at being so meticulously checked all over this afternoon and I feel a bit violated …
Even though my body feels shocked that someone’s said there’s something wrong with it, like my skin’s not good enough …
Even though I feel angry with myself because I should have looked after my skin better and worn a hat more often outside …
Fears Before the Treatment
Tapping on these four different aspects calmed me a lot. But as the treatment day approached, I started to feel anxious and surprisingly scared. In particular, the information sheets about what to expect included a long list of possible after-effects such as:
- hot burning skin,
- terrible itching, and
- blistering.
For some, being informed helps you feel better. This wasn’t the case for me; it made me worry about how I might feel. And I didn’t feel better when I tried to comfort myself with thinking that the after-effects of the treatment couldn’t be any worse than sunburn at the beach as a child. But hold on – I’m an EFT Tapping Practitioner, let’s use the tapping more on this! So again, I tapped using phrases about how I really felt, such as:
Even though I’m really anxious about what it’s going to feel like …
Even though I’m scared of my skin feeling terrible afterwards, blistering – uggh!
Even though I’m scared the treatment won’t work properly for me …
Calming Me During the Treatment
It took two tapping sessions of about 45mins each to process these fears and anxieties, as well as some other fears that came up. On the day, as I walked into the appointment, I felt fine. There was some mild tension that I scaled at about a 2 intensity. So I tapped in the waiting room (using Discrete Finger Tapping and saying the words in my mind): Even though I’m a little on edge, maybe it will all turn out better than I expect. I know this nurse is nice and I can relax.
The main treatments required me to lie down and have a cream applied to my face and scalp by a nurse. Then I had to wait for 20-30mins. The next step was to have blue-light beamed on my face and scalp. Even though I felt calm throughout the process, I tapped on the side of my hand anyway. I did this with the intention of enabling the cream and light to work optimally. When I explained to the nurse what I was doing she was interested to learn more about EFT!
Coping With the Recovery
That night my skin didn’t feel or look that bad. I applied the moisturisers as directed and went to bed. I just tapped a little on: Even though my skin feels mildly painful… I figured, “If I can tap, why have any pain I don’t need to have?!”.
But the next day I started to feel a real tiredness that they said often happens after the procedure. The creams and light are meant to stimulate the immune system to clear out any skin-cancer cells, and I could feel my system going to work. I was surprised to feel so fatigued though. Again, I tapped:
Even though I feel so fatigued, I give my body permission to relax and heal …
Even though this treatment feels like a shock to my whole system, I love and accept myself anyway …
Even though I’m shocked that this feels worse than I expected, I’ll be OK …
This tapping definitely helped me feel better. I also didn’t get any of the nasty side-effects that they’d listed. Maybe tapping calmed my system so my body didn’t need to react as intensely as other people. In fact, at the check-up the following week, the nurse was surprised that the maximum level of pain I’d experienced post-procedure was 2/10.
The Follow-Up
I went back after 6 months for a follow-up. It had all worked really well and they gave me the all-clear. Even if it had not been good news, I would have had tapping in my toolbox to come with me.
I hope that if you, or someone you know, are facing any medical (perhaps even dental) procedure, surgery or treatment – even if it’s minor – you can use my story to consider how you could benefit from tapping. I was definitely surprised to find that I had emotions about parts of this process that I wouldn’t have thought would have any impact on me. I’d also recommend that you work with an EFT Practitioner (perhaps me or someone else) to check into how you feel about any parts of any treatment you’ve been through. Even if it was years or decades ago. We would gently check whether there any unresolved emotions about it, or about what’s coming next? We would tap through any flashes of images you still see. We would help release these from your mind, body, spirit and nervous system with EFT.
Clearing Emotional Stress From Medical Procedures
By checking in with yourself, you can release as much unresolved distress as possible, and give yourself the best chance of a good recovery. I have tapped with several clients to release the unresolved emotions, images and feelings of previous surgery and other medical procedures. They found that the next experience was much better, they took simple tapping skills with them just in case, and they recovered better too.
To understand more about how your nervous system reacts to shocks, traumas and other intense emotional experiences, this 8 minute video about your nervous system is really useful. It also mentions what symptoms and other mental or physical health problems you may have later until you release the experiences with a somatic therapy such as EFT, EMDR or somatic experiencing. If you’re finding that you can’t sleep well, it’s possible that you have unresolved shock or trauma from a medical or dental procedure or minor treatment but you haven’t realised it. Reflect when your sleep got worse – was it around the time of or in the week after? Check out my article about better sleep with tapping. Or if the Dentist is more your problem, read this article!.
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Lareen Newman is a Women’s Coach for Stress Release and Emotional Therapy. She loves to educate women to better understand their stress, their emotions and how their nervous system works under the stress response. Lareen is also passionate about helping women to offload their stress and negative emotions through EFT Tapping so they re-energise and experience more joy and peace in their life. She is an Advanced EFT Practitioner and soon-to-be EFT Trainer with EFT International.
Title Image Credit: Accuray on Unsplash.com
