EFT: The Apex Problem

Definition

EFT works so quickly and easily that clients don’t believe it was the EFT that helped them, so they tend to find other reasons for their improvement.

A client who has had a debilitating phobia or physical issue that has lasted for years, when they have tried everything including mainstream medical treatment and any and all alternative and complimentary treatments, when they end up at my door for EFT, they are already convinced that nothing will work or can work. When it does – sometimes within a few minutes - there is a large part of them that refuses to believe it – because it’s too fast!

This is an interesting result. On the one hand, by facilitating such a great improvement we are demonstrating that EFT is something you don’t have to believe in for it to work. We are demonstrating that you don’t even have to believe it when it clearly has worked for it to continue to work. Which is great!

On the other hand, this does mean that those who might be expected to be excited evangelist for an EFT practitioner – me, preferably! – are, when asked by their friends what happened, where did this improvement come from will respond with something along the lines of: “oh, you know, I’ve been seeing the doctor. It took a long time, but, yeah, finally I feel like my old self again.” They don’t even mention EFT or their practitioner! Which is not so great.

As a community, EFT practitioners have never overtly questioned this situation – mainly because we, too, observed that EFT could be lightening fast. We couldn’t help but sympathise with this attitude from our clients. The Apex Problem is so central to our EFT practice that it is taught as part of accredited training. It is written in stone, eternal, unchangeable and we just have to work with it.

Or do we?

Writing on Walls

The explanation given for The Apex Problem is based on the work of Leon Festinger – a psychologist who produced the theory of Cognitive Dissonance. In mainstream psychology cognitive dissonance is produced when a belief is challenged, which produces feelings of anger, resentment and/or denial. As a result, depending on the strength of the belief in question, we either change our minds or dismiss the challenge. If you are interested in reading more about Cognitive Dissonance you can find an article about it here.

I love Cognitive Dissonance – almost every essay I wrote at University referenced it as proof of something I was arguing. It is a very useful – and demonstrable! – theory.

Based on long term formal scientific research, quoted by Roger Callaghan and adopted by Gary Craig as the explanation underlying The Apex Problem, Cognitive Dissonance is a very reasonable explanation. And it’s scientific, therefore it must be true.

However, at one point there was a body of scientific evidence “proving” that bumble bees can’t fly. Demonstrably they do fly, whatever the scientists said. It was the scientists who had to change their minds, not the bumble bees.

Further, for centuries, Newtonian Physics formalised the indisputable laws of how the material universe works … until Plank, Einstein, Heisenberg et al discovered that was not quite the case. In Quantum Physics – the physics underlying the Newtonian Universe – all matter is energy, except when human intervention changes the behaviour and manifestation of it.

As EFT practitioners, we see the evidence of this every day. A few rounds of EFT and long term chronic issues such as back pain, migraines, vision problems, PTSD etc can all be gone as if they were never there in the first place. Which is often impossible according to established medical and scientific belief systems … except when it isn’t.

And now the Tapping

All of this brought me to the conclusion that The Apex Problem is a limiting belief – and it’s tappable.