Case Story: A Beautiful Cleft Lip Survivor
“Jennifer” came to me because of multiple emotional issues related to her childhood cleft lip. She is now a married woman with a beautiful family but her childhood issues continue to haunt her. When I first met Jennifer, I had no inkling that she was a cleft victim as she was beautiful and extraordinary well groomed. She was tense and I could sense her discomfort and anxiety in her shallow breathing. Jennifer frankly said she was uncertain how I could help her as her issues had been long standing and she had tried counseling and other therapies with limited success. I explained to her how EFT works at a different level as it is based on the understanding that negative emotions are caused by disruptions in our body’s energy system. Instead of changing her thoughts to change how she feels, we instead change her energy to change how she feels and think. I told her to trust the process as she has nothing to lose. She agreed.
She explained tearfully that she had suffered from a cleft lip as a child. She had several surgeries that had helped her to look almost normal and taken speech therapy that helped her to enunciate clearly. Since then she had been hiding her shameful past from others, even from her own husband and children. Seeing that this subject distressed her, I explained that the reason she is feeling so upset is because her energy system is under tremendous stress and has become disrupted. I asked her to do an EFT stress relaxation protocol with me.
After three rounds her distress was gone; her face was more relaxed and voice calmer. I asked her why she felt afraid to tell her family. She replied that they will look down on her and she felt ashamed. We begin to tap on these words, “Even though I feel ashamed…” After a few rounds she no longer felt ashamed. I asked her to imagine revealing her past to her family and note how she felt in her body. She said she felt strangely confident. We proceed to tap this time on feeling of confidence to further increase her feelings of confidence. She was soon so full of confidence she said she feels like she can run home and tell them about her cleft immediately.
I explained to her that while surgery and voice training had removed the physical disfigurement and made her look and sound beautiful, it had not removed the emotional disfigurement in her heart that made her feel ugly and ashamed. EFT helped remove these negative emotions.
A few weeks later she was able to tell her family that she had a cleft lip as a child without even a tear drop. In the months ahead with more EFT therapy, she was able to talk about her issue openly to others without shame and distress. She even attended and gave her testimony in one of our EFT community gatherings without any apparent sign of anxiety. She also showed more confidence and poise. She is now truly beautiful inside and out.
Submitted by
Isaac Lim
EFT Lv.3
Adv/NLP/Medical Qigong/Hypnotherapy Adv