Are you up for a little personal sharing today? I promise it’s not TMI 🙂
In Conscious EFT™ one of our foundational principles is that a client’s core transformational goal is to be able to sustain the energy of pleasure and joy.
Whatever their immediate situation: physical pain, emotional pain, job dissatisfaction, scarcity of money, relationships etc, underneath it is the belief that in the having of it they will experience greater peace, ease, happiness.
Secondly, in order to move toward greater pleasure they need to create consistent daily life enhancing habits. As they build the agency to discipline themselves this way, habits that aren’t life sustaining open up for release..
Surprisingly, this often happens without ever tapping directly on those specific dysfunctional habits!
Let me say this in a different way. At some point along their journey of transformation a client becomes ready to release their attempts to control life using habits that have negative side effects.
They feel an internal urge to begin installing the neural pathways of a more effective habit. The system has a little motivation and energy available to substitute a new strategy which is more directly related to supporting their own health.
A practitioner needs two abilities:
One – To notice the sparks of this possibility emerging.
Two – Knowing how to fan that spark.
When the first sparks emerge they are highly vulnerable to extinction. Just like when building a fire, we blow on the little sparks to provide the conditions under which the flame will take hold. With biological sparks we also need to provide the conditions under which that new habit will take hold.
Here’s an idea to do that.
For example, perhaps someone has too flimsy a boundary around a particular kind of cookie. Perhaps they have built a habit of allowing themselves that cookie often enough that they believe its negatively impacting their wellbeing.
There are lots of emotional purposes that strengthen such a habit. Perhaps they are using those cookies to reduce anxiety. Or to tell themselves that they are worthy and loveable. Or to soothe feelings of loneliness. Regardless, they are eating more of them than their biology truly desires. Let’s say, hypothetically of course, that It’s difficult for them to say ‘no’ to a chocolate chip sea salt (CCSS) cookie from That Place on Queen in a small town in Ontario.
Although this strategy meets emotional needs in the short term (that’s what makes it addictive), there are negative consequences of overuse; physical health implications as well as the mental health impact of the guilt/shame addictive cycle.
At some point in their personal growth work, the client will feel an urge to ‘clean up’ this habit. Without skillful practitioner intervention, that biological spark will get extinguished by societal conditioning around, ‘all or nothing’. The client says, ‘No more CCSS cookies, ever!’ However, forcing themselves into this rigid, 180 degree swing in the boundary is not sustainable. Inevitably the client breaks their new ‘rule’, activating shame and guilt and destroying another little piece of the budding relationship they are working so hard to build with themselves.
Neurologically this will actually strengthen the old habit of over indulgence.
What the practitioner needs to offer is a ‘both/and’ strategy. A strategy which includes an occasional CCSS cookie AND holds it within healthy boundaries.
The energy of deprivation is a change saboteur.
A more flexible ‘both/and’ boundary around the cookies will allow the client’s nervous system to experience pleasure – both from the cookie but also, importantly, pride in the discipline of setting a reasonable limit around them. Pleasure is life supporting! This builds the client’s trust in themselves to exercise choice and control in a healthy way. Trust is life supporting.
How might we help a client do this? For me, this is where the dental floss comes in. I have a good solid habit of flossing my teeth. It is predictable, consistent and linked to pride in taking care of myself. So in order to support a change in my unhealthy cookie habit I tied it to my flossing habit. (Yes, the CCSS cookie monster is me!)
We support extinguishing the unhealthy habit by connecting it to an existing measurable healthy habit..
It could be measurable in different ways. For example, just a check mark every time the healthy habit happens. For me, I linked the CCSS cookie to my container of dental floss. I use little floss containers that last about two weeks with regular use. My agreement with myself is that everytime I run out of dental floss – I enjoy a cookie. And boy do I enjoy that cookie! Much more so than when I was having one ‘whenever I wanted’!
You see how this works? It’s growth through pleasure.
The pleasure of the already established flossing habit leading to the eager anticipation of the simple pleasure of a cookie. A both/and position rather than either/or.
This is a feature of NeftTi’s post trauma growth revolution in coaching/therapy. We call it the ITSA (Inspired Trauma Safe Action).
Watching for the signs of readiness in a client’s nervous system and then appropriately introducing this possibility of supporting growth through pleasure.
Human nervous systems learn best and most sustainably through pleasure.
Just a little cautionary note. A client may not actually be ready to start implementing this strategy and doing so prematurely may in fact be harmful.
NeftTi’s training teaches helping practitioners how to assess the readiness of a client’s nervous system for such an empowered intervention.
If this intrigues you, join us for our next foundational training, DISCOVER the POWER of Conscious EFT where you’ll learn all about this biological readiness model of human transformation – and experience it yourself!
Sending sweetness to you,
Nancy