When I was 17 years old, my parents sent me to see my first therapist.
They thought that I seemed sad, distant, and they were concerned that I wasn’t processing some of my childhood experiences, namely, my parents’ divorce. I can clearly remember driving my little blue Ford Focus to my first appointment and having no idea what therapy would be like. I couldn’t predict how I would feel or what it would be like to share my feelings and not have to edit or second guess myself. Little did I know at the time, this completely new experience would be the catalyst for a series of life changing events.
Unfortunately, those life changing events didn’t come from having really good therapy.
A year after I showed up for that first appointment, I woke up in a basement. It was sometime in the afternoon, and my body had the heaviness and the ache of entirely too much sleep. Even so, I willed myself to fall back into unconsciousness. I hadn’t been out of bed in days. I hadn’t showered. I hadn’t eaten. The little white pills I took every day made me hear voices that weren’t there. I didn’t want to live.
That basement room belonged to the therapist I had seen a year earlier.
That therapist had used her position to convince my parents that I wasn’t just a little sad, I was a danger to myself. She maintained that she could help me more if I were closer in proximity, in a position in which I could be observed more closely. My own lack of sense of self, low self esteem, and childhood trauma meant I was easily convinced that she truly had my best interests in mind. I believed that she loved me.
In fact, by this time, I was dangerously mis-medicated. I had stopped going to school. I had stopped working. I hadn’t spoken to my family in months, and her intense jealousy and angry outbursts kept me from seeing any of my friends. I spent days at a time in bed, waiting for her to come home from work. Sometimes we would go to church. Other times we would go to a local diner– she insisted we split the same meal. And every time she would sleep with me. Afterward, we would pray for forgiveness.
One morning, nearly ten months later, she shook me awake out of a dead sleep. It was four in the morning. Either in an act of conscience or by an act of God, she kicked me out. I gathered my things into a trash bag, and, crying, walked up the basement steps, through the kitchen, and out the front door. I stood in that driveway at four o’clock in the morning and instead of feeling like a woman freed from her captor, I felt intense rejection. I felt lost. I felt broken.
In that moment, I was propelled into a whirlwind of searching. I felt compelled to figure out what was wrong with me, to fix whatever it was that allowed this level of pain to happen. I saw therapist after therapist, took medication after medication. Dysfunctional relationship after dysfunctional relationship. I drank. I used drugs. All it left me with was a diagnosis of clinical depression, post-traumatic stress, and anxiety.
I remember sitting in one particular psychiatrist’s office. I was 21 years old and she told me that this would be my experience for the rest of my life. There was no cure, no magic pill, nothing to make any of these things go away. She told me I would be on medication for as long as I lived. I was advised to expect depressive episodes and build skills to deal with them the best I could. I could only learn to cope with the trauma I had experienced.
Something deep inside me screamed, “There has to be something more!”
My search continued, in vain, until the day the CEO of the company I worked for– my boss– noticed me crying at my desk. This had become a pretty regular occurrence. Instead of lecturing me, sending me home, or firing me– all of which she could have reasonably done– she pulled me aside and asked me if I was open to trying something that could help me feel better.
I remember thinking that I hadn’t been able to feel better in so long.
That day, before leaving work, in a conference room, I learned EFT tapping for the first time. With the help of my boss, I tapped on a memory of something that had happened when I was five years old. An event that, up until that day, I hadn’t been able to speak about without breaking down. When I left the office that day, I felt lighter. I felt like something was possible, and I had the suspicion I had found what I was looking for.
To this day, I am able to tell the story of my dad leaving when I was five years old, from start to finish, without being overwhelmed by emotion.
I immersed myself in EFT and other meridian-based therapies like Matrix Reimprinting and Prenatal Reimprinting. I was taken off all medications, with the approval of my psychiatrist, and I am 8 years free of any single depressive episode.
When I first received permission to wean completely off all of the medications I had been prescribed, I kept the full bottles in my medicine cabinet, just in case. I had become so accustomed to finding small successes only to be crushed weeks later by debilitating symptoms. Even though I had made so much progress with using these amazing techniques, there was still a part of me that was seriously skeptical. I kept my medications for a full year, but I never needed them. Not once did I even find myself in a position in which I thought I might need them!
In the moment that I officially threw my medications away, I thought back to that 19 year old girl standing in the driveway at 4am feeling rejected, broken, and lost. I remembered the 21 year old who was told she would have to learn to cope with her trauma and her symptoms for the rest of her life. I knew then that I had to do everything I could to bring these techniques to as many people as possible. The thought of another person believing they might not have any other options, thinking they can’t do anything but learn to cope with their symptoms, believing that nothing can change breaks my heart. In my absolute wellness, I have dedicated myself to walking with others on their journeys to wellness. I am honored every single day to accompany my clients in their breakthroughs, their milestones, and their accomplishments. I have profound confidence in tapping and the tools that I have learned– they WORK, and they can work for you too.
If you’d like to learn more about how tapping can change your life, book a free Clarity Call now!