EFT Movie Technique in 3 Parts : Part One
Brief Overview
This article is a part of a series of three covering Movie Technique and how to thoroughly test your results. This article is part 1.
In this part, we cover the structure of problems how events that have happened in your life are the foundations of your current issues. How you can stop those events affecting you via using an approach such as Movie Technique. We also cover why you should use the Movie Technique as opposed to the other EFT approaches.
Structure of Problems
Beneath any current problem we experience in life are specific events that are the foundations of it, the roots. Just like a plant when you pull the roots out, the problem goes away (dies, is no longer there). One of the strategies that can be applied to clear our issues is to find the underlying events, the roots, foundations, and then tap and clear them out of our system. When we do this, our mind/ body stops using the events as it’s a reference source for the current problem. This action effectively can free us from that problem.
To use this strategy, you need to find the events, and then tap them out completely firstly. By completely, I mean that the information you hold around the event effectively is put in the “old information archives, no longer important to my survival.” Once this happens, the mind and body system stop using them as part of its threat assessment database. There are many EFT techniques you can use for finding the event (Investigative EFT). Once you do find them, there are also different ways that you can use to tap it out, some more gentle than others. Below is the Movie Technique, an approach that is generally very gentle for clients.
EFT Movie Technique
Due to the nature of some people’s problems, it is advisable to use techniques that minimise the potential of big emotions surfacing as they work on their issues. The Movie Technique is an EFT approach that can be used when you want to work safely and gently with potentially distressing events from a person’s past. It is also a technique that allows you to work on past events without revealing what happened.
Development of Problems
To understand the Movie Technique, it is useful to know about how issues are created in our lives. Beneath every problem we experience are the specific events that have happened that now form the foundations of it. For example, at age five, you might have had an experience where you were shouted at by a teacher for not being able to read a word in a book. Therefore, you had an emotion; it was frightening.
Our mind-body learns very quickly when we are in a perceived (I am using the word “perceived,” but this is your subconscious assessment of the situation, not your conscious thinking) threatening situation. At the moment, the trauma happened, your mind and body system immediately linked elements in the environment to the emotion you felt.
So, the specific look on the teacher’s face, her eyes looking at you, the tone of her voice, maybe even particular smells that were around in that moment become linked to the emotion of fear. They then became part of the database that your mind and body system uses to evaluate threatening situations in your future.
The consequences of that are that if you encounter someone staring at you with a similar look as that teacher, you immediately feel fear. Events such as this often lie beneath problems such as fear of public speaking. Simply because your mind and body system now connects, people looking at you in a specific way, as a threat to you.
People seek help from a therapist because they have issues in their current life. So, if you had a fear of public speaking and sought help from a therapist with this problem, one of the ways they might work on it would be to find the specific events that have happened to you in your life that your mind and body system is using as its reference source for your current problem.
Once they find the events, they would then tune you into them and then tap them out, methodically, one by one. When you tap out the events, it leads to your mind and body updating its databases. It stops running the earlier life events as a current threat to your survival; it effectively archives them as old information. This is a natural process. EFT assists the mind and body in processing old information naturally.
You can tap out the events by associating into the memory, using direct language. When you associate into a memory, you treat it as if you are there now. For example, if the teacher had have said, “you are stupid,” you use these words that directly tunes you into the event. When you do it this way, you are more likely to experience intense emotions.
There is nothing wrong with experiencing emotions. Many people are ok with experiencing emotions when doing therapy. Crying is one of the mind and the body’s natural release mechanisms. The critical point to bear in mind is that for some people, the intensity of the emotion they experience may not be helpful. Ideally, when you work with people, aim to stay within the client’s window of tolerance. In other words, manage the emotional intensity so that although they may feel some distress, it does not get to a level that can traumatise.
Movie technique is an excellent technique for dealing with traumatic events more gently. The reason for this is because it does not associate them into the memory. You can instead give a title to represent the event to tune into it. By doing it this way, you can minimise the degree of discomfort they experience. In many cases, I have seen people clear specific events from their active databases very gently using this approach.
Benefits of Movie Technique
The Movie Technique can be a fast and practical approach to working on specific events related to the problem. It can be used on highly emotional issues and allow the client to be emotionally safe. It forces the client to be specific to an event, therefore eliminating the risk that the client may be too global in the statement of their problem, thus increasing the success rate.
The Movie Technique can also be a faster way of applying EFT. The reason for this is that it can be applied to a problem without the need to know the client’s “story.” It can be very rapidly set up by just asking key questions. The Movie technique does not require the client to talk about what happened. Not all clients wish or wish to discuss in detail about their life.
The Movie Technique is an excellent approach if the client prefers to keep the details of what has happened privately. If you need to retain the client’s privacy, you also would need to drop the Tell the Story, element, and instead use, Submodalities to monitor your progress.
Understanding the Movie Technique
A movie can be made up of many scenes. One very powerful way of setting up the “Movie Technique” is to target the critical scene in the movie. Sometimes when this collapses, all the others will too.
Example of Key Moments: Bereavement
For example, in loss and bereavement issues, a pivotal moment is when the client found out. The phone rings, generally at this point, they are oblivious to the problem. They pick up the phone, they might suspect something because of the tonality of the person’s voice, but the big emotion may not hit them until certain words are said.
This moment is the Key Moment, the point where a big crescendo of emotion hits them. This point can be set up in the movie technique. Although the repercussion of this moment may go on for weeks and months, the first big emotional crescendo is generally not that long.
Key Points of the Movie Technique
- Use clear, content, free language. This language allows you to give clear instructions to the client without pitching them into the event and the distress of it.
- The event should be of short duration. Generally, an event with either one or two emotional crescendos is ideal.
- Identify a title to represent the event. The title does not have to be representative of the event. It does, however, generally need to come from the client and be one that they resonate with, even titles such as Terminator Movie problem works if the client generates it. Terminator is a movie.
- Make sure the title is unique to that specific event, avoid one that could reference multiple similar events, for example, Kitchen Movie Problem as a title might work if there was only one event in the kitchen. If, however, there were multiple events in the kitchen, it could potentially trigger off all the kitchen memories leading to potential intense emotion emerging.
- Evaluate the intensity, by “running the movie” and giving a number to the intensity experienced.
- In the Set Up for the movie technique, you can format it as follows: “Even though I have this (whatever title they have given the event) movie problem, I accept it happened.” The default EFT affirmation is, “I love and approve of myself.” This affirmation does not naturally fit every issue. In my version of Movie Technique, I prefer to use, “I accept it happened”(1) or just “it happened”(2). This wording is targeted at specific events. Most people will have no trouble at all accepting this language because let’s face it; it did happen; otherwise, they wouldn’t be there working with you. In fact, “it happened” will get less resistance than, “I accept it happened.”
- Sometimes people will say, “I don’t accept it,” great you have now recovered another aspect that needs to be cleared for the client to be free of the impact of the event. When you don’t accept something happened, you give it your energy; it is as if you are tossing coal on the fire; you are providing it with fuel. Seldom is the intention behind that resistance to keep yourself suffering. However, that is the consequence of not accepting. I find a little bit of education, psychology 101, which is primarily soft reframing works wonders here. Never attempt to force a result with EFT, work with the client, help them understand the consequences of their actions. Help them become aware of what they are really trying to achieve by resisting and then agree on a better way forward that is more likely to achieve their goal. The affirmation “it happened” is very powerful.
- The reason for this is that events still impact you because your mind and body system is still treating them as if they are still happening now. As if they are a current threat to your survival. When you are tapping, you are not tapping on the event itself; the event has happened; it is part of your history. You are tapping on the data you still hold on that event. Using the words “that happened,” puts the event into the past very subtly. It is the power of language. You are not trying to convince the client’s conscious mind that the event is over. The conscious mind can’t change deep subconscious programs. You are, however, directly communicating with their subconscious mind, which is always monitoring and very subtly conveying the idea, it is over now, you are safe because “it happened” is past tense language. These words often slip past the conscious mind and are directly picked up by the subconscious.
Content Free Language
It is common for a therapist to ask a client, “tell me what happened?” When you do this, you open up the potential for the client to feel discomfort. Some clients are ok with this; they manage it well. Others may experience very intense feelings. As they go into the detail of the event, it is as if they go back into the event as if they are still there. They relive it, which is called revivification.
To minimise the potential of revivification, you can use content free language. Language guides the client through the process of the technique without requiring the context. For example, “you experienced an event with big emotion.” “You were happy, happy, happy because nothing particularly was happening, and then something happened where a big emotion hit you.” “No need to go into that, how many seconds, minutes, hours was that initial big emotion?”
This language directs the clients to give you the information you need without getting into the content of what happened. By directing the client in this way, you minimise the potential for them to access the distress of the event.
