Ruth

""Ruth" is a 39-year-old director of a large company, which she runs jointly with her husband. When she first came for EFT at the end of March 2001, she had been suffering from Irritable Bowel Syndrome for the last 15 years (with attacks occurring approximately every 3 weeks) and from recurrent bouts of depression since being 13 years old. These problems had been interspersed with episodes of tonsillitis and swelling of the glands in her throat, which had tended to flare up after any emotional upsets. Ruth had also had to have two fibroadenomas removed from one of her breasts in 1995. She was currently having reflexology and physiotherapy for "a trapped nerve" in her neck and shoulder.

In addition to her physical symptoms, Ruth felt that her emotional life was very problematical as a result of childhood experiences, which had had a profound effect on her in many ways:

She was afraid of her father, who had always been verbally abuse towards her. Even now when he became confrontational she could feel herself trembling. Because of this she felt unable to speak "about anything remotely connected to feelings" within the family. She also felt labelled as a "trouble maker", "totally uncared for, used and neglected." "My whole life can be mapped out from one argumentative blow-up / crisis centred around my family or my reaction to it, to another." As a result she did not love or respect her father and detested the bullying tactics he used to make people listen to him. She longed for him to know how he makes people feel when he behaves like this.

Ruth felt "undermined" and "invalidated" in her relationship with her mother-in law and "inferior and inadequate" next to her sister. She saw herself as always "being on the outside of everything and everybody" and important to nobody except her animal companions. As a result of counselling 2 years previously Ruth felt that she fully understood where and how these feelings had arisen, but had "no idea how to rub out 38 years of them."

Over the 4 days of the treatment Ruth was able to release an extraordinary amount of stagnant energy from many areas of both her body and her field. Particularly prominent were the lungs (where we hold feelings of grief and sadness) and her large intestine (where we let go of what we no longer need in our lives). To a lesser, though significant degree, there was clearing of the congestion around her neck and lumbosacral spine. In one session Ruth felt "large troughs of cold" moving out of her lower back. Later that night when she was at home she felt more "lumps" of energy being released, and one of these "was large and black like a person, which felt horrible." By the final day Ruth felt "lighter," more energized and her neck pain had disappeared.

By the time Ruth came for her second treatment at the beginning of June 2001, she had already experienced many changes in her life. She was much more energetic, positive, focused and had no feelings of "depressive numbness" - which had always tended to be just below the surface, even when she was feeling relatively well in herself. She felt much more confident about making decisions based on her "gut instinct" and had been free of any physical problems. The most dramatic change had been in her relationship to her father. She no longer felt intimidated by him and found that his behaviour had changed towards her as a result. He wanted to spend more time with Ruth and her husband and she felt very comfortable about this. Ruth was starting to feel very angry about some of the incidents in her youth and was ready to see this as a healthy response, important in supporting the positive changes that she had already made in her emotional life.

When we spoke at the end of October 2001, Ruth told me that she had "never been as well as this in all my life". In the months following her treatment she had realised that she had been attracted to a verbally abusive husband, whom she had decided to divorce, feeling that for the first time in her life she was "able to stand 100% on my own two feet". Despite the potentially stressful nature of these changes, Ruth had not developed any throat problems, was feeling extraordinarily optimistic for the future and had not had any further bowel problems.