How many times have you felt something but didn’t want to feel that way?
Have you ever felt anger but then tried to rationalize your anger away? I’m sure she didn’t mean it that way. I’m overreacting again.
Have you ever felt ashamed but then swallowed that feeling, hoping it would never surface again, if only you could keep pretending it didn’t exist? What’s wrong with me? Nobody else seems to have this problem. Why can’t I get this right?
What about sadness? Have you ever felt tears prickling your eyes and a lump swelling in your throat, only to dismiss these emotions and to ‘not let them show’? He can never see me cry or know how much this is hurting me.
All of us have experienced emotions that we don’t want to feel at some point, and
Each of us has an assortment of ‘signature moves’ when it comes to dealing with these feelings.
Maybe you bury your feelings. Or deny them. Or ‘talk yourself out of them’. For some people, it’s all about projection: She’s so immature! I hate it when she does that! And for many people, the way ‘out’ of feelings (…but not really) is to judge and criticize yourself for feeling that way. Uh-huh.
For most of us, the idea that we can actually feel our emotions and then let them go seems too simple to really work or be effective. This idea is way too ‘out there’ and ‘woo-woo’, am I right? We have been trained our whole lives to work hard and to achieve more, so this notion that we can simply acknowledge our feelings in order to release them causes us to narrow our eyes in suspicion. (Yep, speaking from personal experience here.)
It’s true, though:
Sometimes the best way through our most difficult and uncomfortable feelings is to simply acknowledge them as they are.
Even when you feel like this.
How can we do that? I’m happy you asked. 🙂 In today’s post, we’re going to learn ‘The Set-Up Statement’ from the EFT/Tapping sequence, which is a quick and easy way to name our feelings and to keep that energy moving healthily. The general ‘formula’ for a Set-Up Statement is as follows:
“Even though _____________, I love and accept myself.”
(Fill in the blank with what it is you want to address and also how you feel about that topic, e.g., “Even though I’m super angry with my son for never cleaning up after himself, even though he’s 16 and he totally knows better, I love and accept myself”. -OR- “Even though I have this killer pain in my lower back and I can barely move it hurts so much, I love and accept myself.”)
The Set-Up Statement is usually the first part of a Tapping sequence, and it is normally said three times while Tapping on the Karate Chop point. As you can see in the example above, the Set-Up Statement introduces the topic that you will be Tapping on, and it also acknowledges how you feel about that particular issue (or emotion, person, situation, etc.).
The Set-Up Statement combines the physical motion of Tapping with the totally transformative act of talking to yourself out loud. (I know this seems silly– if not a little horrifying– but trust me: it works.) Together, the electrical impulse of Tapping and your true acknowledgement of how you really feel work to calm your stress response down and to communicate to your nervous system that all is well. This helps to ‘un-stick’ your emotions and to help you feel lighter and brighter overall.
Yes, lighter and brighter like this!
The Set-Up Statement is usually considered the ‘preamble’ to a full Tapping sequence, but I have often done just the Set-Up Statement for myself and left it at that, without proceeding to tap through an entire round afterward. Depending on your particular topic and feelings, it can be just as effective to do the Set-Up Statement by itself as it would be to work through a whole Tapping routine, and especially if you’re pressed for time, energy, or privacy, a small amount of Tapping is always better than no Tapping at all. Definitely don’t feel that you need to commit a whole hour to Tapping– 5 minutes works wonders as well!
In this video, I’m sharing an example of what it looks like to create and work through a Set-Up Statement. Each of my three Set-Up Statements in the video is different (partly because I was improvising and couldn’t remember what I had said earlier- ha!), but when you are making your own Set-Up Statements, it might help at first to just repeat the same statement three times while tapping on the Karate Chop point. It’s all good!
Here is what this video covers:
- What a Set-Up Statement is
- The “Even though _______________, I love and accept myself” format of the Set-Up Statement
- Using the Set-Up Statement to tap on the issue of body weight: feeling uncomfortable with your weight and feeling critical of yourself for being uncomfortable with what you weigh (!)
- Variations on the theme– you’ll be able to see me improvising and personalizing the basic Set-Up Statement formula on the spot, which demonstrates how flexible and customizable the ‘formula’ really is
- The benefits of using a Set-Up Statement: keeping your energy flowing and your emotions ‘in motion’
Want to get the hang of creating Set-Up Statements for yourself? Try it out in the comments below! Use the formula: “Even though ________________, I love and accept myself”, and fill in the blanks with your chosen topic and how you feel about that topic. I’m happy to guide and steer you if you’re feeling stumped or if you’re not sure if you’re on the right track. And until next week, xo! –Dana
PS: Very important!
As I mentioned in my previous post, I’m in the process of creating my new website (and it’s nearly ready, which I’m sooooooooo excited about!) It will be live really soon, so if you want to stay in the loop and not miss out when I migrate over to my own domain, I’d totally encourage you to sign up for my newsletter here. (I will be sending out my post notifications via a third party service instead of directly through WP on the new site, so signing up is the best… and only… way to keep receiving posts from me. Thanks a bunch!)
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