What to do, when we’re stuck trying to clear out inexplicable behavior and nothing seems to work?
“Beneath every behavior there is a feeling. And beneath each feeling is a need.
And when we meet that need, rather than focus on the behavior,
we begin to deal with the cause, not the symptom.”
Ashleigh Warner
EFT founder Gary Craig takes this one step further, when he states: “The cause of all negative emotions is a disruption in the body’s energy system.”
In trying to explain this to the parents of children who were struggling with massive, traumatic overwhelm and so-called ‘bad behaviour,’ I used to say – underneath all behaviour is a feeling, a meaning that’s trying to be seen and expressed. Sometimes, (often) it doesn’t look like it makes any sense at all.
That’s because it’s not a logical process, it’s an emotional one.
Once you can tap into the emotional meaning and express it, the feeling can resolve. And when that happens, the behaviour resolves along with it.
How it works
When something overwhelming happens unexpectedly… and we feel all alone in facing it… and we cannot fight or flee the situation, the only survival response left to us is to freeze. If we don’t know how to fully embody all of what’s happening that’s stressful, we freeze the experience (inside a trauma capsule). And then we store it away, so we can get on with the business of living our lives.
Where do we store it, for safekeeping? In our bodies, away from our conscious awareness, so we’re not constantly in overwhelm, tripping over it.
So, we all carry all the unsorted, unresolved negative emotions from our earlier experiences (that we have not known how to bring into completion) in our bodies, as ‘old baggage’.
And our bodies remember it all, even when we no longer have conscious access to it.
But make no mistake – all that unconscious baggage continues to powerfully impact our lives, even though we are not consciously aware of it.
“Current scientific estimates are that some 95 percent of brain activity is unconscious. These include habits and patterns, automatic body function, creativity, emotions, personality, beliefs and values, cognitive biases, and long-term memory.” [1.]
Our behaviour shows us the truth of this. We feel stressed and triggered by the strangest things. It often makes no sense to our logical minds. We feel anxious (ie anxiety or panic attacks)… or really angry… or deeply sad – all for no apparent (i.e. conscious or logical) reason.
Sometimes, we find ourselves reacting to little things that happen, as though they’re huge instead of little. Or, we behave irrationally or illogically… But even when we can recognize that it’s irrational and actually causes us trouble, we still can’t seem to stop doing it!
The Grilled Cheese Story Example
I have written elsewhere about the woman who compulsively threw up every time she ate a grilled cheese sandwich. You’d think she’d just avoid eating them.
But she couldn’t! She made them – and then ate them – compulsively, even knowing what the outcome would be.
The behavior made no sense on its own. She couldn’t stop it. And neither could she ignore it.
It was a powerful disruption in the flow of her energy system. And she had absolutely no idea about what any of it was about for her. Not. A. Clue.
It wasn’t until she connected the experience to a traumatic event from her childhood – when she was sexually molested by her father, who then made grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch and forced her to eat it (resulting in her vomiting) that her strange behaviour as an adult made any sense at all. And once she understood what was underneath the behaviour, it totally made sense to her!
She had stored that traumatic event in a trauma capsule, and put it in her unconscious where she no longer remembered it. The grilled cheese sandwiches were her body’s way of reminding her of that earlier trauma.
Her conscious behaviour needed to be connected to the unconscious Younger Self experience and her feelings from that earlier event, for her to understand what was otherwise mystifying and inexplicably illogical behaviour.
Tapping for clearing out inexplicable behavior (aka: Understanding is great… but it isn’t enough)
This is where tapping and Hacking Reality really shine as tools for clearing out inexplicable behavior, all the flotsam and jetsam from our earlier ‘unfinished’ experiences. Because just seeing the connection and mentally understanding the experience isn’t enough to release it from our body.
Tapping allows us to literally tap into the acupuncture meridians in our body, where the stored emotions are blocked. When we add into the tapping, a description of the unexpressed (usually negative) feelings – the feelings can then dissolve, having been fully witnessed. It’s like magic, witnessing this.
When tapping in the ‘present’ isn’t enough to dissolve the feelings, then enter Hacking Reality. A Hacking Reality session can take us back in time to the original event, when the troubling feelings and beliefs we created about ourselves and our world were first formed.
We can then tap on the Younger Self who experienced those feelings and beliefs, and we can witness the event coming into new completion. A new ending, a preferable story arc can then emerge, as a new reality. This can then be re-imprinted as a new reality.
It doesn’t remove the earlier difficult event – but the emotional reactivity is neutralized. The new preferred reality overwrites the original memory.
That may sound hokey. Or unbelievable.
(I know, I had many questions before I tried it too). But seeing can be believing. And feeling/experiencing is even more powerful.
The truth is, we are absolutely not ‘stuck’ in experiencing the same-old-same-old patterns of old junk in our trunk that continues to plague us.
Tapping and Hacking Reality are powerful keys that unlock old programmed suffering, to clear them out and replace them with brand new, preferred possibilities. Even when we have no conscious awareness in the beginning, of what’s underneath the unconsciously driven behaviour.
All the services I offer are about clearing away the old junk of the conditioned responses from all that people and prior experiences have told you about who you should be…
Clearing this old junk out, including our inexplicable behavior, is how you can remember the truth of who you really are. It creates new space for you to learn to live inside your truth, rather than being confined inside your old, conditioned and limiting experiences.
Ready to start clearing out inexplicable behavior? To book a session, tap here next.
Or, if you want to read more about how Hacking Reality sessions ‘work,’ tap here next.
Want to read another Hacking Reality blog post? Tap here next.
Have questions and want to book your 20 minute free consultation – tap here.
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