Using EFT for Nausea and Anxiety During Toe Surgery

Using EFT for Anxiety and Nausea During Toe Surgery. 12/13/2005

I am a clinical psychologist with over thirty-one years of experience doing therapy in various forms. I was introduced to EFT just three months ago, by one of my teenage patients who stated, “My grandfather told me I can get this stuff free off the internet, and I don’t need a dumb old psychologist.” He told me the website was www.emofree.com . I looked it up that very evening.

When the patient returned the next week, I told him to tell his grandfather that he was correct! Since then I have been sharing this technique with my patients who are interested and even giving them photocopies of The Basic Recipe section of the manual, to support what we have done in our sessions.

Two nights ago, I tripped and fell and dislocated and broke one of my toes. A trip to the emergency room in the middle of the night confirmed that it was badly injured and would need an orthopedic surgeon to treat it.

After a very uncomfortable night, with very little sleep, I contacted the orthopedic surgeon and arranged for an appointment yesterday afternoon. When I got there, the surgeon quickly assessed the situation and suggested surgery in his office, right then and there. I agreed and he shot the toe with medicine to numb it up and then proceeded to arrange the tools he would need for the surgery.

As I lay there trying to relax before the surgery, I found myself getting anxious and feeling queasy in my stomach. I just closed my eyes and began tapping out the Basic Recipe, with the affirmation of, “Even though I am in pain, and nervous, I deeply and completely accept myself.” Occasionally as I went through the tapping it felt appropriate to change the affirmation to “Even though I am in pain and nervous, I deeply and completely forgive and accept myself.”

I felt the queasy stomach fade away almost instantly, and I just kept tapping through several repetitions of the Basic Recipe, while the surgeon and his nurse prepared for the surgery.

Soon after the procedure started, the surgeon told the nurse that if she needed to, she could step out of the office and he would call her when he needed her. This caused me to open my eyes and turn my head around to find that the nurse was standing behind me, facing away from the surgery, and looking “white as a sheet”.

I just launched into my therapist mode and told her that she looked very uncomfortable and that she could feel much better if she repeated after me and started tapping. She tried to tell me that she was not uncomfortable but the surgeon corrected her and let me in on the fact that this was her first time assisting him in a surgery, because their regular nurse was out on maternity leave as of that day.

I continued to show the nurse how to tap, and as she tapped I simply repeated the affirmation for her; “Even though I am nervous, I deeply and completely accept myself.” After just one complete cycle of the Basic Recipe the nurse looked more relaxed, stated that she felt much better, although mystified as to why, and spent the rest of the time of the surgery, actually watching and helping the surgeon.

As he worked, the surgeon was so impressed with my composure and the change in his nurse’s ability to work with him in the surgery that he started talking about how he would give me a discount on his fees, since I had helped them so much during the surgery.

I was floored by the entire process. I was amazed at how calm and focused I was after tapping about the pain and nausea. I was also amazed at the transformation I observed in the nurse. She went from not being able to look at the surgery, to being able to actively assist in the surgery.

The rest of the story is that I used tapping several times during the afternoon, evening and night, last night, to decrease my pain and anxiety. As I sit here typing this summary, it is only 23 hours since the surgery in which the surgeon had to remove a half an inch of bone from my toe and lengthen two tendons and I have not had any pain medication other than one dose of over the counter ibuprofen today.


Thanks for reading. Happy, Healthy Tapping!

Sincerely,

Timothy J. Hayes, Psy.D.
Licensed Clinical Psychologist
www.ch4cs.com