Clearing an Accidental Trauma
I got a call from my college girl Trish just before lunch today. I knew she was supposed to be in class so I asked her what was up. Seems one of her campus friends, Debbie, had gotten into a car accident and Trish asked if she could bring her right over. “Of course.” I replied, in that deeply calming Zen voice that I have no idea at times where that comes from.
As soon as I hung up the phone, I went downstairs and made a big pot of Calming Yogi Tea and arranged the “tapping room” with three chairs in a circle. After some space clearing chimes on my Tibetan bowl the room was ready to embrace our guest.
Dalai announced the girl’s arrival and as I peeked out the front door I could see Trish coming out of the car. Debbie was in the passenger seat in massive tears and sobs as she spoke to someone on her cell phone. Trish came in to tell me Debbie was on the phone with her Mom and how grateful she was that I was her mother. We hugged for a long moment.
I waited by the window for Deb to hang up the phone then opened the front door slowly and stepped outside. I allowed her to take a few steps closer then reached out my arms wide and said “Come here Peanut.” I embraced her with all the love in my body as I patted her back and said “You are in a safe place. Everything is going to be fine here. Come inside.”
Dalai was unusually quiet and respectful of the young woman as she came in and sat down by the fish tank. After a few sips of tea, I explained to her “You still have lots of chemicals running through your body from the car accident. This bio-chemical reaction can make any “thought” that you have seem real and frightening. What we can do, if you’d like, is a little energy work that can help dissipate some of this chemical rush and then you can think more clearly about your situation.” Debbie has been doing EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) tapping with my daughter for some time now so she quickly agreed.
Starting with the physical symptoms I asked her if she was in any pain. She said her head hurt, but that she had hit her head yesterday and had had a bad headache since then. She couldn’t remember if she hit her head in the accident. On a scale from 0 – 10, she rated the pain at an 8. So we began tapping. “Even though my head hurts at an 8, I deeply and completely love and accept myself. I was surprised by how easily Deb could say she loved and accepted herself as I often find this a difficult expression for many people who are in emotional distress. We tapped all around the head pain and then when we checked in for the first time she noted that the pain had moved completely from her head and was now a 5 in her neck. Perfect! It was on the move and I knew just what to do when that happens. As we began chasing the pain in the neck we forgave all the people who may have contributed to the pain.
We got the pain down to even smaller numbers, but when I asked her to once again think about the accident and its repercussions, she seemed to still have this heavy sensation in her neck and shoulders. So I told her that I could help her move the energy and that it was a little different than the work that she does with Trish and EFT. She again agreed to give it a try. I stood behind her and explained that trapped energy can feel like pain and that if we focus our attention on it, we may be able to see if it wants to move out of our body. She described the pain as thick, heavy and dense. I used the visual of being stuck in the mud. I asked her where the stuck mud might want to move and gave her some suggestions or possibilities. She said, it would move through the top of her head. So I asked her to close her eyes and we SLOWLY imagined the mud becoming red hot lava and inching its way up to the top of her head. We let the lava ooze out (as I made sure to clear the energy space which was literally HOT at the top of her head) and we took some deep breaths. I noticed that Deb had a tendency, just like I do, to hold her breath, so I reminded her often to EXHALE and this helped to settle her body.
Not surprisingly, when we began moving the energy up and out … Dalai went bizerk. The puppy jumped up on Trish’s lap, pulled at her clothes even bit her arm in protest of the invisible space invaders she no doubt was feeling. Trish quietly removed Dal from the room and I continued to work a little while more on moving the sludge from her shoulders.
I could see the color come back to Debbie’s face as we finished. Her pain had dissipated and she could talk a bit about her immediate concerns. She was really worried about her father’s reaction, Dad’s an alcoholic and she worries he will stop paying her tuition and demand she come back home. So we are now up to a TEN just thinking about how Dad is going to react. We started tapping on how Dad behaves. Same old story. Same show, over and over. This is what Dad does. I pretended it’s an episode of I Love Lucy where Lucy has just wrecked Ricky’s new car and the hot headed Cuban is yelling at her as always. We tapped how Dad is just an old re-run that gets played over and over.
We imagined watching Dad on an iPod video that she could control in the palm of her hand and when she could watch the mini-movie in the palm of her hand without reacting to the story, we imagined it on a hi-def TV with the sound muted and later with surround sound. We stopped the video, we ran it in slow mo forwards and backwards … pausing to see the strange expressions on Dad’s face in freeze frame.
“It’s Dad’s Story and has nothing to do with me.” we repeated. Soon she was down to very low numbers and when I asked her what else she wanted she said softly …. “I’d like a peanut butter sandwich please.”
Ahhhh deep breath. Today I got to help someone who was stuck in the story and bring her back to the present moment — yes peanut butter sandwiches are the prime sign of present moment awareness!
It felt good to help someone. Me the sage who barely leaves her house It really felt good that my daughter thought I was capable of helping her friend in need. That she knew instinctively that if she brought her to my home … all would be well. Well, at least for a moment, which after all is all we ever have.
