On behalf of HTT, Lucinda went to volunteer at the White Eagle Club at Hamilton House in London. They host weekly evenings to support Ukrainian women and children who visit the club to meet other Ukrainians, learn English, and get help. Lucinda is there to help them deal with any Trauma they’re going through.
Olga and her 14-year-old daughter are among the women I’m working with at the White Eagle Club. It’s the first time she’s left behind her country, her husband, and her 17-year-old son, who are now fighting at war. She can’t speak English, and I don’t speak Ukrainian, so I’m doing my best with a translation app on my phone.
Olga tells me she also feels guilty she managed to escape Ukraine with her daughter. But despite getting her to safety, her daughter is pressing for them to return.
“My daughter is white-hot furious with me because I told her we won’t return home just now. I’m in tears every day,” Olga explains to me.
As you can imagine, Olga is afraid, stressed and uncertain of the future for her family.
That’s why I’m here each week at the club to help women like Olga deal with the fear, guilt and stress they’re suffering.
So, How Did I Start Working with Olga?
Well, by introducing and teaching the basics of a simple technique we call ‘First Aide’.
I started by getting Olga to tap and rub quickly on her collarbone and the inside of her wrist. This helps stop anxiety levels and Fear and Stress from rising as soon as she feels them.
From here, I demonstrated tapping on the finger points; not wanting to mention anything to do with the war, I used the phrase ‘this problem’ to tap with…
- ‘This problem I am experiencing.’
- ‘These emotions that are going through my body.’
- ‘All these unknown things that are.’
- ‘This problem that I keep thinking about.’
- ‘This problem that I keep hearing about.’
The Tapping set-up tells the brain what we are going to talk about. Then we have positive affirmations like “I’m safe”, “I love myself”, “I am alright right here right now”, or the best one of all, “I love and accept myself”.
The sequence of Tapping points starts at the beginning of the eyebrow by the nose with phrases like…
- “These fears,
- These emotions that are welling up inside me,
- The fear of the unknown,
- All these things that I have no control over etc…”
The light bulb moment was when I asked Olga to consider the level of emotional intensity she now felt – the number she put on it had come down from before we started tapping.
Although Olga never reached zero, we aim to get the stress level to zero when Tapping. But in these instances, with constant news and reminders all around them, getting emotions to a manageable level was what we were aiming for before we went through the whole Tapping process with Olga.
From here, I also worked with Olga to deal with her daughter pressuring her to return to the insecurity of their country.
We tapped generally on the difficulty of teenagers and how her daughter’s anger was so hurtful. Part of the daughter’s anger was not being heard, so we tapped on – “I am doing my best to hear everything she says, but still, she is angry.”
I suggested Olga write a list of things she was grateful her daughter does, no matter how small, and put it on the fridge or somewhere the daughter would see it.
This gratitude list would show her that everything she does is appreciated and help the daughter understand that she is appreciated and seen.
So, as you can see, the Tapping or Emotional Freedom Technique is a powerful tool to help people struggling with trauma, anxiety, guilt and stress.
If you’d like to learn how to practice EFT so you can help others or yourself, visit our booking page for the next EFTi Accredited Level 1 Introductory Workshop and Level 2 Practitioner training dates.
