Body Confidence & Healing Series - Picture Therapy Tapping

Have you ever come across a picture of yourself and cringed?  You may be someone who only see the things you dislike about your body in pictures and never notice anything you want to associate with.  

Maybe your body went through some changes of the years and you no longer recognise that person in that picture...'it can't be what I look like', 'I felt so good that day?', I hear you say.  

You are not alone.  So many people are going through this same experience.  I used to feel that way too and sometimes I see a picture of me and think 'hell no! DELETE'.  Jip that will happen, it is normal but when you dislike every picture of yourself or at least most pictures, maybe you refuse to be photographed entirely, then it can be a problem, not only for yourself but what if you are a parent?  What example would this set about body confidence and self-esteem to your kids.  As a mommy myself, I know how important this concept is and how hard it is to put into practice.

Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash

EFT Photo Therapy

As I was researching what I was going to write about this week I stumbled upon an article by Dr Suzanne Lerner who devised EFT Photo Therapy.  This is such a great new way of working with body confidence and self esteem using EFT that I had to share it with you.  

WHAT YOU NEED

You will need to find 2 pictures of yourself:

1. A picture that you dislike;

2. A picture that you like.

Now print both pictures out as you will need to be able to use both for tapping.

Place the pictures side by side in front of you.  Look at the picture of yourself and identify what it is that you dislike.  Rate the intensity of the dislike from 0-10 and start tapping.  An example of what this would sound like follows but please change the wording to match you specifically as this then ensures that you get the best results possible.

KC Setup Phrase:

Even though I look fat in that picture, I love and accept myself;

Even though my face looks nice, the rest of my body ruins the picture, I accept myself anyway;

Even though I look bigger than everyone else, I accept myself completely.

Tapping Sequence:

TOH: I hate that I am always the biggest one in the room;

EB:  My thighs look huge in this picture;

SE:  In the picture I like there, I look so thin and natural;

UE:  But in the bad picture I feel ugly;

UN:  I like the way my hair looks though;

Ch:  But my smile looks so skew;

CB:  Arg my arms are massive;

UA:  I feel like a blob.

Now take a deep breath in and out and rate the intensity level again.  Check if there has been movement.  Then move on to your next tapping round until you get to zero on the intensity level scale. 

My own adaptation to this technique:

If you don't have a printer or need to work on a negative feeling of a picture on your phone right now...maybe you were tagged on a picture that you dislike.  Then go directly to tapping while looking at the picture and identifying everything you dislike about the picture.  Remember to change your device display setting to allow enough time for you to use tapping and to look at the picture without having to reopen the display every time.  You can also use the below techniques on a printed photo.

There will be several ways to do this for example:

1.  Whole:  Take your intensity measurement i.e. SUDS of the whole picture and then work on reducing the intensity of the whole picture.  Throughout you will identify different things similar to the example above that you dislike on the picture;

2.  Parts:  Identify something specific on the picture that you dislike, take an intensity measurement from 0-10 (zero being no intensity at all and 10 being the most intensity or discomfort felt), then work on reducing this particular element on the picture that you dislike.  When you have reduced this element to zero then move on to the next thing in the picture that you dislike and go through each and every element that you dislike and use EFT to reduce it to zero.

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Resources

Dr Suzanne Lerner's article on EFT Photo Therapy published on EFTUniverse.com