SUMMARY KEYWORDS

drinking, EFT Tapping, release, triggers, reduce, cravings, relieve, negative emotions

SPEAKERS: Casey McGuire Davidson + Kate Moryoussef

Welcome to the Hello Someday Podcast, the podcast for busy women who are ready to drink less and live more. I’m Casey McGuire Davidson, ex-red wine girl turned life coach helping women create lives they love without alcohol. But it wasn’t that long ago that I was anxious, overwhelmed, and drinking a bottle of wine and night to unwind. I thought that wine was the glue, holding my life together, helping me cope with my kids, my stressful job and my busy life. I didn’t realize that my love affair with drinking was making me more anxious and less able to manage my responsibilities.

In this podcast, my goal is to teach you the tried and true secrets of creating and living a life you don’t want to escape from.

Each week, I’ll bring you tools, lessons and conversations to help you drink less and live more. I’ll teach you how to navigate our drinking obsessed culture without a bus, how to sit with your emotions, when you’re lonely or angry, frustrated or overwhelmed, how to self soothe without a drink, and how to turn the decision to stop drinking from your worst case scenario to the best decision of your life.

I am so glad you’re here. Now let’s get started.

Hi, everyone. I’m really excited for today’s episode of the podcast because I’m interviewing a well-being and EFT Emotional Freedom Technique Coach, Kate Moryoussef, who helps busy moms manage overwhelm, stress. Guides them to find more emotional freedom, happiness, fulfillment and health. Kate’s based in Manchester, UK. She has 4 kids and 2 dogs, including a 9-week old puppy and she used to work in PR for many years, but decided to retrain as a Health Coach. She’s been led to an intuitive spiritual way. Working and went to train on mindset work and LP, which she’ll tell us about, and EFT. 

 

So, she believes in choosing to focus on what brings you joy and continued happiness, removing shame and guilt that many women feel in life while parenting. And Kate that is completely in line with the Hello Someday Podcast and my overall approach to work. Working with women who want to quit drinking, focusing on their strengths, not looking backwards, not feeling guilt or shame, focusing on the amazing work that they’re doing, and finding overall health and happiness in the midst of their lives. So welcome to the podcast.

 

Thank you. Thank you very much.

 

So I’m excited for you to just dive in and tell us what EFT is because I’ve heard about it and know it’s out there but honestly have not, you know, don’t have a real idea as to what it is.

 

So EFT or Emotional Freedom Technique, or even tappings, it’s got a few different names which kind of confuses people. It is an amazing modality that I work with mostly now. I’ve kind of fallen in love with it. I find it resonates the most for me and through my clients. And helps me be a better Coach, helps me get to the root of the issue with my clients quite quickly and efficiently. And there’s, I always have success using it because it is an amazing technique that involves sort of Western Psychology, but also this Eastern Acupressure points you are tapping. The reason why it’s called tapping is that you’re tapping on the different places around your face, at the upper body. And all these different places have got “meridian points” are called. And they are where potential energy blocks might be. 

 

And you know, throughout life, we pick up, you know, like it’s almost like, a rake with leaves. And as we go through life, we pick up more memories and emotions and feelings and self doubt or whatever you want to call it. And we go through life and we just pick them up, pick them up, and we suppress them. And typically, when it comes to more difficult times, these things present themselves even more and that can manifest in anxiety, depression, physical pain, overwhelm, lacking, you know, you could be lacking in confidence and they might..you might be triggered by something that could have happened in childhood. And it sometimes takes something like EFT which is like healing work as well, you know, combined with the sort of the Psychology side and it brings things to the surface in a very kind of calm, very safe way, very simple way, which is what I love about it. 

 

It’s such a simple technique that you can’t actually believe that you can get such brilliant results. from it, because you could be, you know, in the depths of huge anxiety, but you are honing in on very specific issues for that time. And then you tap around those issues. And I, yeah, I’ve not had a client that hasn’t benefited from it. I’m not saying it’s magic, or you fixed him in one session. But even if I have a client that leaves feeling lighter, calmer, more relaxed, less anxious about their current situation, which they are accepting, so I’m not this current situation… isn’t going away. 

 

You know, there’s no magic wand, but there’s the acceptance, which helps make you feel like you’re able to move forward and a lot of the time you feel stuck and you go round in circles and you ruminate, and you overthink. And the EFT allows you that time to breathe and to accept and to actually be okay with your situation. 

 

So next, we’re going to the shame and the guilt. And you are saying you’re giving a voice to things that maybe you’ve been too ashamed to say you’ve been feeling, you know, you couldn’t say to anyone. So that is why I love EFT.

 

Yeah. And I, that was one of the main reasons that I wanted to bring you on and share your voice with the people listening to this because women who either are in the drinking cycle or are in early sobriety or even have moved on, but… but there’s still work underneath why they drink is a lot of anxiety, some panic, feeling overwhelmed in life, feeling like they need an outlet to very quickly calm themselves and unwind at the end of the day. And, you know, we talk in Coaching about finding other ways of feeding and satisfying your emotions that aren’t drowning, you know, a couple glasses of wine that’ll give you a headache and a hangover. So the idea that, you know, I talk with women about building a sober toolkit, and it’s about what are all the things that you can go do that will actually you know make you feel better and make you feel less anxious so for those needs that aren’t drinking so it can be a bath it can be meditation or yoga or a book or peanut m&ms whatever it is or walk. But you know, I had never tried EFT and I did one of your videos and in the beginning, I was like, Okay, what is this and even just five minutes in I was like, Okay, I can see this making a difference if I started tapping around you know, my… my, my eyebrows and then the side of my face and my chest and the top of my head and you know, you do the thing with the… with the karate chop like and by the way, anyone listening, Kate has created a video that I’m going to put on the show notes to this episode that is specifically around working through drinking cravings and thoughts about drinking. We’re going to talk about that, but using her EFT techniques, so that is really cool. So, tell me about how you would talk about calming the nervous system and reducing stress. And I’m really interested in how it kind of calms the nervous system and where you tap. What are the key points? Like, why do you do eyebrows? And why do you do, you know, pat and sort of the side of your back?

 

Okay, so these points have been identified as meridian points. And these are, if anybody’s ever had acupuncture or acupressure, reflexology, anything like that. They are all different energy points around the body that store negative energy. And as humans, we are energy. And if you don’t release energy, you don’t unclog this. It manifests and it stays stuck in your body. And that base I said before, is that that some cats sometimes can, you know, if you’re really stressed, you’ll get neck pain or back pain and you can’t release that, you know, maybe you’ll have a massage but these energy points are there, they’ve been identified and there’s other ones as well. There’s ones and your fingers and your wrist points as you know, there are other ones, but some of them. So, if we’ve got the collarbone are where we would naturally touch if we need comfort, or we put on our, you know, our hands and our collarbone, if we’re sort of like Rin shock, and you know, we’ve got one on the back end of our, we’ve got one on the side of our back is where we’d get a hook. So that’s.. it’s very natural. 

 

If you’ve got a worry, you put your hands on the side of your eyes, you know, like, oh, you’re trying to think you know, sometimes you chin, so it’s a weird instinctive place that we would put our hands but the tapping just feels strange. You know, if you’ve never done it before, it can think what the hell am I doing? But they have been identified. And you’ll sometimes find that when you’re doing tapping, even if you are not a believer, you don’t understand it, you will maybe start yawning. You might feel very tearful, emotional, very tired. And it’s your body’s way of releasing energy. And just, you know, it’s just, you’re probably, you’ve had reflexology. They say, to drink lots of water, because you need to get to the toilet, you need to get to the bathroom more often. So you are expelling the toxins, and you’re helping you’re flowing energy back through your body and it’s positive. 

 

So you’ve got the physical tapping, and then you’ve got the statements, the acceptance statements. And people especially if you’ve come from maybe a psychological background, you might understand CBT. You might have had therapy, and we are starting with the negative. We’re saying what is going on, we’re not pulling any punches. We are literally saying, I have this terrible anxiety. It’s knocking me sick. I can’t concentrate, I’m exhausted, I’m depressed. And you’re saying that you’re giving a voice. And then you’re going to be repeating the, you know, the coach will be sort of saying to you… the words back to you, because you will have had a whole conversation about it. And you are feeling validated because you’re… what you’re thinking, what you’re feeling is, okay, you’re accepting it. 

 

And as we go round and you carry on doing the tapping, or the perspectives will come up, or the thoughts or the feelings and it might not be connected to the drinking, it might be something to do with something that happened back in college, or your first you know, year of working and you felt that you you weren’t, you know, achieving or you weren’t meant to be there or that it’s so many different things can come into your head and you’ll tap around a memory. Or you’ll tap around one specific sentence that someone said to you, that just keeps coming back to you when you just don’t feel you’re good enough and we want to get to the root of that. You know, there’s not… It’s not healthy to be ruminating and thinking about something that happened 20 years ago that still has an impact on your life right now when you have moved on. It is not healthy. So we need to release that and bring it to the surface in a healthy and safe way and accept that, that happened. And we’ll find, you know, better ways to cope with it, we’ll find different ways to look at it. And that is why it’s a great modality, especially for people who are looking at you know, stopping drinking.

 

And so question for you, I, you know, I did do the great video that you did on drinking and tapping and drinking cravings, and I did, you’re absolutely right in the beginning. And you’ll see this if you listen to it, and I’m going to have it in the show notes of this episode. Kate is like giving voice to what a lot of people are thinking and feeling when they’re going through a craving you know, I want that glass of wine. I deserve it. I need it. This is my one treat. This, you know, all the things and I actually in the beginning, as a coach who helps people stop drinking was like, okay, Is this good? Or can this be triggering? And can it be reinforcing? You know, all the negative thoughts because I do believe a lot of the work is around mindset change, and realizing that drinking just adds a problem to a problem. And that was probably the first two minutes of the video. And then as I went on, and let you know, it’s the exact process you just described. Other thoughts came in and Kate started talking about like, but is there you know, and this is while you’re tapping your chest, and you’re tapping your chin and around your face, and, and you know, but is there another way to calm and will that really help me and what is and I did, you know, start feeling lighter and start feeling more calm. And that was really cool, because in the beginning, I was like, ooh, I don’t know like, and that’s what we do. Right? We suppress all the thoughts that we’re having. And whether it’s about drinking or whether it’s about anxiety or about work, like we’re like, I shouldn’t feel this way. I should be able to cope, I should, you know all the things and it’s true when you suppress all those feelings you don’t get to resolve them and you don’t get to acknowledge that there is a reason that you feel like you want to drink. 

 

It is. There is something going on underneath and drinking is just the coping mechanism that you’ve gone to for years and years. It’s the quickest way you know, to shut off your mind. But with EFT and with the work you’re doing, if there is another way to quickly move through those feelings and feel better? And to be honest, distract yourself while doing physical acupuncture work. That is really healthy. I think that’s great. But my question is, how, at the end, do you resolve that, right? You go through tapping, you talk about the feelings, and the self acceptance and exactly, where you’re feeling now? You.. You said new thoughts start coming up. But then what happens after that towards the end? How do you close that out?

 

Okay, so just getting back to the video that you mentioned. So I did that video. And I don’t expect anyone to come out of that video and think, I’m never gonna drink again. But I wanted to be able to sort of just show how you can tap for cravings for alcohol along with cravings for anything. Typically, if I’m doing a one to one session with somebody, it would last for an hour. And we would go through maybe five, four or five different rounds, and we would go through that, but I don’t want to put a positive spin. You know, it’s been appealing for a really long time. And I am not putting a positive spin on something that can’t be sorted out in an hour. And you know, if there’s deep rooted issues, I want to get to the root of those issues and tap, tap on those. And the thing with EFT is…is sometimes it’s very repetitive. We can be repeating the same word if that one word is something that you know, you really honing in on, you know, embarrassment, shame, anxious, whatever it is, and that is something that was really holding you back and you keep getting back to that feeling. I’ll be tapping on that, that feeling and that word for a while with my client. So, we, the way we close it, say, you know, the beginning of a session, I’d be saying how intense is this feeling for you right now? And I’d say, raise it from zero to 10. How intense do you want to have that glass of wine right now? You know, after a busy day I kind of like to give them a picture of whatever it is. 

 

They’ll describe it to me. They’ll say, I come home from work. My kids are driving me mad. I’ve had a long drive home. Whatever is going on that day will instinctively reach for that glass of wine as part of that process of winding down. And we’ll… we’ll work around that. And I say how intense is that feeling? You know how intense it is for you.  And they could say it’s an eight. Right now, it’s a nine. Right now, that’s how intense my craving is. And I want to get, you know, the end of that session, maybe down to a six or a seven. So my aim is not to get them down from a nine to a zero, maybe for the next session, we’ll… we’ll see where they are, if they’re still about six or seven, brilliant, that means that the first session works. They’re not as intense with the craving, and we’ll just keep trying to get it down. So I’m not trying to say I don’t feel like a glass of wine anymore. And it’s all fine because I will have a glass of water instead. And I will, you know, go for a walk and everything will be fine. But I will be bringing in ideas and with them, with you know, a lot of it is their words. And I could be tapping with them saying, what are the options you have and they can say what actually I really enjoy running. And then I’d be like, That’s amazing. Okay, so maybe instead of having a glass of wine just for one night of the week, I’ll try a run. Or maybe I can go and listen to a podcast and take the dog for a walk, or whatever it is, and we’ll hone in on what they are offering. So it’s very empowering. They are coming up with the tools themselves, and we’re tapping on that, which is releasing the energy that is helping them, you know, feel this. It’s a tricky one, because there’s a lot of science behind it. There’s an amazing TED talk by Dr. Peter and I forgot her name, you can put it in the show notes. And with loads of science based themes.

 

You send me the link, I’d love to include that.

 

I will and there’s a lot of science based research now that I can send you but there’s also this kind of, you know what, it just works and you kind of just trust the process. And what’s amazing is, there’s a lot of people. So I just had a client this afternoon, who is a clinical psychologist. She has worked in pain management for years. And, you know, in a hospital, she’s got a very clinical brain. And she’d been really suffering with back pain, anxiety. And the anxiety was out of control. And she’s been helping people with anxiety for a very, very long time. She couldn’t get it under control herself, and we were friends. And I told her, though, she’s been thinking about it for a while. I said, Listen, what have you got to lose? Let’s try it. Yeah, I sent us some bits because she wanted the research and wanted the science behind it. And the way we did it, and afterwards, she was blown away. She was.. she was like, I was totally not expecting that. I had to leave my kind of scientific brain to one side. I kind of knew what you’re doing from a psychological perspective. But I was so in the moment. It’s almost like meditative and mindfulness because you’re concentrating on the tapping of words, and it’s calming to hear your own words being repeated back to you. You know, and you …you’re validating each time you hear that those words, a sentence scan, is validating. This is real. 

 

This is not, you know, I’m not imagining all this my head, you know, these are real issues that that situation that happened all those years ago with my boss, which has now made me feel like I can’t cope in with, you know, with my job, or someone told me, I wasn’t a great mum back 10 years ago and whatever it is, it’s been validated. And that is why it works on so many different levels.

 

Yeah, and when you’re describing that, it actually reminds me quite a bit of EMDR which is something I’ve done with my therapist, and I know you know, it’s, a lot of other women have also tried it especially women who are in recovery or quitting drinking to sort of under uncover some of that sort of deep seated stuff. I mean, you know, there is a book called The Body Keeps A Score. And you know, it is amazing how it physically manifests. So, that sounds very similar. 

 

One question I had because there are a lot of women who have already stopped drinking, who are listening to this podcast. And I loved earlier when we were chatting before we were on recording. You mentioned that, you know, there’s, there are other uses for it. Not uses, but other things. Whatever’s coming up for you, you can tap around. And an example that you gave was, if a woman isn’t feeling safe or connected or supported in a relationship or feels distant or criticized or belittled by a partner. And I think that’s, you know, happens for a lot of women, not necessarily that their partner is criticizing them, although that could be the case, but just feeling emotionally distant and not safe or supported, or connected. So, can you talk a little bit about how that tapping works? In that situation?

 

Yeah, I think what is great about the tapping is that it doesn’t really matter what the issue is. I’m not there. I’m not a psychologist, I’m not a shrink. I’m not analyzing. And I think that’s what is really important that people understand. We, as EFT practitioners, we’re not allowed to ask the question why? So we asked, What? Where? How? You know, whatever. But the why?, we’re not allowed to ask because I’m not there to psychoanalyze the situation. I asked a lot of questions is playing detective in the sense that I might say to them, tell me what’s going on right now. How are you feeling? You know, how’s that feeling in your body? And, you know, like you said, it could be something to do with their partner, not feeling connected. It could be something totally, it could be a phobia. It could be something that they know, they’re nervous about something upcoming, you know, regarding work or a confidence issue that could be so many different things. And I hone in on that, that issue. And that is when we start specific, and then we kind of find out where it’s going to go. And so that’s why it can work with so many different things. So, a nanny could lead to going back to drinking. So you could be feeling like just trying to think of an example. Like you really worried about launching a new program through work. And you think it’s a confidence thing. You think it’s an imposter syndrome thing. But actually, it’s to do you know, with the tapping you do the rounds, an image can come into your head from a memory or just a sentence that someone said to you. And that is where it gets interesting because you can then go clear that up and we call it different aspects and we clear up one aspect. And then something else can come up. And then we go and clear that out and it’s basically like going into your back cupboards, your back closet and pulling out all the old dusty things right at the very back. And just making everything a bit more ordered, a bit tidier, easier to find things. Color coordinated, however you use whatever analogy you want to bring to it. It’s that you are clearing out stuff that is not needed anymore. That’s not serving you anymore, that is not doing your life justice and is holding you back from finding more happiness and fulfillment. And for me, and the emotional freedom. And as women you know, whether you’re you’ve got women here or mums who aren’t mums, you know, we deserve that emotional freedom. We deserve to.. to not be held back by what has happened in our past because hopefully our future will always be better. And we need to accept that that’s what’s happened in the past. We can’t change it. We can’t control it, we can’t control what’s going to happen in the future. But we can control how we’re feeling right now. And that is why tapping is so great because you are working right there, right there in the moment.

 

Yeah and I can see so many benefits from it. Because you know also, right now, Kate and I while we’re recording this, we’re in quarantine. It is during the Coronavirus. I, in Seattle, have been in quarantine just with my immediate family, for going on 10 weeks now which is a really long time. And when a lot of my clients, we talk about sober treats and how important they are to to reward yourself for not drinking and to find other ways that…that really bring you joy and contentment and happiness without alcohol. One of my go-to’s were you know, and also sort of just distracting yourself and getting through the witching hour, our little 20-minute massages and pedicures and seeing people and I can imagine when I was doing the exercise. Just the tapping and the touch and hitting those acupuncture points. You know it’s a great thing to do when you don’t have the ability to go out and get a massage or get a pedicure or have that sort of relaxing touch. So I think that…that’s really cool thing.

 

Definitely! And listen, I’m a mom of four kids. My house is hectic. My, you know, we’re also in quarantine. It’s not been the easiest time and you know, I thought I had good tools in my boxes of a well-being coach and I’ve been tested to my full capacity. And I’ve been doing a lot of self tapping. Because I’ve needed it you know, first thing in the morning it’s an amazing thing even for five minutes. Just to set you up, you know, giving you some intentions for the day. It’s a..it’s a positive thing as well. You don’t have to be tapping on negative stuff, you know, if you want to have a day that is not full of shouting or you want to have a positive day. Or you just tap on that and just, you know, say statements, positive statements and is another tool. So, you know, I’m a huge fan of walking, yoga, breathing and hot baths. You know, I…I suffer from overwhelming anxiety. That’s why I want to help other people. And I initially found EFT because years ago, I had it myself. And I had no idea what was going on. I didn’t realize that that was going to happen. And I questioned it while I was doing. I was thinking this feels weird. This, you know, I felt really self conscious. And then afterwards, my perspective totally changed on the reason why I was there. It was just kind of like, Whoa, I don’t even know what’s just happened to me because I wasn’t even expecting it. And that happened like, 1011 years ago. And then I only refound it again, sort of, you know, a couple of years ago, so that it’s a… it’s a very powerful tool to be able to bring out when you are stressed, you’re anxious, you’re overwhelmed. Yeah. And especially in these situations now, where we can just nip out for you know, a massage or reflexology is something that I would always go to. I wouldn’t really go for a massage. But reflexology for me was like a credit.

 

Okay, I’ve never done that either. Oh, get out of quarantine. I want to try it. So for me, it is the best. How do you work with women because you’re in the UK but you say that you work with women all around the world? You do it via zoom? So can you tell us about it in case the listeners want to get in touch with you or try it out?

 

Yeah. And so it’s funny because before quarantine, I was really like, Oh, I definitely need to see my clients and in the flesh. You know, it makes it more powerful. And actually, there’s not been any difference whatsoever. I’ve not had any situation where I’ve kind of felt it’s been lessened by doing online. It’s opened up my client base a lot more, it’s actually made it more exciting because I’m able to speak to other people and not be restricted by people who live nearby me. And so, that’s been fantastic. So I’ve been, you know, speaking to lots of different people with loads of stuff going on, and probably having more experience that way than I would have done beforehand. And so yeah, it’s literally done on zoom. You only need to be able to see the top half of your body. And my client literally copies my movements and repeats what I’m saying. So it’s no different to what we’re doing right now online. And that’s it. It’s that simple. It’s not anything complicated, and you don’t have to do anything. The client doesn’t have to do anything. And generally, they come in and they’re a bit apprehensive and they’re quite, not quite sure. And within about 10 or 15 minutes, their shoulders have dropped, their face looks more relaxed. They’re not kind of clenched. You can even see the texture, you know, the color of their skin. Like pink is all the things I learned when I was studying NLP. These are the things that you sort of look out for.

If you’re listening to this episode and have been trying to take a break from drinking, but keep starting and stopping and starting again, I want to invite you to take a look at my on demand coaching course, The Sobriety Starter Kit®. The Sobriety Starter Kit® is an online self study, sober coaching course that will help you quit drinking and build a life you love without alcohol without white knuckling it or hating the process. The course includes the exact step-by-step coaching framework I work through with my private coaching clients, but at a much more affordable price than one-on-one coaching. And The Sobriety Starter Kit® is ready, waiting and available to support you anytime you need it, when it fits into your schedule.  You don’t need to work your life around group meetings or classes at a specific day or time. This course is not a 30 day challenge, or a one day at a time approach. Instead, it’s a step-by-step formula for changing your relationship with alcohol. The course will help you turn the decision to stop drinking from your worst case scenario to the best decision of your life. You will sleep better and have more energy, you’ll look better and feel better, you’ll have more patience and less anxiety. And with my approach you won’t feel deprived or isolated in the process. So if you’re interested in learning more about all the details, please go to www.sobrietystarterkit.com. You can start at any time and I would love to see you in the course.

 

Okay, so tell me what NLP is?

 

Yeah, so it’s actually there’s quite a lot of that based in the EFT that in NLP is Neuro-Linguistic Programming. It sounds very space agey and sciency, and all of that. But essentially, it’s all about your mindset. And choosing the right words and body language and how you want to present yourself to other people, but also how you want to talk to yourself and how you want to be and how you want to change the way you think. So you can have a more positive, happier way of life and you don’t realize it until you’re in that process. You could be saying to yourself, I’m so stupid. I’m so nervous. I can’t do that. That’s out of my comfort zone. I wouldn’t do this. I’m not able to do that. And you don’t even realize that you say that. You say this out loud. You say this to kids, and you’re saying this in front of your kids as well. 

 

You know, one of my big things I always used to say is I’m not good at maths, I can’t do maths. I’m not able to do that. I’m not good at computers, technology is not right, you know, and we say it and then we say it infront of our kids, and then I hear it with my own kids. My, you know, one of my daughters is old. No, I’m not. English is the only subject I’m really good at. And we just go through life with these kinds of confidence beliefs. And, you know, these beliefs and how we present ourselves to other people. And actually, by studying the NLP, you learn to take a step back and before you say something to check, we check with yourself. Is that something that is going to help me? Is that going to help someone else? Is that going to be a positive way of looking at something?, so it helps keep your awareness in check.

 

They’re so powerful and what you tell yourself is so powerful. And even if you don’t realize it, it impacts how people move forward. Like, one of my favorite examples is, all those studies that say, if you tell your kid, oh, you’re really good at math, versus I love how hard you worked in math. Yeah, it’s different because kids sort of move forward. And they’re like, my identity is, I’m really good at math. And they, you know, studies have shown that they actually will stop trying and taking harder classes because they feel like they have to be the best in the class. And if they aren’t, then it proves that they’re not really good at math, and therefore, they don’t want that to happen. So you know, it’s a weird self fulfilling prophecy, but words are so powerful. And what we say to ourselves is 90% of it, you know, and there are so many studies that women say negative things repetitively to themselves. I call it the inner critic that they’ve internalized since childhood to stop them. From being embarrassed from being hurt from being criticized, so they almost self criticize to keep themselves small, was like self protection.

 

It’s so harmful and you may have needed it when you were living with people, your parents, your friends, and middle school. God help us where you truly work and to be attacked. But as you grow up, you don’t need to attack yourself constantly and it doesn’t serve you. So, I actually really want to do this because I can think of so many. Both for my clients and for myself, where you know, I still have negative body image. Negative, you know, negative thoughts that I had from the first time I wake up in the morning throughout the day, just, you know, negative thoughts that aren’t serving me that aren’t helping me. 

 

And I could see EFT also helping people if they have social anxiety before they speak in a presentation. Before you know it, a lot of the women I work with are people pleasers, an overachiever. And have trouble setting boundaries or after they do, they feel really uncomfortable with it. Like, they’re not going to be liked or perceived as worthy or perceived as helpful. All the things girls have been conditioned, that they have to be. So even anxiety around saying no to someone, because you want to preserve some of that time and calm for yourself, or setting a boundary with someone who might be taken advantage of you, that you’re sort of afraid of doing, or saying no to a boss because you’re overwhelmed and exhausted. And you know, I always say people treat you the way you’ve taught them to treat you and you have to change, to change the relationship. And so I could see tapping on it and like really helping with those feelings we all have inside that we’re pushing down our worries (subconsciously or consciously about if we do X, what will that mean for y?). So, it really goes way beyond dealing with stress and anxiety over wanting to drink or getting through a craving. And distracting yourself, I could see it being helpful in all areas of your life.

 

It really is. And as you were saying all of those things, those are things that are, you know, we tap on a lot, you know, it’s those things that we recognize in ourselves. The boundaries, the people pleasing, the self critic, and we don’t know why it’s there. And last week, and peel those layers, and it’s like an onion and you just peel one and you peel another and you kind of then recognize. And what happens with the tapping is that it gives you this shift, and whether it’s to do with it doesn’t feel as significant anymore. So you could be actually I don’t really care if I’m, if I don’t, you know, say yes to my boss, or you’re actually and think I can go and have that meeting with my boss and tell him that I’m overwhelmed with work and it doesn’t scare me as much as it did before. So it just gives you that cognitive shift. It kind of rebalances the feelings of sometimes things just being slightly out of harmony. And you might be kind of overthinking something more. And it just kind of rebalances everything which goes to, you know, going back to the nervous system. And you know, if we overthink about something, and we don’t externalize it, then it gets much worse in our heads. In Canada, it just snowballs. But once we’ve got out there through the tapping, that meeting, that conversation, whatever it has to be all of a sudden feels much smaller, it feels much less significant, insignificant, and it makes it more manageable. And that is what I love about it is, because going back to, you know, your clients. My clients are busy, overwhelmed women, who just want to take back control for themselves. They want to empower themselves. They just want to feel better.

 

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And I’m…you’re right with it. We are conditioned, as women, to..to burden ourselves with the people pleasing, and then not saying no and the boundaries. And you know, it’s constant work in progress. You know, you’re not gonna all of a sudden become this amazing woman that kind of says no, and then doesn’t care what people think, because that’s in our nature, but it might not be the full part of your identity anymore. And you’ll have more control and inner strength to cope when the situation arises. That you are able to say no, when you need to say no.

 

Yeah, it’s and also just, you know, some of my clients when we talk through something that has been on their mind that they need to address and have difficult conversations, which a lot of women avoid forever. You know, we say, Okay, here’s your strategy. Here’s how you’re going to do it here. You know, we talked through what they feel would hit work and be comfortable. And then 90% of the work is sitting with that afterwards and saying, okay, I feel really uncomfortable. I feel nervous. I don’t know what’s gonna happen next. And just feeling that and getting through it and realizing the world didn’t crash. And, you know, you have exercised a muscle, you’ve changed behavior, you’ve changed the trajectory of a relationship. And you have stood up for yourself and I feel like tapping through that uncomfortableness afterwards could really help. As opposed to just sitting there and not enduring it but sitting through it, right? Which is interesting. I wanted to say that, one of the things that I love on Kate’s website is not only the video she did around drinking and thoughts of drinking, but also she has one on productivity and around calming ETF techniques. And also one, on kids. And I know so many of us are at home. I’m at home with my two kids, especially a five year old who, sorry, she would kill me. She’s six as of last month with a ton of energy and you know, we don’t get out and see friends as much. Or kids. You know, I know people with kids with anxiety or you know, going through difficult times. Tell me about how it works, on kids.

 

Okay, so funny enough, tomorrow, I’m doing an online workshop and it was so popular that I’ve had to put another one on. This is teaching parents to be honest. It’s all mums that have, you know, signed up and it’s teaching them the basic EFT skills that they can use on their kids. And the reason why I did it is because I was using my kid for this exact reason that we are, you know, in quarantine. They are feeling all sorts of emotions and can’t quite articulate. They can’t quite understand why they’re feeling they’re having meltdowns, tantrums. They don’t want to be homeschooled. There’s so many different things going on in their heads. Even as adults we find it hard to articulate what’s going on you know, with us so kids it comes out in being rude and banging their head against the wall, whatever it you know, it does screaming at their parents refusing to be showered, you know, and that’s how it takes it’s got to come out that you know, they can’t hold it all in. So I am doing this workshop tomorrow, where I’m just going to be teaching them the basics of EFT. So, kind of talking about what I’ve just talked about today. But I guess why or how it helps kids so well. And I’ve been using it on my kids throughout the lockdown, mostly my younger ones because my teenage ones are just a little bit more cynical, and much more self comedy. You know, they’ve got this kind of like oh, this is gonna be really silly. Where the little ones are still a bit more open. And that’s what’s so nice about it because I sort of say, oh come on. I’m getting there now. I do the tapping and we call it like a magical tapping, and we make it fun. And I don’t you know, there’s this kind of the rulebook. It goes a little bit out the window for the kids because I just want them to tell me how I’m feeling, but you know, with one of my daughters, who is a…she’s nearly nine, I’ve done a tapping around, she, she’s not loving the homeschooling and just the different elements of it now and we’ve gone..we did today. We had an amazing breakthrough that actually wasn’t the homeschooling that she was hating, it was the fact that she feels that my husband and I aren’t giving her undivided attention with the technology side of the work. And we don’t sit and help her when, you know, things are coming in with the presentations and the printing and all of that. And I just thought she was being, I want to go use the iPad being lazy or not wanting to. And until I sat with her without once, one time with the tapping and it was like to say with an adult it releases whatever’s going on. She cried at the end. We had a huge hug and we cuddled like never before. She said, I feel so much lighter. These are her words and at eight year old, she was able to articulate. 

 

So I’ve got this amazing video of my two kids, my eight year old and my five year old, telling people they love the EFT or they love the tapping and why it helps them. I didn’t prompt them. I just said to them, can you tell me what you love about it and why we do it and how it helps you? And I kind of thought Well, what are they get to come out with here? They were so, like, clear in how they love it. They love the fact that it is 1-1 time. That’s just a really nice thing. It’s a bonding time. But it just shifts things for them. It helps them and when you see them, they come out with different things and I’ll say, well how did that make you feel? And what you know, what did you know? What stuff really like in your body and they’ll be able to add together, collated. So we’ve got over things like nightmares, we’ve got over things, like, where a scary thing that one of my daughters saw in the iPad, about talking about the Coronavirus all the time, and anxiety about falling asleep. So it works brilliantly with kids. But with kids, what’s great about it, is that you can be a little bit more like a rogue with it. So you can tap with them and you can talk to them while they’re tapping. You can have a conversation with them. And I can tap or tap to you know what, you tap on their points for them, if they kind of get a bit muddled up, which they do. Tap on the wrong points, I guess is a coordination thing when they’re younger. It’s tapping on my kids and saying, Well, what about that and what do you think and you know, when daddy does that you did like it when he said that to you. And, and, and it just worked. It was brilliant to see and it’s so nice to know, as a parent, you have something else because I think everyone kids push your buttons and your immediate thing is sometimes just fly off the handle and shout.

 

But I’m so grateful that I’ve learned the tappings, issues. Why I wanted to bring this to my workshop for my parents. So even if they’re not doing, you know, they’re not practitioners, they can just get a few basics that will help them, take them out of a sticky situation with their kids. And the feedback. You know, I sort of asked the parents what’s going on with the kids. And there’s a general theme going on, that the kids are playing up at night, they’re not wanting to work, they’re having more tantrums. So I’m hoping that the workshop will really empower parents with some new tools for them.

 

I’m sure it will. And I could see, I mean, I know that kids having tantrums, kids not wanting to go to bed, the drama around various things can be a real trigger for parents and just push them to the edge which again is a trigger for drinking. But what you’re also doing. You’re having some time with them, you’re modeling sort of how they can self soothe. I do it with breathing with my daughter. But, you know, I wish I had those tools when I was a kid or when I was in middle school or high school. Because our children’s feelings are not only, as sort of important as ours, they have the same worries, they have the same anxieties, but also they, I feel like especially with my six year old, they almost feel bigger to them, it takes over their entire body. Like they feel things really, really deeply. And they don’t necessarily have the tools or you know, my six year old can’t call her best friend like I do and like to let out all my frustrations in a safe place. You just don’t have that and a lot of times, as parents, our kids are trying to tell us stuff, and we just want them to stop. You know because you get defensive as their parents say, I do all this for you. I do this. You don’t…you don’t give me credit for the 17 things I’ve done right you… Only come about. You know, I mean, I think that’s just being honest. And so giving them a safe place where you feel like you’re helping them. Getting tools in a non judgmental way can be nice. I have to say that my daughter and I did yoga. She Recovers is this amazing group. I love Taryn Strong, and she did yoga as part of a weekend from home on Zoom. She also did a session on essential oils and I brought out the lavender essential oils and we put it on our wrists and our neck. My God, every night at night, my daughter is going for the essential oils a little bit too much. She told me she rubbed it on her face aggressively. I’m like, okay, we need to talk about you know, more is not always war.

 

But well that’s funny because I’ve been using a lot of essential oils. I bought quite a few. Just, I’d say the first or second week of lockdown when everyone was like we were just a frazzled mess in the house. And you know, it was just like the Armageddon had happened and we just didn’t know where to turn and so I turned to essential oils. And I turned to the…to the tapping and you know and going back to the drinking is, I’ve… it’s been a theme you know. There’s been a lot of my friends were on different WhatsApp groups and there’s been a lot of chat about.. is it wine o’clock is a gin o’clock time and all these things. And spurring each other on saying, it’s okay. It’s five o’clock, we got to the end of the day, you’re having a drink with me and all these different things and it’s very difficult especially in this situation. But any situation, if you are being spurred on by friends, and so.. Going back to the tapping. That can really help, but knowing if your kids are driving you insane and I you know today, especially I had work to do… I had, they had work. We’ve got this puppy, it was just like, and I lost my temper with my daughter. Can you just go work quietly on your own and stop asking me for help? And I obviously really upset her. And we ended up going upstairs away from everything – the computers, the dog, the chaos, and we went into her bedroom. We’ve not done that at all, like, apart from games, sleep at night. We don’t really go upstairs to the bedrooms. Yeah. And we sat on the floor, and it just happened. And we did the tapping. And that’s when all the emotions came out. And it was… it was really amazing that we had that time. And now I’ll know that, you know, they need it. They need to be taken out of the zone, taken totally away, and given an opportunity to release whatever’s going on. And that was really calling for help. It was really calming for me because as you’re tapping with the kid tapping on yourself as well. You know, you are getting what they call it borrowed bad boring benefits. Yeah. So I get that from my clients as well. So when we tap, I’m tapping with them. So I come out of a client session, I don’t have this baggage that I maybe would have, if I was in a therapy session of feeling very like, heavy and because I’m kind of clearing my own energy as we’re tapping, you come out of it calm. So the same with the kids, you coming out of that situation, karma for both of you. And it was… it was good. It was really good. So I mean, I think I’ve got something on there for kids.

 

I do think you did here.

 

I’ve got testimonials from my kids, which kind of really helped other people, which is what I’ve created for this workshop. So I will… I will post more stuff and I have got some other bits

that I’m going to be doing. 

 

I think your workshop is going to be a huge success. And I hope that you know, I’m sure as people go to your website and are interested in learning more. And seeing your videos that hopefully you’ll put some information about workshops, if they’re interested, they could just sign up to learn more later or sign up for your newsletter, I’m sure you send stuff out about it. I have to mention before we run out, Kate put together this wonderful guide from cranky to calm, which I’ll put a link in the show notes, to your site about how to get it. But she actually approached me to partner with me on the section about finding coping tools that aren’t drinking in other ways for self care and decompressing and taking care of yourself throughout the day. So you don’t get to the point where you feel so overwhelmed that you just want to, you know, hit yourself over the head with a bottle of wine, which is how I envision it. So, you know, drown yourself in a bottle of wine, which is what I used to do. And so the guide is wonderful. Thank you for asking me to contribute to it and I’ll definitely have a link to where listeners can get that. And I’m sure they will hear more. I also wanted to mention that you have a podcast as well. It’s called the Ambitious Mum. And do you want to tell a little bit about that? 

 

It’s mum with you. And I called, Mom, I just can’t do it. 

 

I know. So yes, it’s called the Ambitious Mum, and I’m on a small series break at the moment. I’m just like, starting to get my interviews back up. But yeah, it’s a podcast about motherhood, ambition, and everything in between. And I think, you know, especially everything that you encompass, is that in between. So I speak to loads of amazing different women who happen to be mothers as well about how they manage their life, their profession, how they got to where they got, to all the stumbling blocks in between the messy parts, the scary bits, and also hopefully, you know, they they’ve taught me so much, there’s a lot of wisdom there. So they’re just, it’s pretty. So it’s lots… lots of different women who I’ve got a lot to give in so many different capacities. And I have lots of great guests coming up, and I hope you will be one of my guests as well. I would love that. I think you’d be so good for my listeners. And so yeah, do sign up. It’s on Apple podcasts, Spotify, wherever you find your podcasts. Yeah. And it’s the ambitious mum.

 

Yes, with you.

 

Perfect. Well, thank you so much. We’re at the end of our time, but I really love talking with you. I think that you’re tapping the EFT. I always say it is yet another technique for people in their sober toolbox. In their self care toolbox that you can test and use and distract yourself and feel better without drinking. There are so many ways out there to, you know, take care of your emotions. Take care of your body and acknowledge that what you’re going through is really hard. And you do deserve a reward at the end of the day, and a way to release. There are just a lot of new ways that we’ve never tried before. And they’re effective. They’re cool, they’re fun, they’re interesting. So I definitely encourage you to check out Kate’s website, and to learn more about the work she does. And the videos are amazing too, just because they give you a quick snapshot. You can do them yourself. So when I did it was about 10 minutes, and it actually really made me feel very good at the end. So thank you, Kate.

 

Thank you for having me. I really enjoyed it.