One of my students had called about bringing
her son to see me as she had gone as far as she could go with him. (note, I
find the same thing for myself, it's about getting help when you are stuck
and remember, a dr. doesn’t perform an appendectomy on himself, even
if he’s the world’s expert, my hat is off to Cole’s mom for
recognizing the block). I most certainly agreed to see them both. In my experience
when children are experiencing some difficulty I like to work with the parents
as well. Cole came with his mom and we started immediately tapping on his disruption.
We made a little headway but I sensed that he wasn’t quite ready to go
much further, that’s when his mom asked if he’d like to work on
his fear of spiders. He was quite willing to see if EFT would work for that
as he mentioned being teased at school and feeling embarrassed by it all.
So we started out with me tapping on the side of his hand (karate chop) and
having him repeat, “Even though I have this fear of spiders, I still
a great kid anyway, and Even though I have this fear of spiders and it makes
me feel scared, I’m still a great kid anyway, Even though I have this
fear of spiders ‘cause they are creepy, I’m still a great kid anyway”.
We did one complete round repeating, “this fear” at every tapping
point.
I then asked if he knew when it started and he said he thought it was a few
years ago when he first watched Spiderman and was haunted by a spider hanging
down on a web so we did another round about that. I asked him to tell me about
a time when the kids at school had chased him with a spider, this really upset
him so we talked and tapped about him feeling helpless and afraid in front
of the kids and that he really would like to get over this fear but it was
pretty big.
Cole is well versed in rating the intensity of his disruption and he had gone
down continually in his numbers, this had taken around 15 minutes and so I
suggested that we test what we did. I asked them to stop at a dollar store
and buy a plastic spider or see if he could. I also asked if he’d get
back to me on how he had done with the homework.
I received an incredible email from his mom in a couple of days along with
the pictures that speak a thousand words. Lisa, his mom had first tested with
a picture of a spider and Cole tapped while looking at it ( I am guessing he
was more intuned with the “fear of the fear"). Coe was able eventually
to touch the picture of the spider, hold the paper it was printed on and even
commenting that the spider’s body looked like a snake’s head. The
next day the family went out for dinner and Lisa mentioned she had found a
plastic spider and it was in a bag in the vehicle. The first thing Cole did
when they got in the vehicle was to reach for the bag, look in it and ask his
Dad to take the spider out so he could see it. Later at home Cole was able
to touch and hold the spider. This is where the picture comes in, you’ve
got to see the look on his face, it is Truly Pricelss!! Not sure who is happier,
his mom, Cole himself or me.
Follow up by Lisa:
Cole now keeps the spider on the dresser in his bedroom. He has been able
to watch spiders on TV and even stopped to look at a spider book in the book
store the other day...something he NEVER would have done before. The icing
on the cake was when Cole asked to go to the pet store to see the tarantulas!
Unfortunately they were unavailable but we will try again at another pet store.
Thanks Dawn, you're the Greatest!
