How do you know that you’ve stumbled upon a revolutionary healing tool? When you can actually reframe the loss of your first child as a blessing in disguise. Let me explain. Twelve years ago my husband and I had a stillborn baby girl after a very spiritually centered pregnancy. The autopsy revealed the cause was unknown. I sank into despair when 6 months later I was diagnosed with Hasimoto’s Thyroiditis which is an autoimmune disease essentially causing the thyroid to attack itself.
I tried every alternative method I could find including homeopathy, Chinese herbs and acupuncture, iridology, nutritional supplements, macrobiotic diet, Ayurvedic medicine, etc. to heal the condition. I desperately wanted to discontinue the synthetic hormone therapy that is the standard protocol in this country. Nothing worked. The discussions with my endocrinologist was always the same, “Accept the fact that you will most likely have to take this pill for the rest of your life.”
Years later, after giving birth to two beautiful health children, I became a postpartum doula. I participated in several grief counseling training sessions where I processed the death of my first baby in great depth. The comment I heard most often when I’d tell my story was , “You really seem to have completed the grieving process” because I didn’t have any obviously lingering emotional attachment to the event. I felt on many levels that this was quite in fact true.
During a time of immense personal growth and asking for guidance from God, I found EFT. Immediately recognizing that my loss was somehow trapped in my thyroid I felt in by bones that this would be the modality to remove it. I began by tapping on all the negative feelings I had around the death including some biggies like God abandoning me. I even discovered some guilt I had felt as I ignored my intuition that wasn’t right with the baby 2 days before her death even though I had just been to a reassuring prenatal visit to the ob/gyn that week.
I went on to work on the thyroid itself with affirmations like “my thyroid is producing all the T-1, T-2, T-3, T-4 it needs for prefect balance.” I diligently addressed any the tailenders such as the doctors telling me that this condition is incurable. I also made sure to check for any symptoms of hypothyroidism and tapped on those when they came up. One secondary benefit I found to be true for me (but I suspect is around with most women with hypothyroidism) is that its a great excuse for being overweight.
I know that one of the criticisms of EFT is that it’s all about belief. Well I’m here to tell you that after months of seeing my clients walk thru my EFT practice symptom-free after one or two sessions, I couldn’t quite believe that this was really working on my own issue until I actually made myself sick! First came insomnia, then tinnitus, and finally the feeling of being on speed or too much caffeine. It took me a few days to recognize something that had never happened to me: by continuing to take the drugs I had made myself temporarily hyperthyroid. A quick visit to my very open-minded nurse practitioner and she immediately started weaning my body off the drugs. I tell this story to my clients as a cautionary tale on the importance of working closely with their doctors when applying EFT to physical ailments. The blood work confirmed that I didn’t need to be on medication any longer after a few months of persistent tapping.
This brings me full circle to my dramatic reframe. I lost a child yes, but I recognize now that I was destined to work within the birth community to change the status quo. The U.S. has the highest incident of postpartum depression and I can’t tell you how discouraging the numbers are for complete relief using traditional therapies. My ultimate goal is to train midwives, doulas, and childbirth educators in EFT. I believe in the pioneering work of Dr. Grantly Read who concluded that childbirth without fear will almost always bring about pain free labors. I know pitching energy psychology to the birth community is in it’s conception stage and I (along with other EFTers) will be ready to give birth to it. Of course, I will be relying on EFT to stop any limiting self-talk from distracting me from the path which my little angel started me down twelve years ago.
Thank you for the miracle you’ve sent out into the world,
Alina Frank, CERT-I Practitioner, Certified Postpartum Doula
www.tapyourpower.net
www.eftmentors.com
