Well, you've done the hardest part which is get to the point where you really want to do something different than "just" pop pills and you've done the other hard parts which is figure out you needed to take time to listen to your body, which you did and you got an answer, which you actually listened to, and now you're having some success but nothing lasting.  There are at least a couple of possibilities as to why it's not "sticking:" you may not have found the emotional roots of your physical pain, part of you deeply needs that pain and isn't ready to let go yet or there is a physical aspect that is not related to an emotional problem which needs to be dealt with before you can go farther with tapping.  As in, broken bones hurt and tapping will relieve the pain for a while but if you don't get it properly set the pain will return. 

So, you could start out with really scrutinizing your diet and how it impacts your body.  I'm sure you've already done so since you say you have a history of chronic pain which implies perhaps years of suffering.  I have a number of health and diet (as in food choices, not Weight Watchers or whatever) websites if you're interested in perusing them.  Most of them are fairly radical in terms of what an average nutritionist in the US would suggest at this point but since that way of eating isn't working all that well for most people I feel fairly safe in recommending alternatives, many of which I've tried out on myself with great success.

But the tapping.  If the chakra clearing is helping then keep doing it even if it doesn't seem to last very long.  It may take a while to really get things clearing up chakra-wise and this can be true also with the other tapping.  If this is a chronic condition then the patterns may be a little tough to shift- they've been this way a while- but on the other hand you may find just the right point for the lever of EFT and shift everything at once.  I'd hate to limit your possibilities! 

Anyway, if you say, while tapping the karate point or the sore spot (on your chest),

Even though I have this history of chronic pain that I'm totally ready to be totally rid of I love and accept and forgive myself unconditionally...
Even though I've been ignoring everything else I should be doing* and focusing on listening to my body and it's so maaaaaaaaddddd...
Even though I've tried the medical route and I will continue the therapies that I'm doing that might be working...

What "tail enders" come up for you?  Or can you say this with only a deep sense of yes, this is totally true?  Either way this gives you something further to work on.

*"Should" is a powerful word with a lot of negative connotations.  What else should you have been doing that is more important than figuring out the key to your physical pain?  How does ignoring your physical pain do you or anyone else any good?  Are you less important than your tasks and responsibilities?  Do you have so many tasks and responsibilities that you rarely if ever have any time to yourself to rest or play or sleep as long as you need to?  Is it possible that this pain gives you the "excuse" you need to take this time out?

If your body is so mad, does the madness have a name?  A color?  A specific place in your body?  Does it stem from a particular instant in time or a particular event or is it more an accumulation of mad moments over a longer period of time?  Is it about a particular person or place or thing?  If not, if it's just a sense of "MAD!!!" then if you could make up a story about that madness what would it be?  What does this madness keep you from feeling?  What does it protect you from?  What good does it do you?

I apologize if you've already asked yourself these questions and laid them to rest already- they are just suggestions anyway, a potential starting point.  Even if you think, nope, that's not me, you've eliminated some possibilities and that clears the field for new questions.  Also, have you searched the Gary Craig archives for stories specifically about pain?  Seems to me there are a number on that subject.  Perhaps there would be some helpful phrases there for you.

I hope this is at all helpful.  Please let me know if anything does or doesn't work for you specifically- I love to learn and really appreciate the feed back. 

I wish you well!

Namaste.

Wow, shoegal, what a great set of links!  Thanks very much.  I have a couple dozen friends who need to read about this- and when I have time in town I'm going to get his books from the library.  Very interesting!  Just think how fast the healing could be with EFT involved!

Namaste.

sgirl, I've read his books and frequented the forum - he's basically a medical doctor who believes that chronic pain (back pain being his speciality), fibromyalgia, anxiety, depression, skin conditions, TMJ, hayfever, allergies, migraines - all sorts of things, are all due to unresolved emotions. It's a pretty far out there thing for a NY doctor to say, and to treat people in this way, but he's been doing it for over 30 years with great success. He believes that the pain/condition is caused by the mind as a distraction from the unresolved emotions, and some people have even been free of pain by learning this by reading his book!

I thought it might give you a different perspective on your own history of chronic pain - if you check out the 'Success Stories' on the forum, you may be inspired.

I don't know if this might help, but I found a few things recently for my own pains.

When I'm in pain and taking painkillers, I cannot gather myself enough to do good EFT. What I do now is to tap daily on my pain to give myself room to be able to tap for other things. Usually I wake up with a pain of 5-6 on a 10 scale (10= what I can endure for extended periods to at least go to the bathroom and eat by myself without crying). After tapping for a few minutes the pain is usually down to 2.

I have PTSD from a childhood accident, and it was discovered only recently what effects that has had on my health. It boils down to feelings of insecurity, not being able to trust, problems with bonding with people (including my parents). One extra tapping point if bonding is a problem is to tap on the breast-bone, below the collarbone point in the recipe. Test different locations on your body, where you feel your fingers draw you, you might find other points that are doing it for you better than the ordinary Seven Magic Points.

From the PTSD perspective, the stress reaction in the body is doing stuff to me, causing lots of pain. What my organs and cells seem to do, is to revert to a Defense mode instead of Healing mode as fast as they feel the least pressure. I have recently also had Iritis (an eye illness where the iris starts to grow attached to the lens, often sparked by stress), so I can feel how stressed I am from how much irritation I feel in the eyes - do you have anything like that? Some physical communication that you can rely on to tell you how to take care of yourself and to know your limits?

My "pain killer EFT"  series goes like this: "Even though my cells/organs/muscles/bloodvessels/nerves are in defense mode instead of healing mode, I love myself and I allow myself to trust Life." That last phrase is tweaked to take care of my PTSD core issue at the same time, and I can feel the relaxation in my body being deeper for it. Try out some phrases that are You and get Your energies going. Play around!

Of all books and available material I chose to buy the three parts of Gary Craig's dvd's - The EFT Foundational, Intermediate and Honors LIbraries. I guess any method, at extending one's experience and knowledge about oneself and all the different techniques that are at our hands, is good. I use EFT together with reiki, other meridian techniques when applicable, and things like tai ji etc. Everything that can balance us is useful, even though I find EFT to be one of the better ones.

One other aspect of being ill and in pain, is the Gain part of it. Somewhere down in the subconscious is a part of us that believes that the pain and/or illness is doing good in some way. Why this is or how it came to be is quite mysterious when you're up to your nose in it. What on Earth do I gain from this? Nothing!!! Or this thing that made it a gain has simply got stuck and turned into a Psychological Reversal. More on how to deal with that I just wrote in this thread http://www.tappingforum.com/topic/1111.0/does-tapping-really-workhas-anyones-life-really-changed.html

Hope at least something of this was useful.

I guess the comment about specifics was a try to be helpful, but sadly it didn't really have that effect on me. (Sorry for hijacking the thread sgirl, but the specific PTSD comment seemed aimed at me.) emofree.com, yeah, that's useful. As I wrote last time, I have all three sets of Gary's dvds already, being in the middle of the intermediate set at the moment, not mentioning the abundant articles by lots of initiated and experienced people.

And, specifics... yes, exactly.... I fell to the floor head first when I was 6 months, so any specifics escape me. Sorry! My parents initially thought I had broken my neck as I didn't give many life signs at the time. The docs said I was ok though, so nobody has paid any attention to that incident the last 44 years. A few years ago I collapsed and was diagnosed "depressed", but I refused the anti-depressants as I felt something else was happening. I have been ill for almost five years now and none of the physicians I have met has been interested in investigating further. I even had the stamp "hypochondriac" on my forehead until two months ago when they found out I am ill  for real. So, cw, with all this going on around me, your comment fell smack to the ground. And I wonder, how accustomed are you to pain?

As I live far away in a non-english speaking country where there are very few others that bother with EFT, I have been doing my best the last year to be both therapist and patient as all help I can get officially is a psychologist who only knows how to listen to talk, talk, talk and seems to have no idea of what feelings are. He also has a very limited language, mainly containing of "hm", "ha" and "tell some more". I have been able to get a few steps with my multi-illness situation  (PTSD, PCOS, IBS?, thyroid problems, Iritis and a recent diagnosis of some, yet unknown, autoimmune inflammaroy disease, topped by chronic pain) anyway. One of the primary effects of the PTSD is fear of anybody threatening me with any pointed object, so drawing blood to get a few ideas of what my physical problems are has been quite distressful. I simply leave my body and turn into a bezerker with only one aim; to maim or kill my assailants. And as I have done some martial arts training, I could as well succeed, which is another fear connected to this problem.

Last summer they finally put me to sleep just to be able to make an ordinary blood test. It was the first time in my life that anybody pierced my arm to have blood. If it hadn't been for EFT, I wouldn't even have gotten out of my house. A month ago, I succeeded to go through a blood test without any anastetics, fully conscious. It took 2.5 hours of tapping to do it, and I was a wreck when we were finished, but I did it. But, (insert bad words here), did I long for somebody to guide me through it.

So, yeah, specifics... Like all the images that comes up when I get into this situation, that I fervently tap at being close to the point where I actually go out of my body, tapping me back to a lower suds level (mostly using only "this feeling" as was unable to verbalise what was happening), to be able to add the pressure a pinch more, where every tiny step will threaten to send me sky rocketing to a near OBE again. And the images permutate and comes back and back in a wide variety of different aspects. And all the bystanders can do is to just look at me doing it. Even the nurse cried afterwards...

What I would want is to get hold of a hypno therapist with whom I could do some EFT during hypno sessions, but they don't exist here yet, so until then I'll keep on experimenting, looking at Gary's dvds, copy and learn. In the process I have found out a few things that works for me. The technique I linked to has helped me reverse my Psychological Reversal about my subconscious trying to stop me from living. I was telling about some experiences in the sincere hope that it might put somebody else on a track that could help. There are no One Trick Wonders, even with EFT. The art isn't in the tapping itself, and to master anything one needs to delve deeply into it, use one's intuition and aquire a skill. And that takes time, effort and a willingness to go beyond what one perceives to be Self.

You know, cw, I don't want to follow your lead in this case. I'm sure you are only trying to help and give me a chance to redirect my nose in a direction that you feel is more suitable for me. Your remark only showed me that you hadn't read my post very well and thus don't really care. In this, you are following a pattern of people around me telling me what is good for me, without really caring what happens. The power game we were getting engaged in, I decide to leave.


(And, yeah, I feel less pain after realising and writing this. So, regardless of how you feel about it, deciding where my limits are and defending them was a healing experince. Without any tapping, so I guess all the tapping I have done so far is paying off.)

I add only that in tapping about being dropped/falling as a baby that you tap from that baby's point of view.  If you can't remember then make it up and tap from that imaginary point of view.  This is not as crazy as it might seem- and you may access actual memories of the experience which you can then tap on. 

I think you're doing remarkably well considering the depth of pain and fear you are struggling with, and the lack of help around you.

Namaste.