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Some Points to Ponder before doing Surrogate EFT

For those not yet sure what surrogate tapping or surrogate EFT (or surrogate healing) is - it's a way you can do healing at a distance for someone else. As an example, let's say your sister is going through a really tough time and she's not open to any help. You can do EFT (or any other form of healing) on her behalf, while her body is in another country even. She does not have to know that you're helping her "from a distance".

Surrogate healing of any kind has always sparked the "permission" debate with questions like "but did you ask for permission?" The moral debate is not the topic of discussion here. Instead, I'd like to delve a little deeper into some of the possible surrogate pitfalls for ourselves.

Just as another part of the introduction - I often refer to Byron Katie's words:

"I find three types of business in the world. Mine, yours and God's". She basically means that we're often in anothers' business when we want to control them or think we know what's best for them.

Honesty Required

If we think about it honestly (no I mean really, really honestly) - the real reason most of us want to help anyone else is that we feel better when someone else feels better. I shied away from this truth for many years - I used to say things like "It's just in my nature to help" or "I can't help it, when someone else suffers I have to help". Until I discovered the REAL reason is I positively hate it when someone else goes through misery - there's a part of me that can't "be" with someone else's pain. I jump in and "fix" because then I feel better, too. If they're miserable, I don't feel entitled to be happy.

If we think about surrogate tapping then, mostly we want to surrogate tap for someone else when they're in a bad place, which makes US feel bad, sad, guilty, terrified, what if it happened to me....All our worst fears can rise up (like with the recent earthquakes and tsunami's) and haunt us, make us feel fearful and guilty to think a happy thought in the face of so much destruction and heart-ache.

Two Options

In my experience, we have two options here. We can surrogate tap for the "other party", in an effort to help them or change how they feel about the disaster in their lives, or even change the outcome. OR we can tap for how WE feel about the disaster and everything that it stirs up for us.

As far as I'm concerned, both options will get you to the same place for sure: YOU will feel better. You'll get to a place where you are more effective and can think about options more clearly. When you are frantic, feel bad/sad/helpless/guilty - your brain is busy with the problem. There's simply no space for the solution to come. You can't be of much practical help in this kind of emotional space.

What's the real issue?

In my opinion, we have to look really carefully at the reason we want to surrogate tap. It takes courage and real, deep honesty to look at the truth. Is it because I want to "fix it" for someone else? Do I want to rescue them out of their situation? Did this person ask for my help? Am I just really uncomfortable when someone else hurts and there's something inside that drives me to try and "do something" about it?

The thing is... we mostly do not really understand or know the bigger picture. How do we know for sure what this person is supposed to go through? How do I know what the "right outcome" is for them? Do I really really know what's in their best and highest interests?

I'm certainly  not advocating that someone else SHOULD suffer, or that we should not do anything to assist someone in need. Or that we should not do surrogate tapping.

I'm really stressing that it might be useful and prove insightful to honestly investigate our own reasons for wanting to lighten someone else's burden.

Our own stuff...

Sometimes it's our own unhealed wounds that have not been tended to, that are opened and scratched raw when we see someone else's pain. The thing is, it's so much easier to "look outside myself" and try to fix pain "over there", than it is to face my own pain and wounds of the past.

When we heal the pain in us first, we are more able to come from a caring, loving and clear place of offering assistance. When our own wounds are still raw, we come from helplessness, desperation, fear, loneliness... and our buttons will be pressed over and over again by all the pain around us.

A perfect example

I had a clear experience of this last week. My husband was (like always) under enormous work pressure. Quite a number of things were going wrong at the same time and he started feeling pressured, overwhelmed, irritable and plain stressed out. I felt those vibes and was feeling (as usual) helpless, sad for him, and pressured to offer my help to lighten his load (even though computer programming work is REALLY not what I prefer doing).

I wanted to do some EFT on his behalf to help with all the stress ("he has no time for this", goes the argument in my head...). A while later I realised I was going to be "in HIS business" if I did that. My business is how I feel about his stress. When I feel lighter and stress-free, I am more able to be the love and light that we all are - and therefore he will be able to "entrain" to a higher, calmer vibration. Without me doing anything about his work load.

If I stepped in and "fixed" it for him, I would still sit with my own suffering. I would suffer again the next time, and the next, and the next... People get stressed and overwhelmed around me all the time and it would press my own buttons every time if I don't do my own work on this issue.

So I could take a look at the following for some tapping options:

Clearing the above out of my own "diseased forest" will have profound effects in my own life. And then, if he still feels stressed and asks for my help, I could consider my answer with a clear head and not from a space of desperation to make it better for someone else. There's a vast difference.

Here's a brilliant Abraham-Hicks clip that will help explain why it's so very important that we feel good ourselves FIRST before we try to help someone else!