When Logic Isn’t Enough to Change Your Mind (Or Behavior)

Are you someone who is highly aware of your emotional challenges?

Like, if someone asks you where your commitment issues come from, you could give a 10 page powerpoint presentation on all of the things that have happened in your life, your various traumas, your attachment style, your astrological placements, your Human Design profile, your Myers Briggs assessment, your enneagram number, where your parents f**ked you up and how it all ties into your current relational road bumps?

Or, if someone asks you about that goal you set out to achieve, you can give them your Ted Talk 🎤 about what’s been stopping and blocking you?

Btw, the above is not a judgement because if you answered 'yes' to those questions....you are in good company 🙂.

Just keep reading.

I was recently working with an EFT client who was feeling blocked around opening up to people, particularly around his new career pivot.

He had a limiting belief that it was not safe for him to share his truth or what he considered his authentic self.

After we did a few rounds of EFT/'Tapping' on a recent event where he had experienced feeling this block, I asked him if he could remember the first time that he felt this way?

The first time that he had felt that constriction in his throat when he tried to speak his truth?

Immediately he began to speak about how it was tied to family trauma around keeping secrets and watching his mother get gaslit when she tried herself to express those secrets.

When I asked him if he would like to tap around what he had shared since it seemed to be a direct connection to his current block around using his voice, his first response was that he had already worked on it on his own and in therapy.

This is a common theme with many of the people I work with (self included) - extremely intelligent, highly sensitive, emotionally aware, perceptive individuals who can eloquently speak about their past and current challenges………

…….but speaking about our challenges doesn’t always equate to moving past them and/or embodying that healing in such a way that stops a limiting belief, behavioral pattern or moves a goal forward.

When I asked him if he would be willing to tap around it, he had some resistance but said yes.

We tapped around the resistance to even tapping around it and after 1 round of releasing the resistance, a core memory popped up that he had not thought of in 20+ years.

It was a memory of when he was a young child and has received a gift from family members that was a very clear crossing of his boundaries as well as a gaslight to his own knowledge and what he knew to be true about his family and experiences.

But he did not speak that truth because for his young self, there was a myriad of reasons why that was not safe.

So, what does that have to do with his current moment? And why he still struggles with using his voice?

When we fast forward to the 2024 version of my client, he logically knows he is safe.

Those family members are no longer living. They cannot harm him. He has talked about this in therapy and with people in his life. He is in many other ways, a very outspoken person.

But it is not the logic brain that makes our final decisions……

What neuroscience has taught us is that it's the emotional part - the limbic brain - that does.

That is why he, and so many of us, can speak about issues, challenges or blocks we are experiencing; and while awareness is a critical step, it does not always translate to long lasting emotional or behavioral shifts.

This is why my client said he wants to speak more about his career pivot but when it’s his turn to talk about it, declines to do so.

This is why you say you want to start going to that new class but binge watch a TV show instead.

This is why you say you want to make that boundary with that person, but end up staying silent in the moment.

These limiting beliefs and behaviors are from the survival part of the brain - the part of the brain that wants to make sure that what happened to you before NEVER happens to you again.

Or, if you've seen the movie Inside Out 2, tries to prepare you for the worst possible case scenario(s) and make sure those never happen to you either.

It’s actually brilliant……but not necessarily conducive for your growth and evolution. It wants to help you but in the long run, it’s hurting you.

Most of us are not taught the tools we need to support ourselves in this way and from a young age we are told or learn that what we feel is either scary, wrong or not valid when neither could be further from the truth.

So instead we feel safer in the thinking brain and avoid feeling, which is also supported by a society obsessed with logic and intellect.

To change patterns and behaviors we must move past awareness; past just simply “knowing” and being able to talk about it…..even if it’s eloquently.

We must be able to connect directly to this emotional part of our brain, who’s ultimately the real captain steering the ship of our decision making.

As much as many of us wish we could skip the feeling part and stay in the thinking and ruminating brain, we can’t skip steps if we want lasting change.

It doesn’t have to be big, scary or overwhelming to do this.

This is why I love EFT/‘Tapping’ so much, have been a practitioner for 7 years and am completing my clinical certification in less than a week.

It does exactly this - connect and communicate directly to this critical part of our brains.

Tapping does not require us to use logic. It allows us to create emotional and nervous system regulation so that we can turn off our stress response; that survival part of our brain.

Tapping then allows us to create the space we need in our mind *AND* body to be able to differentiate between what happened to us and the (limiting) belief that was created from what happened to us in an attempt to protect ourselves.

It allows us to not only heal and release what happened but to also see how it is impacting us today…… and then the final step: re-program to experience something different.

For my client that looked like tapping on this memory and yes, releasing the grief and rage but also the belief of the need to hold onto that memory in order to survive.

After the session he shared with me that he still owned the gift that held this memory and fear for over 20 years and later on messaged me that he immediately went and threw it away.

He’ll also be fully transitioning into his new career at the end of the month.

If you want to move from awareness and logic around beliefs and patterns that are sabotaging your emotional and energetic health, career goals and relational growth into real change, you can book your session here.

You have until Sunday July 21st, when I will be complete with my EFT clinical certification, to use 20% off code TWENTYPERCENT for individual sessions and 20PERCENT for packages.

P.s - Not ready to commit to sessions yet? Join me this Thursday for a virtual group EFT/‘Tapping’ session with Manifest House at 6pm PST.

P.p.s - if you’re new to EFT, you can watch this quick intro video here.