A Self Image Makeover That Anyone Can Do: Eliminate Depression, Anxiety and Melancholy and Start Making New Friends

Do you want to change your life? Are you reading tons of self-help books and trying to do your affirmations every day, desperate to feel better about yourself? How is that working? Self help books and affirmations didn’t work for Lori* but she made major progress with Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) in just 5 weeks.

Lori had been suffering from a very poor self image. In fact she said “I could not remember a time when I did not feel socially and interpersonally inept, on the outside looking in, unattractive, or feeling just plain boring.” Lori went through life feeling unlovable, and she just couldn’t see her own physical attractiveness … no matter what anyone told her. She avoided social situations because of her generalized anxiety.

She had no life outside of work … no friends … no boyfriends. She felt truly despondent. She had read at least 100 self help books and had been for talk therapy and told to “fake it ‘til you make it”, which was impossible for Lori. She had always suffered with melancholy, depression and anxiety and one therapist told her she had dysthymia, a milder, but long term type of depression.

Tired of living this way, Lori contacted EFT practitioner, Stephanie Rothman. In her first EFT appointment, Lori felt a major shift in her self perception. You can read Lori's story in more detail on the EFT website.

Why so quick? The thing that’s different about EFT is that it targets unresolved negative emotions where they are rooted - in the subtle energy system of your body. Negative emotions and trauma become lodged in your energy system (also known as the meridian system in Chinese acupuncture) and can stay there, wreaking havoc on your life. But once you remove them, their negative pull on your self image simply vanishes.

Conventional talk therapy, and typical self-help books erroneously ignore the concept that disruptions in your energy system cause disruptions in your emotional life. But with EFT you can remove these disruptions … take control over your own healing … and live the life that you want to be living.

EFT is a kind of do-it-yourself emotional acupuncture and Lori did a lot of her EFT work on her own. Anyone can learn the basics of eft … you simply use your fingers to tap on a series of acupuncture points on your head and torso. It works because you are thinking about the negative emotions that you want to dissolve … while you are tapping and balancing the meridian system. Often the disrupted feelings of anxiety, depression and melancholy begin to dissipate almost immediately. There are no drugs, talk therapy or medications involved … and EFT has a success rate of about 80%. Please refer to the end of this article for helpful links to the EFT website.

How EFT worked for Lori

In her first appointment with Stephanie, Lori picked one particular painful emotion that was affecting her life. It was intense …on a 10-point scale, it was a 10. But after a few minutes of EFT, Lori reported, “I went from a 10 to about a 3 or a 4, and felt great relief, and not a little amazement, at the ease of the technique and its effectiveness.”

Lori then made a list of 7 major negative emotions that were impeding her happiness … and over the next 5 weeks she targeted her emotions with EFT at least 3 times a day … every day. She worked on disappointment, negativity, and sadness from her past. She worked on her childhood need to please her mother, and negative experiences that she had with men who cheated on her. Systematically she worked to dissolve the negative emotions that were trapped in her subtle energy system. Lori reports…

"My experience with EFT has been so life-changing, and so life-affirming, that on occasion it is difficult to believe that the person I was 8 weeks ago has blossomed into the happy, resourceful, content woman I am now. When people began to respond positively to me, I knew that what I thought had happened, had actually happened, that is, that I had removed the many, many blocks that had held me back for so long and had really begun to live a great life.”

After just 5 weeks, Lori was happily dating 2 wonderful men and people were offering to set her up with their male friends. She noticed that when you change, and begin to feel better about yourself, people are drawn to you. She is volunteering for a charity and is making friends for the first time at the place she works.

Lori has demonstrated that with proper persistence, it is possible to completely re-engineer your emotional profile and, indeed, create freedom where there was previously self-imprisonment.

Please consult qualified health professionals before putting EFT into practice for yourself or others.

*Name changed to protect privacy