Cornerstones

“It’s like I built the structure of my life on this cornerstone,” J.S. said. “And now I’ve found out it’s the wrong cornerstone.”

She was talking about the results of her first e.c.c. clearing. She was enthused about muscle testing, but became incredulous when her system indicated that the trauma we needed to clear initiated in early childhood. The emotions involved were fear, pain, and shame. Muscle testing ruled out any emotional, physical, or sexual abuse. But a very strong response confirmed this had something to do with feeling unwanted. There were other children in the family then, and Dad was away at work a lot. Moreover, it was a tough time for her parents who had just moved into a community where they felt unwelcome.

Her muscle testing insisted that this experience also involved her feeling unworthy and unacceptable. The trauma rated as extreme. Gradually, she began to connect emotionally to the pain.

“I did feel like things were all my fault,” she admitted. “Mom was overwhelmed and lonely, and that was my fault. They felt like outcasts because the neighbors were standoffish, and that was my fault.” Her eyes started to fill with tears.

Her system further indicated that out of this early experience she had made such decisions as “I’m not O.K.,” and “There’s something wrong with me.” If she were somehow better, she believed, her parents wouldn’t have problems.

The clearing was quite successful. The cornerstone she referred to later was that “unwanted” feeling. Shaped by that, she reflected on the pattern of her life:

“The worst of it was in relationships. I kept choosing people who would find fault with me to reinforce the earlier message that I wasn’t O.K. I married the same man twice because I thought that if he could make me feel better, then I might someday be O.K. We played the whole drama out all over again. The neat thing is– I’m not gonna pick another one like that.” “When I realized I wasn’t a kid anymore, I tried to recapture my childhood because I didn’t have one. So I started to collect all these cutesy things that are ties to childhood. I’d keep them around to keep alive my inner child. After your workshop I took them to the thrift store. Now I’m connected to my inner child. I don’t need the symbols”.

Baggage

When I saw your e.c.c. demonstration, C. P. said, I got a headache and felt dizzy. I almost didn’t come back. But I knew that my intense reaction indicated that I had unresolved issues that were seeking relief.

So I volunteered to be next. Muscle testing quickly took us back to my early childhood. The emotions involved were fear, anger, and shame. The trauma turned out to be life-threatening.

There was no abuse, just my mother trapped in her misery. This fits with pictures I used to see–the look on her face. She and my father were having conflicts. The feeling I got was not of being unwanted, but unwelcome. The child before me had been stillborn, and, although it’s strange to say, it’s almost as if I sensed her womb as an unsafe place.

For no apparent reason,I had always had the weird and uncomfortable feeling/thought “I have no right to exist.” It involved a fear of annihilation. When we located the experience in the womb, I felt not just a cognitive understanding, but a very deep emotional connection to this “theme” that had been running through my whole life.

As a result of my early experience, muscle testing confirmed, I made the decision that I was there to relieve my mother’s misery. Therefore, what she wanted for me was what I should do. “Because I’m ‘baggage’ to my mother,” I concluded, “I’m obligated to make up for all her misery.”

So my life was about fulfilling my obligations and doing what was expected of me. Living with this “trapped” feeling, I consequently developed a fear of relationship, probably because I dreaded feeling obligated again to another female.

The clearing was very powerful for me. Afterward, I was trembling and dizzy, but I finally stabilized. I feel quite well now. I no longer question my “right to exist.” I don’t have the “annihilation” issues anymore. I feel less trapped and more relaxed about relationships. My problems now seem more “adult” to me, no longer based on my childhood decisions. I feel freer of what I thought were my “obligations.”

As I face an unknown future, my new problems emerge from the new thinking: “Now that I don’t have to do what I thought I had to do, what do I really want to do?”

More Than I Bargained For

At the workshop I wanted to release whatever was blocking me from writing the papers I had to do, J. W. said.

Muscle testing directed us to age twelve and the time my mother tried to kill me. “Oh, no,” I thought, taken by surprise, “I don’t want to go there.”

I come from an alcoholic, abusive family. When I was twelve my father tried to molest me. My mother saw us and thought that I initiated it. That night she tried to smother me, saying “We can’t let this get out,” as she put the pillow over my face. (I know this must be hard to believe!)

I can recall so much terror. I think that I died that night, but I later regained consciousness. I couldn’t tell anyone. There was a big part of me that wanted to deny this ever happened.

It was important for me in the workshop to walk through the terror, and the clearing helped me with that. It was a really traumatic emotional ride, and it took a while for the results to settle in. But it was absolutely worthwhile.

As a result of that age-twelve experience, I had decided that it was profoundly unsafe to be alive, and that life is a tightrope. After the clearing, part of me relaxed and decided that the world could be a safe place, and that I had a right to be in it. That went to the core of my being and affected all the decisions about what the world is like for me.

Now I’m more relaxed and not getting “hooked” into stuff with my kids and my ex-husband. Everything that happens to me isn’t a survival threat. All that hyper-vigilance is gone. I’m not instantly personalizing every perceived threat. For this, I am profoundly grateful.

A long-time friend told me, “You don’t look the same. You look softer and more beautiful.” There’s a softness around me now that wasn’t there before.

Mom had said, “Do well enough to make me look good, but not well enough to make me look bad.” As a result, papers and grades became a life and death matter to me. After the workshop, unblocked, I finished one paper in a half hour.

Safe To Be Me

I always had a feeling that as a child my needs were not met, said D. F. In the workshop I realized that wasn’t so.

My needs were met. But it wasn’t safe to be myself. My essence was too entwined with my mother. My mom was institutionalized when I was five. If we could have muscle tested her forty years ago, she might not have gone crazy. Even when Dad wasn’t away at work, Mom would talk so much and so fast that she would drive him out of the house. Then when I was three, he died.

Muscle testing indicated that at some level I knew when I came into the world that I would have to take care of my mom. And in fact I did.

But I wouldn’t do anything like her. I was too afraid of going crazy like she did. So I avoided the “negatives” of her, but the price I paid was that I lost out on the “positives” as well. In my whole life, I have never “emerged” as my own person with my own identity. The seed was planted, but the soil was never watered so it never grew. Intuitively, I have know this all along.

The two clearings, both of which took me back to the womb, provided insight and understanding and helped me release the old decisions. Now I know that I can be myself without being my mother. I can bring out my own essence without her.

This gave me a kind of freedom. I have a sense of being O.K. now. It’s easier for me to get along with people without getting upset and judging them. I’m more accepting of them because I’m more accepting of myself. It gave me an inner sense of peace to know that I was O.K. and really feel it, rather than just think it intellectually. I’m not threatened by other people anymore.

All this is rather embarrassing, and I must have healed it to talk to you about it as clearly as I am. Your technique lasered in on what my fifteen years of therapy failed to discover.

My existence has some meaning for me now. Feeling like my early needs weren’t met, I always felt out of place. I never had any deep connections with anyone. I couldn’t feel worthy. That’s probably because I couldn’t have any deep connection with my mother–it wasn’t safe.

Now I step back and look at the big picture. I have self-worth. I’m a good guy. I can release my self-judgment.

Core Identity Shift

My Top Priority Item in the workshop stemmed from a car accident at age fourteen, said S. A. My mother and father had divorced when I was five. After that, my grandmother pretty much raised me, and we were very close.

Grandmother and I were both injured in that accident. While we were still in the hospital, I wanted to let her know that I was all right. But when I got to her room, the nurse came in and pushed us out. My grandmother, I later heard, was afraid she had scared me away. Shortly after that, she slipped into a coma and died.

I never got to see her after the accident or even say goodbye to her. This guilt stayed with me.

Muscle testing revealed that after her death, I made the decision to take care of everyone in the family.

We cleared this in the workshop. At the end I was asked to say my real name. I said, “My name is Suzy” but it didn’t sound right. Much to my surprise, the response was weak, meaning false.

Then they said, “Try, ‘My name is Susan’.” I did, and the muscle test response was strong, meaning true. This surprised me, and everyone else, because I’d been “Suzy” all my life!

I think I know what happened. I never moved on from that accident. It was like I was holding onto that little girl, that “Suzy.” Releasing that incident was like growing up for me. People in the workshop even said that after that, my voice sounded deeper. Now I don’t feel guilty or responsible. It was twenty-five years ago, but it used to seem like recent history. After the clearing, it seems more distant.

My work is also different now. I’m training to be a holistic healer, the perfect profession for me because I could take care of everyone! Before the workshop, I’d try to take on the other person’s emotions or illness, so that they wouldn’t have to. Now I go more outside myself, and I can remain more detached.

The clearing impacted my relationships also, which were very codependent. In the past I’d take care of other people and try to fix them. Now I don’t have to do that anymore.

For example, I was overly-sympathetic to a man I met recently who had also been in an accident. I felt compelled to help him. Now I don’t, and that’s a change for the better. I can see other people’s pain as their issue, and I can stay out of it now when it’s right for me to do so. That happened as a result of the clearing.

This workshop was such a profound experience for me! Now, I call myself “Susan.”