Today I heard a great
story. It was told by Jack Canfield the author of Chicken Soup for
the Soul at a seminar that I was watching on YouTube.
He began by asking the
audience if anyone had ever spent the night in hospital and of course
many had. He then asked if anyone knew what a “We nurse” is and
after a pause and a little banter with the audience he described a We
nurse as someone who asks you things like “have we had breakfast
yet” or “how are are we feeling today” and of course the worst
of all “have we had a bowl movement today.”
Jack goes on to talk
about a friend of his who had a stay in hospital and quickly got
irritated by the We Nurse and one day got his chance to get even.
He had just been given
his breakfast when the nurse came and informed him that “we need to
provide a urine sample today”. He asked her to close the curtains
and would be able to have one for her in a few minutes. As soon as he
nurse had left poured some apple juice into the specimen jar and
waited. When the nurse returned he handed her the sample, she looked
at it and said it was looking quite cloudy today. Quick as a flash he
took it back off her and proceeded to drink it and said to her “OK
let me process it again and see if we can get it a little clearer
this time.”
Jack's timing was
perfect and he received the laughs that he was no doubt working
towards. It's one of those stories that we have no way of knowing if
it actually happened or not but as a favourite speaker of mine Ed
Foreman says, if it didn't happen, then it ought to have.
It made me think
though, isn't that story like our memories? That if we process them
for a second time we are able to get them a little clearer,
especially the embarrassing or painful ones. The problem is though if
a we remember a situation in a negative light it becomes much harder
to revisit it. A case in point would be things that happened to us as
children or in our formative years. Those kind of memories tend to be
stashed away and marked as 'do not visit' as we know that by reliving
them we will again experience the pain, anguish and embarrassment all
over again. The thing is though, these are exactly the memories that
we do need to revisit. Something that happened to us when we were a
child was processed with the intellect and live experience of a
child. If we are able to look at it now in a new unit of time we can
process the information again with our experience and intellect as it
is today.
That is all very easy
to say but it's not always so easy to do. If the memory is too
painful we will most likely avoid it at all costs. At the very least
once we begin to focus on it we will again begin to feel the original
emotions and we become stressed. Stressed people neither remember
clearly or process information logically and this is one of the
things that EFT work excels at. When we approach these kind of
memories, at the first sign of stress the practitioner will work with
you to lower your stress levels. Often at this point something
seemingly magical happens, the person remembers things that they have
never consciously thought about before, like they suddenly have more
information that has never been available in the past. It's not magic
of course though it's extremely logical, de-stress a person and they
remember more clearly it's as simple as that. Once the new
information is available the person in their low stress state can
process it in a way that they never have been able to before. They
draw new conclusions and often see things in a whole new light. It's
really not unusual at this point for people to become really excited
and full of energy and at times people will literally be bouncing
around the room. It's hardly surprising really, suppressing these
memories as we tend to if they hurt is a little like locking a part
of ourselves in a prison cell and suddenly we are releasing a part of
us that has been chained up for years. Unlocking our memories really
does unlock another little piece of ourselves and gives us a little
more of that freedom that we all desire.
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