Changing Drinking Habits: Using EFT Tapping to Explore the Identity Aspect
WHAT’S THE ISSUE: ‘I would like to create a new habit of drinking herbal teas (instead of wine) as it reminds me of relaxation. Like the cup of tea that I have in the morning or when I go out with others for morning tea.’
This teacher reached out wanting to do a second tapping session with me after experiencing a big ‘aha!’ moment in the first session regarding her alcohol cravings; she realized that bringing ‘busy work’ home from school was triggering her 5pm wine cravings. She now wanted to start exploring the family identity aspect that seemed to be keeping her old drinking habit in place. She wanted to gain clarity on why, while she said to her sister ‘I can’t believe that we DO this wine drinking habit because it’s toxic for the body and we need to care about our bodies more…that idea of looking after our bodies goes out the window when it comes to 5pm’.
She agreed for us to audio record this second 60 minute EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) Tapping session with me for the purpose of sharing parts of it here on my website and on my social media for educational purposes. This EFT Tapping session took place via Zoom with both videos turned off.
EFT TAPPING FOR CHANGING DRINKING HABITS (PART I)
In this first snippet, you hear us mapping out the somatic, cognitive, and emotional components of this teacher’s stress response, which occurred when she thought of letting go of her 5pm wine drinking ritual. You also hear the teacher letting go of the emotional stress component (the frustration) of her internal blocks to changing this habit.
In tapping sessions, we’re ultimately looking for old Blocking Beliefs / Limiting Beliefs/ past events that may be keeping an old habit in place. We then see if a core memory comes up that traces back to the time of belief formation, so we can clear the old blocking belief at its root.
This teacher had two intertwined blocking beliefs that were preventing her from being able to change her drinking habits:
- ‘Drinking wine to relax (at 5pm) is what we do (as a family). It’s who I am’.
- ‘I am being an adult when I am doing this (having a glass of wine at 5pm when I come home from work)’
By the end of this first session, she traces the formation of these beliefs back to happy memories in her childhood (8-10 years old) when the adults in the family home were calm and relaxed. Then a memory came up for when her mum passed away.
By the end of this session, she became aware that she had totally stepped into her mother’s shoes to run the house exactly as her mum had after she passed away. She doesn’t remember feeling any emotion when it happened because she felt she had to take over her mum’s responsibility of looking after her younger sister and her father. She was only 17 years old when her mother died and she took on all these adult responsibilities. She was still a school-age student.
EFT TAPPING FOR CHANGING DRINKING HABITS (PART II)
This second snippet occurred after we tapped on acknowledging the difficulty she was experiencing in identifying how she was now feeling about changing her drinking habit. What emerged was an awareness that she was experiencing inner conflict.
Part of her felt that the old belief ‘This is me – this is us’ doesn’t make sense, while another part wanted to be free of ‘this cage’. We did some tapping with the two parts of her: ‘the cage’ part that wants to hold onto the old belief, and the ‘This is me’ part that ‘wants to let go of what my parents taught me’.
You’ll notice that after we finished doing a round of parts tapping, she experienced what in tapping we call a Client Cognitive Reframe. In other words, her mind reframed her thoughts about the situation, independently. This is different from if I were to go in and give her advice on how she could think differently about the situation. Her mind did it on its own once the stress dropped.
Client Cognitive Reframes happen naturally when a cognitive, somatic, or emotional stress aspect drops to a 3/10 in intensity, or lower. And here you see this happening after the ‘I am being an adult’ when I drink wine at 5pm belief drops down to a 2/10 in how true it feels.
EFT TAPPING FOR CHANGING DRINKING HABITS (PART III)
In the final part of this tapping session, the teacher agreed to try doing some Choices Tapping (also known as the Choices Technique) on her ‘I’m being an adult when I drink wine at 5pm’ limiting belief. In clinical EFT Tapping, we wait until the negative intensity of an aspect has been cleared to a 3/10 or less before turning our attention to tapping in the positive emotions and thoughts we want to feel.
All the work we did in the previous part of the session cleared the space for this teacher to be able to choose what she wanted to feel and think with greater clarity and insight. As a result, “I’m being an adult when I do this (drink wine at 5pm to complete busy work)” now felt like a 0/10, after she experiences another Client Cognitive Reframe. The way she thought about her old drinking habit had changed. So in just one session, her decades old belief, “I’m being an adult when I do this”, when from feeling 60% true to 0% true.
Important to note: this was not a ‘one session wonder’, as it wasn’t the first time we tapped together. A relationship of trust had been established, and it was in this context that we were able to do this work and make this much progress. And of course, it’s worth remembering that the best results are co-created. This teacher was ready to go there and work on processing her inner conflict.
RESULTS AT 2 year follow up
At two year follow up, the teacher was happy with the long-term outcomes from these two tapping sessions to work on her compulsion to drink a wine after school. She does have days off where she drinks a wine after school, and when on holidays, weeks off! But she’s fine with as her goal wasn’t to stop drinking wine altogether.
KEEPING THE BIGGER PICTURE IN MIND
“Compared with people who have zero ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences), people with ACE scores are 2-4 times more likely to use alcohol and other drugs…People with an ACE score of 5 or higher are…also more likely to relapse when quitting.”
Evidence-Based EFT HQ Masterclass, Dr Peta Stapleton
I am sharing this teacher’s tapping journey to collapsing an old blocking belief for educational purposes. I hope that putting this out there may help someone who is seeking support in processing old blocking beliefs that are holding them back from creating a new habit by knowing that EFT Tapping is a tool that could help them with that.
However, I am aware that sometimes hearing someone experiencing such a powerful shift in a blocking belief in a single session can be damaging; it can cause you to believe that this happens all the time. So I want to emphasize the point that these a limiting belief may take one session to collapse, but it may also take a lot more sessions. Speed of progress varies from person to person and depending on how complex the issue may be.
It’s important to remember that some people come to EFT Tapping sessions having already done a lot of work on increasing their body intelligence. For example, some people already practice tapping or other body-based modalities, such as yoga, for self care. If, in contrast, you have been doing a lot of head-based work (thinking about your emotions rather than connecting with your emotions), you will most likely need more time before you can feel and process stressful emotions, memories, beliefs.
EDUCATE YOURSELF ON THE 5 STAGES OF ADDICTION AS WELL AS YOUR ACE SCORE
“Drinking alcohol is associated with a risk of developing health problems such as mental and behavioural disorders, including alcohol dependence, and major noncommunicable diseases such as liver cirrhosis, some cancers and cardiovascular diseases.”
World Health Organization
Do you suspect that your drinking habit may have gone beyond the Experimentation (Stage 1), Misuse (Stage 2), Abuse (Stage 3)…and may now qualify as an Addiction (Phase 5)? If so, you need to seek the guidance and support of qualified health care professionals who are qualified to treat addictions. If this is the first time you are learning about the 5 Phases of Addiction, and how Stage 5 is the Addiction Phase, click here to learn more.
The World Health Organization also offers a free screening tool for alcohol dependence that may help you detect whether you have developed an unhealthy drinking habit. If you want to access the PDF printable version of this tool, you can scroll down to the self-report section (on page 2) and check your drinking that way. If you prefer an interactive approach where your score is calculated for you online (no personal details needed), you can check out this site. It may help you determine what type of specialist support would be appropriate for the level of severity of your particular drinking habit.
Another area worth educating yourself on is your ACE score (Adverse Childhood Experiences score). If you’re ACE score is a 5 or more, you will need to tap not just on the cravings you want to eliminate, in the moment. You will also need to tap daily for any everyday stressors and triggers you experience in your day. Creating this additional self-care habit is important if you want to protect yourself from relapse. If you don’t know your ACE score, you can click here to calculate it now.
DISCLAIMER
Wondering if I can help you with your alcohol cravings? Here is what I can do:
- I can offer my EFT Practitioner services to help you gain some insights regarding what your drinking habit triggers may be.
- I can also offer EFT Practitioner sessions that help you gain insights into what memories, associations, or beliefs may be blocking your ability to change your drinking habits.
What I cannot do is treat addictions. My EFT Tapping sessions, teleclasses, and one-to-one support programs can complement, but do not constitute a replacement for, working with a licensed specialist and being part of a support group such as Alcoholics Anonymous. Be aware that sometimes alcohol cravings aren’t actually the problem, but symptomatic of a deeper issue.
REFERENCES
Evidence-Based EFT HQ global online training provider led by Dr Peta Stapleton
Australian Institute of Professional Counsellors (2012) “The 5 Stages of Addiction”
Discovering whether you have an ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) score
Alcohol Dependence – WHO Screening Tool
Interactive WHO Screening Tool in English and PDF version available in 40 languages
About the EFT PRACTITIONER
Eleni Vardaki works online supporting student, parent and teacher well-being. Her mission is to help bridge the gap between mainstream education and the well-being skills we need to thrive. A UK-qualified teacher and accredited EFT Practitioner, she offers one-to-one EFT Tapping sessions and educational classes for stress, anxiety, and academic achievement.
