EFT Group Archives

EFT For A Math Phobia - "I just freeze up"

Hi Everyone,

I've been meaning to write up a session I did some weeks ago. It was for a woman with a phobia about math -- math classes, math teachers and math homework all made her feel anxious and 'freeze up'. She is in her 40's and is returning to college to get her degree so she has to pass several math classes, and in the first math class she was having a hard time.

As she described it, "I can't deal with algebra -- the letters and numbers don't go together and I get confused. I just freeze up." She also said, "When the professor walks up behind me in class, I feel a prickly hot heat, my mind goes blank, I can't think, and even if I know the answer, I can't say it." She was even working with a tutor for support but felt very blocked by all the emotional responses triggered by math.

I'd asked her to bring her math book and math homework along. As she looked at the problems, we rated her anxiety and her confusion and tapped:

Even though I feel anxious about this algebra...
Even though I don't think I can do this...
Even though the numbers and letters together confuse me...
I accept myself completely...
and I choose to know and believe that I'm a smart person...
piece by piece I can figure this out...

She felt her body relaxing more and the problems in the book didn't seem so impossible

I asked her how long she had had the phobia -- "as long as I can remember." I asked if she had any theories about where it came from. "Do these feelings remind you of anything?" "I just remember a substitute teacher in 2nd grade" she said. "She wasn't a math teacher. But she really humiliated me. She came up behind me and called attention to me because I was writing with my left hand. She told me, in front of everybody, 'That's the wrong way to write' and she snatched the pencil away." My client definitely had an emotional charge to this story, so we immediately started tapping. We used the 'movie technique' and as she told the story, we tapped for all the details:

Even though she called attention to me...
Even though she said 'that's the wrong way to write...
Even though everybody was looking and I was embarrassed...
Even though she insulted me and mispronounced my name...

We did some reframing:

Even though that teacher humiliated me, I accept myself completely..
and I'm willing to consider that what happened was all about that teacher and not about me...
that was a terrible way to treat a little girl...
that was not good teaching...
there was nothing wrong with me...
but there was something wrong with a teacher who would treat a child like that...

(We said all that while tapping on the Karate Chop point, then we tapped all the points as we said "teacher humiliated me", ending with a repeat of the reframing as we tapped the hand points)

My client is planning to be a teacher of young children, and she realized that her sensitivity to children and respect for children may have developed from that incident. As she got that insight, she felt a sense of peace. I think we tapped for:

Even though that teacher treated me so badly...
I appreciate myself for treating children with respect and sensitivity...
and I'm glad I learned to do that...
something good came out of that painful situation...

Finally the whole story had no more charge. She still didn't know why she had gotten those feelings attached to math, but it was clear we had dealt with the triggering event. At one point, I enacted the part of her current math professor and walked up behind her, looking over her shoulder... and now she couldn't get any anxiety at all.

I finished with a little hypnotherapy to reinforce her new vision of herself feeling calm and confident during math class, doing math homework and math tests with ease.

I spoke with my client recently and she said that things have been great! The anxiety in math class is gone! She feels free to ask questions and volunteer answers, and when the professor walks up from behind, she doesn't feel a thing. She is still working with a tutor to catch up, but her confidence level is much higher and she knows she can do it, so even 'the letters and the numbers' don't seem so overwhelming now.

I'm often amazed at how quickly clients find the source of an issue, as if they already knew on some level, just never quite thought about it that way before. EFT seems to open the channels and as you are tapping, insights often emerge. Some of the best questions to ask are, "Does this remind you of anything?" ... "When did you feel like this before?" ... "What's your theory of where this problem originated? Where do you think it came from?" I often suggest that they answer off the top of their head, just the first thing that comes to mind. And you usually know you're onto something when the answer is, "I don't know why I'm thinking about so-and-so, this sounds crazy, I don't know if this is related but..." !! Usually, it's right on target.

Love,

Betty