A guest blog post written by Polly Howard (Edited by TASK)
I want to talk about how I said goodbye to overwhelm. I’m sure many of you relate to overwhelm. It is something I realise that I have lived with forever (as far as I can remember). In recent years, with the different situations that have arisen, from parents getting ill and dying, to moving house and countries, to losing jobs and income, I have certainly lost count of how many times I have said, I just feel so overwhelmed….
Overwhelm was so easy to get rid of
But all of that has gone now. And my life feels so very different without it. And actually, it was quite simple to get rid of in the end.
As many of you know, I started training to be a systematic kinesiologist 18 months ago shortly after my mother died. At that stage, I wasn’t really thinking in terms of a career change, but it was something I had always been interested in. I was feeling so lost and that my life had no purpose. Encouraged by a lovely kinesiologist friend, Katie, an inspirational woman, I signed up for the TASK (The Academy of Systematic Kinesiology) Foundation Course.
The first few levels passed in a blur, not sure what I was doing there. I was fairly overwhelmed by it all, and by the end of those six months, I still didn’t think I would sign up to do the Practitioner Course the following year, despite being told by several people that I was a ‘natural’.
The turning point for me has been emotional work.
The turning point for me has been emotional work. Don’t get me wrong, I feel that I have done plenty of soul searching over the past 30 years or so of my life. In fact, I think I first went into therapy aged 26 or 27, and have spent many years dissecting past traumas, relationships, events, etc.
But last year I experienced the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) for the first time with the wonderful Connie, inspirational woman number 2.
EFT, for those of you not familiar with the term, is ‘emotionally focused therapy’, or sometimes called ‘emotional freedom technique‘. In short, EFT uses tapping on specific meridian points around the face, which releases stored negative emotions. This may sound strange to some people, but I am a total convert.
EFT changed my life
It has no doubt changed my life. EFT has given me the confidence to make better choices for myself. So much so that I signed up for TASK’s Practitioner Course last summer, which I have now very nearly completed.
In Systematic Kinesiology we also use a form of EFT which we call MTT – Meridian Tapping Therapy. I had my first experience of this last October when on the full week of training for the course.
Overwhelm was eating away at me
It was the second module and needless to say, I was feeling completely overwhelmed with it all. I felt overwhelmed by the people on the course with me, by feelings of imposter syndrome (I’m not a therapist, I’m in food and wine – what am I doing here?), overwhelmed by lack of confidence that I would never be able to cope and learn all of this, as well as overwhelmed that everybody else knew more than I did (or so I thought). The list was endless.
I had a meltdown
On the second day of that week, I had a meltdown. But I was in the right place for my crisis of confidence. Enter fantastic inspirational woman number 3 – Claire Muller, principal of TASK.
Claire did some MTT on me, throwing lots of words at me, mostly about being completely overwhelmed, whilst tapping away on numerous points at the start and ends of various meridians. MTT is almost counter-intuitive as you are repeating lots of negative words describing how you are feeling but the idea is to scramble your brain a bit and almost take a pair of scissors (metaphorically speaking) to snip the ends of the brain synapses that have been nurtured for so long with these false beliefs and negative emotions.
I’m not exaggerating when I say I’m changed forever
It is a not an exaggeration to say that this has changed my life. I no longer feel overwhelmed!
Overwhelm is no longer a part of my life. I can count two occasions over the past seven months when I have started to feel overwhelmed. But then I realised, stopped and said to myself (and the overwhelm), no thank you. I don’t want you in my life, you are no longer a part of my life. It’s lovely to feel that I now love my life and am so much happier without overwhelm.
My final weekend of training is coming up. Having passed my practical exam and scored 82% in my written mock exam, I am excited about the future, and where it is going to take me – a future without overwhelm.
I love Kinesiology
Helping people is what I love. If I can help people to let go of some of their negative emotions and lead a happier and freer life, then mine will be a happy well-lived life too.
I can’t end a post about wonderful inspirational women without mentioning my beloved mother.
She was a brave, funny, vulnerable, kind and loving woman. She would have been 88 years old on Friday. There have been so many other wonderful women who have helped and supported me along the way. From childhood friends to new friends and therapists met on all my travels in various countries over several decades along the way. Thank you all. I wouldn’t be where I am today without you.
If you feel overwhelmed check out TASK’s blog post on mental and emotional health and wellbeing here.
During these unprecedented times where it isn’t possible to see a Kinesiologist in person it may be possible to arrange support online where you can be shown EFT/MTT techniques and say goodbye to overwhelm.
To find a Kinesiologist that can help please go to TASK’s sister site TASK UK Network
Polly Howard is a self confessed ‘Mad English Foodie’ who loves cooking and eating all good food and wine, with a passion for organic, fresh produce.