EASY for ME, but A HARD LESSON for HER

Today as I helped my 81-year old neighbor set a trap for the canal rats, the corner of it got caught on something, and the trap slammed shut on my first knuckle and finger. Rat traps* are huge versions of mouse traps – they look like they could trap Godzilla.

Man! Did that SMART! In a nanosecond, swelling rose up a good half inch with an awful black and blue bruise with a big dark red bruise in the center appeared on the side of my knuckle near my thumb.

I ran inside and grabbed some ice and held it on it tightly, but I couldn’t hold the ice on very long because it made it hurt worse.

(See image #1. I had to photoshop the image to show how it looked, because I didn’t have time to take a picture of it in that state. It actually looked worse than how it looks in the picture.)

Then I remembered – oh yeah! I can tap!

YELLING WORKS!

I couldn’t think of any words, so I just kind of yelled and roared.

And then my thinking started to come back, and I tapped ‘it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts’ and ’I’m so sorry hand! I’m so sorry! Man this hurts! Oh this hurts the pain the pain’…until I felt a big sigh.

I had tapped for maybe two minutes. I looked down to see that the swelling had stopped, the dark spot had shrunk, and the pain was about half gone.

So I kept tapping, just saying ‘the pain the pain’ and ‘I’m sorry,’ over and over again, until after about 5 minutes, it looked like #2 in the image below.

I tapped for a few minutes more on ’this remaining pain,’ and finally there was no more pain, no more dark mark, and no more swelling.

I’m typing this right now with the same hand, about 3 hours later, with zero pain. Now my hand looks like #3.

If I had not tapped, I’d be in sorry painful shape.

WHAT IF I HADN’T TAPPED?

Last year a friend tripped and fell on her knee on the concrete. I ran over to her and tried to get her to tap, but she furiously pushed me away saying, ‘you know I don’t believe in that stuff!’

Within minutes, her knee was so swollen it looked like a softball covered by a huge black, blue and purple bruise.

As I drove her to emergency, she passed out from the pain.

They admitted her overnight for observation, and she picked up MRSA.

They plied her with an elephant’s weight in antibiotics, made her do a two-week stay in the hospital before allowing her to come home, and because of the MRSA, she did another two-week stay a month later.

It took six months for the swelling to go all the way down and the pain to leave.

Imagine if she’d allowed me to tap.

TRAUMA & THINKING

Have you ever wondered why you can’t think straight when you’ve been shocked or traumatized?

It’s because your body and mind are in full survival. No thinking! You’re all the way over in right brain mode.

That’s why when you ask someone who’s been shocked or traumatized, ‘are you OK’ or ‘how do you feel,’ they often cannot speak at all. Especially if it’s a kid.

Once you remember, ‘oh yeah, I can tap!’ and then do so, your ability to think and verbalize comes back.

REMEMBER TO TAP!

If you don’t know how to tap, go here and go through the little freebie demo: EFTinEveryHome.com.

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* In case you’re thinking “oh she should use humane traps!” Well, we use traps of all kinds here. I used to catch the critters and release them, but … island. They just came back. So don’t go putting me down for not being a nice guy – my neighbor is a cranky old thing who won’t have things any way but her own.