What questions help you gain clarity?

Thriving Together
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What questions help you gain clarity?

You’re invited to share a question you have learned to ask to help gain clarity, insight, calm, or relief.

We believe Shared Wisdom matters… here’s an invitation for us all to do just that!

  • One question per reply, please.
  • Start the question line with > and a space or click the quote marks
  • Share an example of how the question helps you and those you’re connected to if you’d like.
  • Share up to two per day if you’d like, leaving space for others to share as well.
  • Click the heart next to questions you resonate with!

We’ll be collecting the resonate ones into a Resource for us to share and use for ourselves and with others.

Thanks!

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What does this remind me of?

As I learned more and more about how trauma affected my reactions, this question helped me get closer to the source of what I was feeling (and reacting to).

Trauma has a way of magnifying a reaction. For example, let’s say there’s a man who just “isn’t my kinda friend.” Before I healed the trauma around the sexual abuse I experienced as a teenager by a man, I’d end up HATING anyone who reminded me of him! Could be a smell, the tone of voice, haircut, mannerisms… wow, I wasn’t really with who and what was actually “here and now.” I was reacting 100x as intensely.

“What does this remind me of?” helps me honor and tune to any aspect s that remain unhealed… and I then use EFT Tapping on them.

This also works for body sensations! “What does this remind me of?” isn’t always answered “logically” since trauma is stored in the body in ways that do not always make logical sense. I ask the question… then trust what comes up and go with it for Tapping.

Thanks for listening. If this question is one that you find useful too, please click the :heart: outline below.

Rick

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How do I want to feel?

Emotional energy can respond to intention. Indeed, a core component of EFT Tapping is to acknowledge how we’re feeling in the “Even though I feel ____” part of the setup and then…

The default answer is “I deeply and completely accept myself.”

That is not always how I want to feel. If you’re learning tapping, or even if tapping isn’t your thing, this question can help tune you to a state-of-being (a feeling) that you want, that would be helpful towards your thriving.

But I gotta admit something here…

When I first started using this question, it was not very helpful. Why? Because my answer was “I want to feel happy” or “I want to feel grateful for what I have”.

A Bridge Too Far

With this question I first start with something like “I want to feel ok with this unwanted reality.” See if I can land somewhere in the emotional vicinity of “okay with what is.”

Okay with What IS… that has given me so much relief over the years. Wow.

@CarolLook includes in her tapping “I accept who I am and how I feel about this.” That also helps a lot.

So… “How do you want to feel right now?”

(P.S. Be sure to click [Reply] and add a question you ask yourself or someone has asked you that helps you gain clarity)

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What did you expect?

I did a short course on Healing the Pain of Unmet Expectations.

Ever since then I have noticed the profound impact expectations have on my sense of emotional well-being.

A sorta silly example: If I expect sun and it is rainy and cold, I tend to feel differently than if I expected rainy and cold… and it is actually rainy and cold!

It’s the same rainy and cold! But my expectations change my experience…

Or used to a lot more. By asking the question, “What did I expect?” it makes the assumptions conscious, and I can often grin and re-adjust a lot better… especially with some EFT Tapping to ease the way.

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What have you got to lose?

This question helps by reminding me that I have everything to lose (self worth, clarity?) if I do nothing at all. “Sitting on the Fence” is uncomfortable over time and making the scary decision to jump to one side or the other builds up a kind of strength. Hmmm…I’m not sure if what I just said makes as much sense as it did in my head! But what have I got to lose in posting it anyway?!?

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Is there another way to look at this?

The value of this question can be to sense how “reactive” I’m being.

For example, if I say (or scream in my head) “NO!!” it definitely means I am in my primitive brain. Why?

Well, I can’t think of anything, any situation, where there isn’t another way to look at it. That doesn’t mean I’ll agree with that way, or choose it as my viewpoint. But my primitive brain (and yours) tends to become frozen/stuck/narrowed in on one perspective… one view ONLY… and that view is almost always triggering.

If Emotional Freedom includes the ability to choose a frame of reference, then this question can help us FEEL for how free we are.

It can be tricky… if I’m “stuck”… and yeah, if I can start tapping even just my collarbone points and ask, “Well, how might a totally clueless person see this?” Haha, yeah, and sometimes I am the totally clueless person. But it helps to throw in a little judgment sometimes with the tapping.

“How would _____ see this?” I have wise people I know, and others I’ve read, and others I’m connected with spiritually. One of the potent capabilities of humans is that we’re actually capable in our minds of putting ourselves into other people’s perspectives – however imperfectly. I believe this gift is for US, because it can help us see a situation from other vantage points.

Truth is, the more emotionally free I am, the easier it is to see all the emotional landscape. I can be aware of many different stories (perceptions) we can have about a situation and align my energy with one(s) that give me a sense of empowerment and direction.

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What doesn’t feel completely SAFE about that?

“Of course I want to _____! I’ve been trying to for YEARS!!”

Right. And if you WANT something that is actually achievable and you’re not taking at least regular microsteps (baby steps) towards it, then…

You probably do not feel safe – not sufficiently safe to move forward.

No, this does not make logical sense. In energy psychology they call this a psychological reversal.

It means what you think, believe, and say you want isn’t congruent from head to toe – at least not enough to take action.

This reality is core to so much self-sabotage, procrastination, and even loss of health and sexual vitality.

“I want a partner!!”

What doesn’t feel completely safe about that?

“Well, last time I had a partner they looked at me with contempt, criticized me all the time, stole money from me, and ran off with someone else leaving me with all the debt.”

Oh.

The follow-up question is then:

How unsafe do you feel right now when you thing about that?

You think about the ex-partner and check in with your body. How unsafe does it feel, 0-10?

I assure you. I’ve gone through this process with 1000+ people now. It is SURPRISING to recognize how unsafe we might still feel about the past and those unhealed traumas can still impede our future. That’s where EFT Tapping can be a huge relief in getting your energy moving again.

Another aspect is that something in your picture of “success” that would impact your survival.

For example, if the last time you had financial success it lead to a serious (even life threatening) level of stress and illness, until that is addressed (by strengthening you devotion and practices of balance and self-care), it is really amazingly easy for your primitive brain to kick in and stop you.

STOP YOU.

Stop ANY of us.

These questions can give you deeper clarity, and perhaps also some compassion for why it has not happened for you yet.

I welcome your examples for how this has played in your own life! Click reply :slight_smile:

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When did my headaches started? This was a clear revelation to me .
Shame of a lifestyle that was totally against everything that I grew up to be . So now again , I deal with multiple pain and I don’t know how to
Or if I could help myself to end this cycle of feeling unworthy of having so much and dealing with everyday pain anyway . I should be over this by now . ???

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The Wolf is one of my animal guides/teachers and lately has been asking me to expand my limited view of the present situation…am I courageous and willing enough to look at new ideas? Am I willing to delete some old ideas? I tried (maybe even kinda succeeded!) during a recent FT conversation with my son who was berating his father for being the “prick that he always is” … shortly after they both learned that Uncle/Brother Jim is dying of Stage 4 Lung cancer that has metastasized. I asked my son to try and look at the situation (his father not picking up his calls) from another angle…maybe he has to be a prick to get the time and space to process or maybe … he simply doesn’t have the words…any number of things.

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Trauma sticks around, until it’s healed. There’s no “should by now” that fits, alas. I remember the expression: Time heals all wounds. Have to admit I was counting on that for many years… and it nearly killed me.

Fortunately, trauma can be addressed.

Is there a “wise being” way you might see your younger self and her lifestyle choice that might bring you compassionate relief now?

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Yes, when we get to a place where a re-frame can honor another person’s life challenges AND honor and include our own intense feelings about being treated a certain way, a lot of healing is possible.

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When did this start? What was going on in my life around then?

This is a “trauma informed” question, meaning it recognizes that sometimes a MAJOR change in how a body-mind processes life happens after trauma.

A client had chronic stiffness all through her neck and rib cage. She’d done lots of different physical therapies, yoga, and more. It had been 14 years.

“What was going on in your life 14 years ago?” The answer was the shock, out of nowhere, that her husband had been having an affair for many years.

Using EFT Tapping on the SHOCK to her system brought a profound shift in her body.

The theory we have, with lots of evidence, is that even though this wasn’t a “trauma” like a car accident that came out of nowhere, it was a psychological impact that caused her body to freeze. Ribs and neck brace for impact. Since the trauma of that had never really been addressed as it was held in her body, the body bore the burden.

Until it didn’t need to anymore.

A caution that sometimes there isn’t as clear a connection between when something started and even trauma(s) that when cleared will bring relief. The impact might not be felt for years, and sometimes impactful events are healed by time – but not always.

It’s a useful question.

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What secrets am I keeping?

I’d like to suggest that if you are keeping a secret that feels infused with shame or hurt, consider whether that might be deeply impacting your well-being.

Having kept secret the sexual abuse I had experienced as a teenage boy and then finding out in the healing process from ulcerative colitis that was, quite literally, eating me up from the inside… when the corrosive secret came out, in a space and with a person I trusted, my healing journey changed dramatically.

Please know, if you do not have a safe person and space for that yet, it’s okay. I certainly pray for you to match up with the right person for you.

I post this vulnerable question for my inner Ricky who felt (rightfully I would say) that at the time of the abuse conditions would have been horribly unsafe psychologically for him to reveal what was happening or happened. I’m so grateful there are so many more safer ways and people to share with, personally or professionally.

It’s part of the picture that perpetrators shame and threaten. It’s also part of the picture that it’s hard to get safe help and support if a person is both victim and perpetrator.

I’m inviting anyone whose healing process is stalled or collapsing to at least consider this question, and even if only acknowledging it for now to yourself, if you have a corrosive secret that being aware of it and accepting that it may be Impactful can open us up to next steps in the restoring freedom process.

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What’s That Like?

I’m very interested in ‘embodied metaphor’ and the question “What’s that like?” or the open ended questions “And that’s like…?” or “It’s as if…?” are designed to elicit a metaphoric representation of an experience or feeling etc.

So a response such as “It’s like I’m really sad” or “It’s as if I’m super tired” are not quite ‘there’ yet. I would then ask “Sad like what?” or “You’re so tired it’s as if…?” And at some point a metaphorical representation will appear and will provide all kinds of tapping opportunities.

My sense of metaphors is that they reach REALLY deep inside of us…deeper than language does. My sense is that metaphors are the bridge between sensory experience and language. I have gotten a lot of benefit from using this approach.

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Interesting frame, and question! When conscious that the metaphor is a bridge between the sensory experience and how we describe it, feels like it adds the kind of fuller, deeper awareness that is so helpful in Tapping. Thanks @Glenn!

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I’ve found it to be a fascinating and really useful realm to explore. There are some very interesting therapeutic models that have been developed such as ‘Clean Language’ and ‘Metaphors Of Movement’ that use client generated embodied metaphor as the engine of change. Essentially ways of explicitly exploring and altering the metaphor from inside the metaphor so to speak. I haven’t found anyone who’s focus is on tapping and metaphor but I’ve found it to be readily useful to tap with.

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Feel free to guide it in that direction when you are I tap together on Circle calls, anytime that would be helpful!

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That would be great! Thanks Rick.

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How would a Wise, Kind, and Compassionate Being see this situation or past experience?

Sometimes we need to cut through the self-hate and self-criticism. Bringing the perspective of a Being that offers a compassionate viewpoint on the situation can give us the direction for the energy.

What do I mean by that?

Consider the EFT Tapping setup statement. It includes how we’re feeling/thinking… and a direction where we’d like to go with all that energy.

“Even though I feel like a loser, I’m open to the perspective that I was doing the best that I could with no support.”

Our primitive brain can traumatize us, over and over, with harshness. It also tends to believe there is only one way to see a situation. Bringing in the possibility of a wise, or kind, or even slightly more compassionate view can start the healing process when it is stuck.

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