The Invisible Field of Relationships


Sandy and Robert had just broken up and it was a mess. They were part of a group of friends that went back fifteen years and the emotional tension was driving a wedge between all of them. They just couldn’t hang out together anymore.

One of the members practices EFT and offered to do some “trigger work” for the whole group. Each person identified what was hurting them most. For Sandy, it was watching Robert be affectionate with others in the group. For Linda, it was the familiar conflict of having to choose between the people she loves, something that went back to her parent’s divorce when she was a child. For Stacy, it was feeling helpless to help. For Robert, it was guilt because he was the one who initiated the breakup.

Each friend clarified what was troubling them and held it in mind while they rated the level of intensity of emotional pain on a 0 to 10 scale, 10 being as emotionally intense as it could be and 0 being no sense of distress at all.

They all sat together focusing on their individual issue and using the EFT procedure, which includes tapping gently on the end points of the major meridians on their face, torso and hands. After three rounds, in about ten minutes, they all stopped and rated their intensity level again. All but one of them had experienced a significant drop in their emotional pain and reported relief from the physical discomfort that accompanies relationship pain. Emotions can cause headaches, nausea, tightness in the face, chest, stomach and throat and a variety of other physical symptoms.

They decided to do several more rounds to see how much better it could get. Several more levels of improvement occurred for each of them. Most of their levels had dropped to a 0 or 1 and a few others were hovering at3 or 4. EFT had treated the invisible perturbations in their individual energy fields that were generating the group tension. This gave significant and rapid relief because they were treating the cause, not just the symptoms.

After the EFT treatments, about 45 minutes, they spontaneously started to discuss how each of them had been affected by the “breakup”. Instead of everyone feeling heavy and stilted, they were all laughing again, joined in the familiar camaraderie that had kept them together for fifteen years.

Our own experience with this invisible “whateveritis” has shown up in our own relationship since the very beginning when we first met. And it has continued to show up in our work with relationships, deepening our own sensitivity to fluctuations in the field.

If you do not have certain distinctions about what actually causes relationships to be the way they are, the way to healing, repairing and evolving relationships can appear impossible or difficult, at best. And without these distinctions many relationship interventions are more like a band aid on a gushing artery.

We’ve worked with families, companies, teams and communities in which there were relationship challenges between two or more people that had a significant negative effect on the entire group. Families have been torn apart, production in companies negatively impacted and communities damaged for lack of understanding how a single unresolved issue between people can affect and damage the whole.

It happens all the time and it doesn’t have to. In our view, this level of relational sophistication and maturity is actually the leading edge for human evolution.

All of our relationships exist in an invisible field of energy that can be calm and stable, in a state of homeostasis. But when there are powerful emotions between two or more people, those emotions, such as anger, sadness, resentment, hurt feelings, etc. ripple out through the field, having an effect on everyone involved. The more people suppress or deny their feelings the crazier the field gets which has an undesirable effect on everyone else involved.

Emotional Tanking
Emotional Tanking

The illustration on the left depicts a phenomenon called “emotional tanking”. Click on illustration to enlarge

The story above is similar to the one we shared in our last post and is typical of what EFT can do. It is a deceptively simple and powerful tool for healing relationship issues of any kind. We use it all the time in our coaching practice and in our relationship with each other.

What most people fail to realize or know how to look for, is the earliest similar incident to what is going on in the present that appears to be causing emotional pain. Nine times out of ten, present time emotional pain has its roots in our childhood and our relationship with our parents and siblings.

It’s just that the present time incident is so overwhelmingly compelling that it really looks like that is the problem, when in fact the present time event “triggered” the  pre-existing, unresolved event from the past. The force and velocity of the feeling is historical. When you deal with the deeper historical level, the current issue loses its steam, as well.

It is one thing to “know about” this as a concept and another thing to “know” it as an opportunity to clear the past with tools designed to heal at the deepest level possible. Once it is cleared and resolved, your own energy field becomes less affected by difficult situations in the present. This allows you to be more resourceful, loving of yourself and others and a more powerful creator of your life and relationships.

EFT is an evolutionary tool that clears unwanted emotions. It isn’t always clear to people that their ability to adapt to accelerated change is directly related to the density of their “pain body”. The pain body holds the unfinished business from the past that often determines your perceptions of the now.

Because of these phenomena we often can’t see new and powerful possibilities in difficult situations. Now is a time for all of us to see clearly “what is” so we can make wise choices for ourselves and the people we love.

© Paul and Layne Cutright

Resources: The Web of Life by Fritjof Capra  and The Field by Lynn McTaggert


2 responses to “The Invisible Field of Relationships”

  1. Wonderful blog, and I love using EFT (the shortened version) for myself and my psychotherapy clients, as a great tool in moving easily through emotional discomfort. I concur that so many processes don’t work nearly as effectively in getting the “gunk” out of the body. I am so pleased to find something that moves the stuff we no longer need out so that there is no residue left behind.

    • Thank you, Nancie! We’re absolutley with you on this one for ease of use and rapid results. More and more professionals and lay people are using EFT all the time.

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