Shame Hides Behind Phobia

A person has a terrible phobia of buses. She can’t ride the bus to save her life. She can ride in cars and taxis, but buses she cannot. What’s going on here? Is it that buses are somehow less safe than cars or taxis? Having ridden in a bunch of Italian taxis recently, I can assure you that nothing makes you pray harder than traveling at 165 kph in an Italian taxi!

Most phobias respond extremely well to EFT, especially once you use EFT on specific memories. In this story by Dr. Inci Erkin, we see that the presenting phobia of getting on the bus is NOT the cause. It isn’t about the bus! It is about the feelings of shame from an early experience that involved—only peripherally!—a ride on a bus. Here is the story:

A married young woman, came to me with the complaint of a “bus phobia” saying she couldn’t get on a bus.  However, she could go to places by car or by taxi.  She only had a problem while traveling on a bus.

First, I tried the following with EFT:

Even though I can’t get on a bus…

But it didn’t work! So I asked her to close her eyes and play an imaginary movie wherein she gets on a bus, takes a seat, and the bus takes off.  Then asked her what she felt. She told me that in this imaginary move she was afraid that she had an urgent need to pee (urinate) but she could not get out of the bus, wets her skirt, and is very embarressed !

So, the Setup phrase was:

Even though I am afraid I cannot control my urge to pee....
Even though I am afraid I will have to pee on the bus....

While working with EFT and diminishing the intensity from 10 to 9, 7,6… she suddenly remembered a childhood memory.  It just popped up.

At a cinema, when she was 5 years old, she was watching a movie with her family.  During this movie she wetted herself!  When the lights came on, she was very embarressed, till they arrived home by bus.  And every family member made jokes about her for wetting herself.  This teasing went on for a long time.

Then we continued with EFT:

Although I wet myself at the cinema when I was 5 years old…
Even though, when I was 5, I wetted myself at the cinema…
Even though I wetted myself at the cinema and went home by bus with giggles at me…

It took us 2 EFT work session to complete our work.  She is doing her tapping every morning since then and she has no fear at all to ride on a bus. She is very happy about that, because she saved the money she spent on taxis.

A couple of points to notice here. First, Dr. Inci started with the general approach of “not being able to get on the bus.” This has a way of reducing the anxiety of just talking about the phobia. It isn’t surprising that the intensity didn’t move much from this general approach. The visualization she had her client do helped identify a specific fear. She was afraid she would have to urinate and would embarass herself. The intensity here was a 10 to start, and they continued with persisitence to tap over and over again as the intensity dropped from 10 to 9 to 7 to 6. (Remember, we want to persist until it is a zero).

As so often happens with EFT, as the intensity falls, sometimes an even more intense, older memory rises to the surface. Dr. Inci does not describe all the tapping rounds she and her client did over two full EFT sessions to completely harmonize all the negative energies around this experience of shame and ridicule, no doubt they did dozens of rounds addressing any aspect the client could remember. That kind of diligent detective work combined with persistence can lay the phobia to rest completely.