Even though the war experiences were always at the dinner table, there is only so much that, as a kid, you’re able to really comprehend. Everybody was in the same situation, all men had beed drafted, everybody was bombed out (my home town Cologne was 90% destroyed), everybody was hungry and poor, trying to build something out of nothing. There was only one way, and that was up.

There are many stories she told me that now, as an adult, almost moved me to tears. But there is one story that happened that hit me like a lightening bolt:

We talked about my great grandfather Heinrich. I always knew that he had been well of, owning and renting out a number of beautiful apartment houses at the turn of the century. They were in a part of Cologne that didn’t get completely destroyed during WW2, but he had unfortunately sold most of them right before the recession hit in the 1930. When money became less and less valuable (people were eventually buying with billion Mark bills for bread), he lost all his fortune.

He became depressed.

Who wouldn’t?

He blamed himself for the bad timing of his decision to sell.

Eventually, they put him in a mental hospital. It was the 1930, and that’s what they did with depressed people.

As a kid, I knew that he had sold the houses and that he never overcame this. But yesterday, my mom asked me if I knew what really happened to him? I said No.

She said that when the family came to check on him, they were told that he had been “moved”. They never saw him again. What happened was that Hitler had declared people with mental issues as not worth living, and put them, and my great grandfather in a gas chamber.

I am crying as I write this.

My mother mentioned that there is a small chance that maybe they shot him instead of gasing him, but they just don’t know. They lived with this knowledge for years to come.

I have no words… What does one say or think after learning this?

It is hard to comprehend what war and dictatorship does to people. How they have to live. How they raise their kids. The deamons they struggle with every day. All wars do things to people, to families, to children for generations to come. 

Most people struggle and suffer silently. “That’s how it was back then.” is all they share. 

They are right. That’s how it was. But what can we do to change this?

Curiously, when I got my business degree, the company I worked for was at the corner of Kuehn Strasse, where my great grandfather Heinrich had owned his houses. They are still there.

When people survive war, they suffer. They need help. They stuff things down. We don’t need to check for a diagnosis to understand this.

I am grateful that EFT can help take the charge out of haunting memories.

We need to do something to change the suffering.

I will tap on My Great Grandfather’s death in the gas chamber soon.

But today I want to honor him by grieving.

I am so sorry that this happened – to him, and million others who were loved and cared for.

So sorry.

We must never let things like this happen again.

EFT is a way to end the suffering of survivors of trauma and war without numbing and drugs. I am grateful that more and more people are now using it. We can shift trauma. And we have to to create a future that can’t be build on the memories of injustice and cruelty.

To create a future built on respect and kindness, we have to stop the suffering of those who carry the memories of war. Most people have them. Time to get to work.

War was present at the dinner table, in discussions about politics. An undercurrent of anger was normal. Nobody to blame for this. But it sure hurt.

The trauma was handed down generation for generation, and depending on the circumstances of the war, children were raised with pride or shame, rage and withdrawal.

My father never talked about what happened in those three years in Russia, when his friends were starved to death and he barely survived because they had a use for him as a musician. We were not allowed to ask. Nevertheless, there was barely a day when the aftermath of what happened to him wasn’t sensable.

I never thought of my father of a man with PTSD. I had no idea what this was, and he truly didn’t show many symptoms. He was friendly and quiet, somewhat withdrawn and hard to get to. The only way to truly connect with my father was through music. So I learned the piano. Asked him to teach me. And he did. That was special.

When I was about fourteen years old, I had the courage to ask him what happened in Russia. It was just one sentence, one question. I wanted to know, enter the forbidden territory of questions never to be asked.

I have never seen him so angry. He flew over the table, his finger pointing at me shouting “You must NEVER ask me that question again. NEVER! Do you understand?”

I understood, and I was sorry. Very sorry. I thought that time might have healed some wounds. And I wanted to know. I didn’t know about PTSD.

My mother told me that she had found letters in a drawer in the basement from friends who had made it out as well. “You must forget.” they said. “You must try to forget and live.” Nobody will ever know what happened in Russia.

My father died from cancer when he was 61. We all knew: He died from a broken heart.

He was a quiet man, whom I will never understand. I knew that the scars in his neck were from infections he got while he was captured. I was photos with his head swollen from starvation. Most people never knew what he had been through.

And even if they did, they would never understand.

I wish I had had EFT back then, when the dinner table became a battlefield of yelling and accusations. Teenage kids say stupid things, and parents who have to work so hard to keep it together don’t always know how to react.

I wish I had had the ability to tap with him and my mom when they got angry. It would have changed things, opened a dialogue. 

EFT wasn’t known then.

Today, it is.

All over the world, families suffer from the aftermath of war. Kids are being raised by traumatized parents. Families break apart because nobody speaks. It is easier to hide what happened than to face it, fearful of admitting how bad things have become.

Veterans are terrified to hurt their wives and children in a flashback and leave before they can do them harm. Others freak our or withdraw, drowning their memories in alcohol and drugs. Others again overwork and volunteer where they can, serving their communities in whichever way possible. There are veterans wherever we look. Many of them carry a load of memories, sorrow, sadness and rage.

It is not abnormal, it is normal. Anybody who has been thought what they experienced would feel the same way.

But today, with EFT we can make a difference.

Families can make a difference.

Friends can make a difference.

Buddies can make a difference.

Most Veterans prefer to talk to a buddy or a loved one over talking to a therapist at the VA.

So we have to help the families, the communities, the people they want to talk to  to help with EFT.

EFT is not rocket science. Kids can learn it. Teachers can learn it. Mothers, fathers, wives and husbands can learn it.

And they can help better because they care. They want their loved one to be well. They have the insight, the patience, the compassion. They are there when the soldier wakes up screaming from a nightmare. They are there when he sees blood all over the place. They are there when the smell of burning plastic makes him run from the backyard. They are there when he is afraid to use the bus or attend the 4th of July fireworks.

They are there when he needs help. And with EFT, they can do something that makes a difference. A real difference.

It saves families and allows for a better future.

I am grateful that EFT is so effective with war trauma and Veterans.

I only wish I had known about it when my father suffered from PTSD.

As a DBHRT Team Leader, I am grateful that EFT is now available to Behavior Health Volunteers in the state of New Hampshire and beyond.

Since the training was only 3.5 hours, I had to focus on an effective and easy to learn way to teach tapping to providers who had heard of, but didn’t have experience with tapping.

To accomplish this, I decided to focus on three main teaching points:

EFT for self care for providers

EFT for Shelters

EFT for Schools.

These are, with the exception of working with the Military, the main areas where DBHRT gets called most frequently.

The approach we took was:

- Teach and practice the basic recipe without the finger points or gamut, so that it coule easily be learned and memorized in an effective way.

- Demonstrate and practice the constricted breathing technique. The intention here was to

a) Show how stress shows up in the body of almost anybody

b) Demonstrate how EFT is effective even if people just follow the demonstration without any knowledge or background in EFT 

c) Bring measurable results without tuning into emotional aspects of trauma – which is important in a collective stress situation, such as schools or shelters

d) Teach an effective way to work with children or adults that can be repeated as needed and be fun

e) Teach a tool where emotional work can be prepared, as this technique takes the edge of emotional intensity

After the effectiveness of the general tapping with a very basic set up statement ” Even though I have this constricted breathing, I completely accept myself” Was taught and practiced by the attendees, we went on to learn the

Chasing the Pain technique

The intention for this workshop was to make sure, that we can effectively help in groups and emergency situations, without doing therapy or deep trauma work.

By refocussing the intention on the body, we allow trauma victims to release the intensity without having to tune into the emotional cause of it.

We can monitor success in releasing energy blocks by focussing on the physical location, releasing it, and then observing shifts in intensity and location. By doing several rounds of tapping, we can bring great physical and emotional benefits, without having victims tune into the emotional component of the trauma.

Next, the Personal Peace Procedure tool was introduced and practiced. Participants filled out at least 5 issues that they wanted to release, with the added intensity measure “SUDS (Subjective Unit Of Distress Scale”). They learned how to release the intensity of the issues they wrote down, and also practiced in pairs on how to release it.

The combination of the basic recipe, the constricted breathing technique and the chasing the pain technique was then demonstrated and practiced for self care, Shelters and school aged kids.

For shelters, we brainstormed the different emotions that victims go through, divided into age groups.

We found that, even though there are some age specific issues that each group had, there were also some general, effective issues that could be safely addressed with any group. These were: 

- Overwhelm (Even though I am completely overwhelmed right now, I choose to be surprisingly OK with that)

- Anger/Rage

- Fear of what’s next

- Concern for family and friends

We realized that these feelings could be safely addressed by a DBHRT volunteer, without the need to analyze each member’s specific situation.

Finally, we talked about specific ways to help children with EFT.

Reframing of the basic “I deeply and completely accept myself” Was necessary, to make it age appropriate.

Some of the ways to do this were:

Even though I am so upset right now, I know my parents love me

- I know I am a great kid

- I know that I am a great baseball player

- My friends think I’m cool

Or for older kids: Even though  am really upset right now, I know that I can do this

- I know I am a cool dude

- It’s OK, anybody would feel this way.

We introduced the “monkey tap” for younger children, which means “banging” on the chest/collar bone points like a monkey, or tapping simultaneously on the top of the head and under the arm. “monkey noises” or small sounds like “poc poc poc” can be made with each tap, to help the children have fun while they de-stress.

The “SUDS” can be measured by comparing the intensity to the size of animals (Elephants vs kitty cats), or simply by stretching out the arms for the highest intensity and bringing the hands closer together as the intensity decreases.

There is much more to learn to do this work effectively to help people in shelters and schools, as well as the military, but bringing the work back to the four basic teachings:

- Basic short recipe

- Constricted Breathing Technique

- Personal Peace Procedure

- Chasing the pain Technique

Is a solid and effective foundation even for beginners of EFT.

http://www.silverliningvillages.org/#/thinktalk-radio-show/4557666377

Veterans can receive help from so many resources. Silverliningvillages in Georgia can help homeless Veterans who want to find peace and create a new life that works for them.

In my experience with EFT for Veterans, rage happens when a person had to endure situations that are unforgivable, inexcusable and that violate what he/she believes in.

I have yet to see a soldier that is not outraged about something that he saw, was exposed to, did or couldn’t prevent from happening.

Even though EFT can take the charge out of those memories, in my experience, there are three steps necessary to truly release rage:

Acknowledgement of what happened without judgment

Releasing the intensity with EFT tapping

Transformation of the experience, to find a deeper meaning and new purpose.

Please click on the link below to listen to the EFT Tapping podcast interview with Ingrid Dinter, conducted by Jondi Whitis from TapFest Radio

Dear Bill,
Thank you for your service and for your willingness to help others with EFT!
I deeply relate to the situation with the 27 year old veteran. I think that this is one of our biggest challenges, and the foundation of EFT4Vets:
EFT doesn’t work, as long as the Veteran doesn’t want to try it. Sound’s like a no-brainer, but it is the deepest problem we have.
This is why I teach about the warrior mindset, and the importance of acknowledgment without judgment.

I know that you as a Veteran do this naturally.
For “outside people”, it is often hard to understand: We need to acknowledge without judgment, condoning or excusing anything (ANYTHING!) that happened, and honor the warrior, welcome him back and take over responsibility for what happened in war.
If someone is drinking heavily – then this is the best he can do at the time. If he was looking for someone to help him, he would say so.
He feels that there is no way that anybody will ever understand or even more – be able too heal what happened.

I don’t have to tell you this, as you have been through more than most civilians yourself, and I respect and honor you very much for this.

I never ask straight forward, personal questions, or share my observations about how someone is doing, as this might feel either intrusive or trigger the “I’m OK” response that they are trained to have.
I’d simply sit with him, acknowledge that he is drinking and confirm that this sometimes is the best we can do.
When we get rapport, I might ask: How long have you been back? (as that’s more distant than “where have you been?) it’s a safer question.
Another question is: “How are your buddies doing?” It might be easier for him to talk about his buddies than about himself.

If the rapport is really good, I’d ask :”Everybody came back?”, and either share my relief or offer my regrets by simply saying “I’m sorry… .”

I then share that my father was a POW, and that I grew up seeing what this did to him. I’d share that he would never allow us to ask questions and he never spoke about it.
This opens another door.
I find that all Veteran honor POWs very much, so there is usually a response that might initiate a small conversation.
Sometimes they share that their father was in the Military, too, or something like that.

Then we have mutual ground.
I always keep language short and don’t intrude. For many Veterans, just talking about something is hard. They are afraid of judgment, afraid to be missunderstood. They don’t want to have to explain themselves.
So I just confirm and acknowledge what they are willing and able to share.

I have seen more than once that, once they understand that I am safe and reliable, they begin to talk. This by itself is powerful and healing, and I listen and confirm.

When the time is right, I share :”You know, there is a new relaxation technique that takes the charge out of nightmares and flashbacks, so Veterans can sleep better. There are no drugs involved, and you can learn how to do this yourself.” I don’t explain much about EFT – it would be too weird in the beginning. If they ask how it works, I tap first, and then explain, meaning I show them exactly how to tap, and after each point I make the comment. This way, they see that it is easy and become curious before they receive an answer.

If this works, then I might tell them to try it with a physical stress symptom. The reason is that I don’t want to open up a “can of worms” on a public area, and I want to demonstrate immediate results. Stay away from tinnitus in the beginning, as this has shown to come back (we don’t know, why yet), and from medical conditions, as they may or may not improve. Rather work with tension in the body, and, after it subsided, ask how he is feeling now. Then point out that feelings and physical symptoms are connected, and so are our thoughts.

Keep it as easy as possible, so that it is comfortable to digest.

With my veterans, I replace the “I deeply and completely accept myself” with “I honor and respect myself”. It is more suitable language for them – it simply makes more sense.

Then see what he wants to do next, and offer to work with him. Don’t wait for him to call you. He won’t, even if this worked for him. Instead try to offer calling him at a specific time (without pushing). Chances are he won’t be there when you call, but calling multiple times will help him understand that you mean what you said when you told him that you care and want to help. For you as a veteran this should be so much easier than for a civilian.
My guys have always told me that they will most likely not pick up the phone, but that I should please keep trying. It is a symptom of PTSD….avoidance…and they have to get over this in their own way.
Don’t push out the time too far, the sooner the better, otherwise their memories overcome them and the “window of opportunity” closes again. I have seen this, and it hurts when it happens.

I hope this helps and makes sense.
Thank you so much for all that you do Bill!
Please let me know how I can support you!
Ingrid

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This is the recording of a breakout session that I gave at the international Conference of the Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology “ACEP” in Orlando 2009.

I’d like to invite you to a free, 60 min Tele Class:

An Introduction to EFT4Vets:  Helping Veterans with EFT coaching

When: Friday, March 18th 2011

Time: 7:00pm EST

The call will be recorded.

Please know that we honor your privacy and never sell or give away your information to others.

Working with Veterans and their families is an honor and very special and unique in many ways.

It is my hope that the recording and Webinar will inspire you to understand warriors and their families better, and realize why “soldier’s heart” is truly a symptom of the soul.
There is so much that community members, friends and family can do to recognize, honor and help the troops of all wars, and I am grateful that I have to share EFT to help make a difference.
Please expect this work to touch and transform you. Nobody comes back unchanged, and helping warriors and their families will touch you in more ways than you might expect.
Thank you for your interest in helping Veterans and their families.

Blessings
Ingrid