The Power of Doing EFT on Wishes and Wants

One of the best ways to identify parts of ourselves that need healing is to work with wishes and wants.

Let's say you're giving yourself a session about your relationship with your partner.

You're upset about a fight that you had, and want to clear out as much painful emotion and fears as possible, but you're feeling stuck about exactly what to tap on.

Ask yourself this: "If I could have anything in my relationship with my partner, what would it be? What do I WISH would happen here?"

Be sure to allow yourself the inner spaciousness to receive answers that you think could never happen.

Remember, EFT is not about what's possible, and it's not about facts, it's about finding your emotional truth, and if that truth hurts, tapping it out.

So if your emotional truth is: "I wish my husband would be the trustworthy man that I need him to be," and when you say that out loud (or just think it), you experience an emotional charge, then that is a good statement for you to tap on.

Simply asking yourself the question, "What do I wish would happen in this situation?" enables you to identify a place inside yourself that hurts and needs healing, and this can lead to other powerful tapping statements. 

So once you've tapped out the first statement you identified down to zero or close to zero, then move on to the next statement you wrote down, and then tap that one out.

Most likely, the session will continue to unfold organically like that, with one statement naturally leading to another and then another.

However, if it doesn't and you find yourself getting stuck, just ask yourself the same question: What do I wish would happen here?

If the word "wish" doesn't resonate with you about a particular issue, then use the word "want", and ask yourself "What do I want in this situation?" or "What do I want from this person?"

Then notice the thread that emerges when the answers to those questions arise within you. Once you've found the thread, you can follow it until you feel that the issue you're tapping on is totally healed, or until you've tapped out and healed as much as you can in the time you've allotted yourself for the session.

Using This Technique to Heal the Wounds of the Past

Working with wishes and wants works just as well for past circumstances, like your childhood, as it does for aspects of your life that are still going on in the present, like your current relationships.

For example, if you're working to heal the from the childhood trauma of your parents splitting up, ask yourself: "What do I wish had happened in this situation?"

Perhaps your answer would be: "I wish my parents had never gotten a divorce", or "I wish my parents had had a happy marriage."

Then you notice how you feel when you say or think these statements, and if it hurts, tap on it until it doesn't hurt anymore.

The 5 Steps of Using This Technique

1) Ask yourself one of the following questions: What do I wish had happened? What do I wish would happen? What do I wish I had in this situation? What do I really want? If I could have anything in this situation/relationship/job/etc., what would it be?

2) Notice whatever answers are coming to you in response to that question.

3) Ask yourself: How do I feel when I speak or think these answers?

4) Tap out any answer that hurts when you think or say it out loud.

5) Follow the thread that emerges, tapping as you go, i.e. notice how one tapping statement naturally leads to another and then another. If you get stuck, ask yourself one of the questions from above.

Key Point

An important thing to note is that we're not tapping on wishes and wants to make them go away, we're tapping on them because they hurt.

So after you tap down a "wish statement" to neutral or nearly neutral, you may still have that wish, only it won't hurt anymore when you think about it.

Again, this is all about your emotional truth, and your healing.Asking yourself about wishes and wants is a great way to begin any EFT session, and it can also be a really helpful tool to reach for when you're already in the middle of a session and you're not sure what to tap on next.

We all have wishes and wants, and identifying them can be a very effective way to discover the parts of ourselves that are hurting and needing to be healed.

Please Note

When doing EFT tapping on your own, if you aren't able to completely heal the issue you're working on, so that when you think about it, it no longer causes stress or emotional pain of any kind, I recommend working with a professional EFT practitioner. If you decide that this is the best course of action for you, and you’d like to work with me, click here to schedule an EFT session or free consultation.

By Heather Ambler

Heather Ambler is a California based EFT practitioner and mindset coach. Through her private practice and online programs, she’s helped many thousands of people all over the world heal the pain of losing a loved one, recover from trauma, release fears, erase limiting beliefs, increase confidence, and achieve goals. If you could use some help with any of these things, click here to schedule an EFT session or free consultation.