The Termination Stage with EFT Tapping
In this series articles I have attempted to explain how EFT Tapping can be used in each stage of the Cycle of Change model. This framework is useful to understand how we all change our behaviours and my aim here is to dive into each stage to look at what role EFT can play in addressing the specific challenges to each of them and how it can move us quicker between stages.
The focus of this article is the Termination Stage.
This is the end of the game and where I believe true freedom lies.
This stage is not one that receives a lot of attention in professional arenas as, I suspect, a person who in the termination stage doesn’t need professional support anymore. I do feel, though, that it’s a stage that needs to be honoured, and I personally know people who have reached this last stop, me included, and it deserves its well-earned space. I also believe, and I stress that this is my point of view, which has been informed by my personal experience and of some of the people I know in my life who happily live in this space, that it’s the turning point where recovery ends and your new life begins. I can’t recall the point in time when this watershed moment happened, but I know and I feel that I am in it and I have been in it for some time.
When you reach the Termination Stage, you are certain that you are not going to lapse or relapse because the desire to drink alcohol is completely gone. There is no desire to return to the old behaviour.
Because of the work that I do, I reflect a lot on my own feelings, thoughts and the way I process information internally, and I think that the best way I could describe how this stage feels came through to me when I was explaining it to them. The way I described it was that if in this outwardly imaginary and impossible made-up scenario someone came up to me and told me that they were sure that I had the ability within me to drink moderately and feel completely satisfied with it, that there was absolutely no risk that in the future I could build up my tolerance to alcohol and there was unequivocally no part in me that would never wanted to get hammered, I would still say “no, thank you, I don’t need that, I don’t want that, this is where I want to be and this is where I want to stay”. If there is no desire for alcohol, if you truthfully and wholeheartedly feel in every fibre of your being that there are no benefits whatsoever for you to drink, if you don’t need support to stay alcohol-free anymore, then you are really done with it. You are free and can happily leave the premises. That doesn’t exclude that you may still decide to stick around to help other people to stop drinking or being of service in the way you see fit, whether on a 1:1 or in a community or group setting, if that’s what you are moved to do. But you wouldn’t do it because you need to, you would because you want to give back.
Termination is when your sobriety journey ends and becomes your identity, what you are and what you do, your way to be and exist in the world. Working towards becoming alcohol-free is an ongoing process of self-discovery and personal growth. As part of that, I continue to use EFT tapping in my life along other tools and resources that I have acquired throughout my life.
The way I interpret, live and experience this termination stage, though, is that as human beings we will always be on that trajectory of learning and self-improvement to always move the goalpost to become better versions of ourselves, but that progress won’t revolve around alcohol or the lack thereof anymore, because we have finished with that once and for all.
