As an Emotional Freedom Technique Advanced Practitioner and Trainer there are a number of ways I can measure the progress that clients have made, one of which occurs when a client visualizes their negative emotion.

In each of the examples below the client used a picture to describe to me how they were feeling and so I linked into these to measure the reduction in the negativity and as you will see they replaced the negative picture with a positive one.

Client 1 described her feelings in terms of a brick wall when asked to describe it, the wall was a high as a 2 storey house, one half of a semi-detached and red brick. After each round of tapping I would ask the client to visualize the wall, initially it became lower, narrower and the walls became white. Then it became a white fence, leading to a beautiful field. Then the fence had a gate and the gate was open and she was able to walk through – all negativity gone. Proof to both the client and Practitioner that the negative emotion had gone.

Client 2 describe her emotions in terms of a pond on top of her head which was so overgrown with weeds that no light could get through and nothing could live. After we tapped I would ask her to describe the pond, gradually light entered then there was plant life and then she said “Oh leave it, it is now beautiful, bathed in sunshine, with water lilies and frogs on the lilies.” All negativity had gone.

Client 3 described her relationship with her mother as having a brick wall covered in moss and in poor state of repair between them that she could not see around. As I checked in with her, first of all she was able to move some of the moss, next time when asked she had punched the wall so now it was lower and she could see the sun shining on it and she could see over it, but she was not yet ready to look around it. Then she was on the other side of the wall on cobbled path but it was misty so she wasn’t sure if she could walk forwards. After the next round she felt able to walk forwards and as she did so the mist parted, the sun came out and there were daises and she described it as walking into a field of opportunities. Her feelings towards her mother had completely changed from telling me the mother was a control freak to describing her as a lovely woman who is so kind.

In each case I had picked up on the clients own description of their emotions, and by experiencing changes the client was able to directly witness the changes in their emotions. It is also worth noting that as well as removing the negativity each client replaced it with a positive image. This approach is also used when the client has a different Representational System - Audio or Kinaesthetic (NLP).