Hadassah's story

Hadassah was young when she got engaged, one of the first of her class. She was a classic overjoyed kallah – thrilled to be engaged, excited for her wedding, and dreamy about her chassan. She loved every aspect of being a bride – the constant attention, the shopping, the preparing, the phone calls with her chassan overseas and the heady notion of becoming a sheitel-clad married woman.

In her own bubble of enthusiasm, she didn’t notice her chassan’s reservedness. When he broke it off, just a month before the wedding, it came as an enormous shock.

Hadassah came to me some three months after her broken engagement, two months after her meant-to-be wedding date. Her mother had gently encouraged her to receive help.

In our introductory conversation, it quickly became clear why Hadassah’s mother was concerned about her. Hadassah had always been a bright, bubbly, vivacious girl. Now, she lacked energy. She had no motivation to do anything, and certainly didn’t feel ready to start dating again. She had lost her joy in life.

“The first week or two, I cried every day,” said Hadassah, twirling her hair around her fingers. “Now I don’t feel like crying. I just feel a bit numb. And heavy. My whole body feels so heavy that it’s hard to get out of bed. I sometimes drag myself up to go to work, but often it’s just too hard and I end up staying in bed.”

I nodded. Unprocessed emotions get trapped in the body and result in all kinds of physical symptoms – like heaviness, digestive issues, nausea and weakness, to name just a few.

We started with the heavy feeling. And as we tapped on it, we asked gentle questions.

“What’s making my body feel so heavy?”

“What’s inside that heaviness?”

We’re not asking the cognitive brain – we’re asking the subconscious, on the energetic level. Because if we just stop to tap into it, our deeper selves will give us the answer. The EFT tapping works as a retrieval tool, bringing us to the crux of the issue.

Almost immediately, different memories of her engagement period came up. The moment of the break-off. The first time she realized something was off, but dismissed it in her youthful exuberance. Isolated incidents that she brushed off at the time but now seem such clear indicators of distancing that she can’t believe she didn’t realize it.

Underneath those incidents were emotions. Shock – a lot of shock. Confusion. Pain. Rejection. Guilt. Anger. So many emotions, each one stuck inside her.

Hadassah had known she felt hurt, but most of the emotions were new to her. She hadn’t really acknowledged the intensity and extent of the shock. She hadn’t realized at all that it made her feel confused and insecure – Is there something wrong with me? How come I didn’t even see it coming? She had never identified the deep anger she felt, nor understood that she was angry at her ex-chassan, at her mother, and most of all at herself.

As each emotion came up, we simply acknowledged it. We gave it a name. She allowed herself to feel the emotion instead of denying it, ignoring it, suppressing it or feeling guilty for having it.

And by doing that, she released the emotions from staying in her psyche.

At the end of the first session, Hadassah already felt lighter. By the end of the third, it was clear that the trauma was no longer held inside her. She didn’t just not feel heavy – she was back to her light-hearted, bouncy self.

I said good-bye to Hadassah with a sense of joy. Those negative emotions inside Hadassah – had they not been released – could have accompanied her for years. Over time, they would have settled deeper within her, influencing the way she thought about herself, shaping limiting beliefs, and affecting her ability to trust, connect and form relationships with others.

Thanks to her wise mother, her own readiness for change, and the gift of EFT, Hadassah’s broken engagement actually left her stronger and more emotionally healthy than ever before.

Names and identifying details have been changed to protect privacy.