As you get older, do you notice that the 20/20 vision you used to have is getting worse? Are you wearing contacts or do you need eyeglasses for reading? If so, do you believe they are a necessary evil once you hit a certain age? I used to think so too, but I don’t anymore. Here’s the story that explains how I’ve been able to improve my vision and why I believe that perhaps you can too.
Back around 2013 after I finished writing my book, “Lovin’ the Skin You’re In” I became very aware of the fact that my eyesight was changing and my eagle eye vision was diminishing. The first hints of the problem showed up as headaches and eye strain after spending long periods of time writing at my computer. By the end of the evening my head was pounding and my eyes were burning.
I knew I had to step away from the computer, but when I sat down to enjoy a good book, the words on the page looked blurry. I quickly learned that by moving the book further away, my vision came back into focus.
Looking for New Answers in Old Places
Seeking a solution, I went to get my eyes checked. The optician explained to me that as we get older, our eyesight diminishes because it takes longer for our eyes to transition from one type of vision to another (seeing things closer vs. far away) Then he began talking about why most middle-aged people need to get glasses once they reach their 40’s. He suggested I get a prescription for a pair of reading glasses. My vanity and pride got the best of me and I suddenly felt as nervous as a cat in a roomful of rocking chairs.
I could feel my body tensing, getting more and more uncomfortable with his dead-end explanations. As far as I was concerned, he was a closed-minded idiot. My eyesight was still 20/20 and I refused to admit otherwise. I was dying to get out of there.
As I was leaving his office, he calmly repeated his suggestion that I get a prescription for reading glasses. I laughed and told him “No glasses for me. Thank you very much. I’ll stick it out for as long as I can.” A big grin spread across his face as he said, “Ok, but there will come a time when your arm won’t be long enough and that’s when you’ll be back for those glasses.”
Living Happily in Denial with my Readers
That happened 7 years ago and it marked the beginning of my struggle with my diminishing eyesight. Despite the fact that I didn’t actually invest in those prescription reading glasses he was peddling, I had started buying the cheapie magnifier reading glasses that are available in drug stores. It was like a game to me. I must have had about 20 pairs and it was fun wearing them to match my outfits. They were all so pretty.
I had a pair of magnifiers in every room in my home and everywhere else in between. Now that I think about the hypocrisy of it all, I laugh when I realize that buying the drug store readers was really no different than getting prescription lenses. But somehow I thought that by getting them instead of prescription lenses I was beating the system.
Over the next year I had noticed that I was needing to rely on my readers to see better all the time. I went from only needing them for close work like reading and sewing to using them almost all the time, even cooking and shopping.
During that time my daughter, Cara was a constant source of irritation urging me to get real glasses and think of it as another way that I could love myself. In her very zen, loving way she was pushing me to walk my talk and it annoyed the hell out of me. I just didn’t want to accept that I needed glasses to see. I continued to ignore her suggestions and I went and purchased more of the readers in hopes of finding a solution to not wearing glasses.
We Carry Our Emotions Throughout Our Body– Even Our Eyes!
As a professional coach, I have learned about the body/mind connection and how we carry our emotions in our body. I now really understand that my eyes are included too. They are affected by all my emotions.
One day I was searching everywhere looking for a pair of glasses and there were none to be found. I couldn’t believe that of the 20 or so pairs that I had purchased over the last few years, they were all gone. I thought this was surely a sign from the universe that it was time to deal with the emotions that were causing my vision to get worse. I began to run a list in my head of what limiting beliefs I had about my eyesight.
It was so easy to look for the excuse and say it was all those hours at the computer that caused my vision to decline. But I don’t think that was the cause of my diminishing vision. It was more like a symptom.
I thought about what the optometrist said about how our eyes age. True, I was 50 years old at the time, but as I thought more about how our mind and body are connected, I had to account for all the painful experiences and adversity I had endured throughout my life. It made sense to me that my vision was getting worse because many of my blocked emotions were stored in my eyes and I didn’t want to face those feelings.
Despite being a survivor, I had a lot of painful memories that I was carrying around that came back into focus through the process of writing my book. And being estranged and financially betrayed by a dad I once adored cut like a knife. My grieving and pain was so fresh that I would sit and write and sob.
Because I wanted my book, Lovin’ the Skin You’re In to serve other women to empower them and not be a self-serving diary of my struggles, I hired 2 editors and took 6 years to complete the book to get enough distance and perspective. During that time, my subconscious mind had been blurring my reality and my vision just enough for me to be able to handle the task of completing the book.
One day after making just one too many jokes about giving my eyes to my book, I realized it was time to start facing the truth behind what was really causing my ever-increasing fuzzy vision.
Improve Your Eyesight with EFT: Emotional Freedom Techniques
As a passionate advocate of a stress-relief process called Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), over the years I’ve gathered an extensive library on the subject of EFT, also known as tapping.
Tapping is a stress-relief technique where you tap gently on your face and hands and that sends a signal to your brain to relax. It shuts off your body’s automatic stress response and turns on your body’s relaxation response and that helps you to see your life from a more empowered perspective.
As I scanned my bookshelves seeking a solution, one title caught my eye; “Improve Your Eyesight with EFT: Emotional Freedom Techniques.” by Carol Look, LCSW, DCH, EFT Master.
I remembered hearing about it awhile ago. EFT Master, Dr. Carol Look had done an experiment with 120 people wanting to find out if tapping on negative emotions using the process of Emotional Freedom Technique could improve their eyesight. I read that she had gotten some very impressive results.
She discovered that for many of the participants in the study, their vision problems were being caused by blocked and unexpressed negative emotions. And, of the 120 participants who successfully followed through and completed the 8 week experiment, 75 percent reported a significant improvement in their vision, with many no longer needing to use reading glasses.
I intuitively knew that it was time to read that book and start experimenting to see how tapping could improve my vision. I had done classes before with Carol Look and worked with her privately and knew how amazing she was. So that was all I needed to give me the green light to take a chance and apply her wisdom to my eyes.
8 Weeks to be Better Vision
The book is to be used over a period of 8 weeks. Each week you will tap along using the tapping script for that week. To connect to your emotions, you will choose 1 – 2 incidents in your life when you experienced the emotion that is covered in each of the weekly tapping scripts. Here’s the breakdown of how the books works:
Before you begin the first week, you give yourself an eye test or go to a professional and get a baseline to determine where your vision is.
After doing that, you start Week #1. Week #1 is focused on dealing with resistance and limiting beliefs doubting that your vision can be improved by doing the tapping.
Week #2 deals with fears. From this lesson forward, you will be encouraged to think about 1 -2 actual situations that happened in your life when you remember feeling this feeling.
Week #3 focuses on guilt and again you will think about 1-2 situations in your life where you have felt or still feel guilty for something you said, did or didn’t do.
Week #4 is the largest section and it focused on dealing with anger. That is the section that I am working on now.
Week #5 you will be encouraged to think about 1-2 times you have experienced anxiety as you tap along with the script.
Week #6 – You will tap on your beliefs about aging and any specific information you have learned about your issues related to your vision.
Week #7 – Your tapping will be focused on dealing with resentment and hurt as you tap along with the prepared script.
Week #8 – You will tap on any remaining blocks that you may have related to improving your eyesight.
My First Experience with Tapping to Improve My Eyesight
Back in 2015 the push I needed to get serious about facing the feelings around my failing eyesight was when my daughter was about to leave to live in the dorms at the Culinary Institute. I was heartbroken and knew that I would be missing her so much. Our family had planned an 8 week vacation splitting our time between Maine and Ocean City, Maryland. I realized that was a perfect opportunity for me to test out Carol’s eyesight experiment.
I was so completely astonished by the end of the 8 weeks. My vision had almost completely gone back to being 20/20. I no longer needed to wear readers to cook, go shopping or watch television. I was so overjoyed that my eagle eyesight was back. But as soon as the 8 weeks of daily tapping scripts was over, I found myself eager to stop the tapping. It was uncomfortable looking at and dealing with old issues from the past. I noticed that I would ‘forget’ to tap or misplace the book and days would go by before I would think about it again.
My Eyesight Worsens with Depression
When Cara left to go live at the dorms at Culinary, I was heartbroken and went through a huge depression. Just around the same time my precious cat, Owie passed away of kidney disease and my mother had a mental breakdown, I was still also grieving the loss and estrangement of my relationship with my father. I had pushed away all my friends and emotionally distanced myself from my husband. The intense insanity of my life made it necessary for me to step away from coaching. My eyes began itching intensely. I stopped wearing eye makeup and began daily eye washings. I walked around with cool compresses to ease the pain of the constant rubbing that was irritating my eyes. Consumed with grief, I cried all the time.
If you’ve even gone through depression, you learn it’s like being stuck in a deep, dark pit. When you’re down in the ditch it takes so much energy to pull yourself back up you can’t even imagine doing it. During the short window periods of time when you’re not actually consumed with being miserable, you’re too busy focused on just trying to get through a day and survive. Taking a shower and getting out of bed is a major achievement when you’re depressed. And when your thoughts are already blue, that’s when all the unresolved issues in your life come back to haunt you making you feel even worse sucking your life dry.
To pull myself out of the depression I had to use every tool that I shared in my book. I never thought that I would face depression. I had seen my mother struggle with depression over the years and thought “I’m too strong and that won’t happen to me.”
Depression Fuels my Commitment to Get Healthy
Coming face to face with my mother’s mental illness humbled me to the ground. It made me realize that depression had nothing to do with strength. But it had everything to do with self-care. As I watched my mother acting like a child and rebelling against my attempts to care for her, I knew I didn’t want her reality for myself. Fearing her mental illness was my legacy became the inspiration that sparked the energy I needed to begin making changes in my life.
It’s taken me almost a year and a half to get back to being myself again. I’ve worked on many different aspects of my life to reclaim myself and relaunch my coaching business. Despite the fact that I finally decided to follow Cara’s advice and invest in myself by leveling up my self-care by purchasing prescription reading glasses this past January, now it’s time to work on my eyesight again.
Even though I’m 57 now, and the argument could be made about getting older and my eyesight worsening, I won’t accept that as the only reason why my vision is worsening. I know that my eyesight has been adversely affected by the intense emotions I’ve experienced over the past several years that I have tried to avoid confronting.
Since I first had such amazing results with using the book, “Improve Your Eyesight with EFT” I’ve used it several times since and worked to tap on the scripts to deal with my emotions. Without fail, each time I’ve seen almost immediate results and changes in my vision. My challenge has been in being consistent and sticking with the tapping and finishing all the 8 weeks of exercises. Each time I have seen remarkable results, it’s almost as though it was too frightening a prospect to bear and I stopped doing the work soon after.
But I’m tired of living in the past with regret. I don’t want to continue holding onto old resentments and blame. I’ve seen huge signs of abundance to come each time I’ve pushed myself and done things that were uncomfortable.
Know Your Why?
In coaching it’s well understood that knowing the reasons why you want to do something is what powers your motivation to actually get it done.
If your eyesight is weakening, think about the reasons why you would want to improve your vision. When I asked myself why improving my eyesight was important to me, here’s what I said to myself, “I know I can do it. I am capable. I am worthy and I deserve to be happy. That means letting go and forgiving more. I know I don’t have to remain stuck in my negative emotions when I lose my way. I can do things differently. I’m the boss. I am in charge of how I respond to life. I’m nobody’s victim. I’ve wasted too much time whining and crying over spilled milk. It’s time to move forward and start fresh. I count myself as blessed because I’m a survivor and that experience has taught me that I’m stronger than I think I am. It’s given me the confidence to know that I can do anything I put my mind to.
I want to create more videos, do more reading, writing, get back into public speaking, learn graphic design and start sewing again. Those are the goals that are burning in my soul inspiring me to confront my emotions and use tapping to improve my vision.
I’m ready to commit and be consistent in caring for myself. As I continue to work on getting healthier and thinner, by taking steps to lose weight without dieting, I instinctively know that the path to better health is paved with finding more joy in my life. That leads me to the knowledge that it’s time to improve my eyesight.”
As I mentioned earlier, I’m ending the 7th week of the experiment, and I am astonished to notice how much my vision has improved again. Most surprisingly was how quickly the first improvement showed up. After only the 4th day I was able to read the large print of the book without my prescription reading glasses. Now I am on the chapter dealing with resentment. I am stunned to recognize how many times I have avoided facing resentment. Now that I am using tapping to deal with those situations, I see lots of hope for a brighter future and that includes welcoming back clarity in my vision. I know that the more I tap on my unresolved emotions, the more improvement I will see. So you can get bet I’ll be starting over again as soon as I finish this book.
If you also have been struggling with vision problems, there’s a good chance that you also have some unresolved emotions blocking your vision. I strongly encourage you to get the Improve Your Eyesight with EFT book and do the experiment for yourself.
To dig deeper into a discussion about this, I invite you to join my Facebook Group, “Baby Steps to Lovin’ the Skin You’re In.” To join click on the image below:
And if you’ve already had experience using EFT for improving your eyesight, I’d love to hear about it. Please feel free to share your stories and comment on this post.