Discover the transformative journey of Chris Pizzarello, a hypnotherapist who found healing through Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). Chris explains the principles of EFT, guides us through a session, and shares his experiences with past-life regression. Learn how he helps individuals overcome anxiety post-2020, regain control of their lives, and more, in his exclusive MysticMag interview below.
How did you get started in hypnotherapy and what was your professional journey like?
After my daughter was born, I was struggling, even though I shouldn’t have been. I had the family I always desired. I was doing ok at my job at the time, but I was lost. I wasn’t fulfilled, and I felt like something was missing. I was suffering from depression and overall had a hard time coping with life.
Around 2008 I discovered EFT. That changed my life because now I had the tool that I needed to be able to get rid of the anxiety, which I had suffered from when I was a child, as well as to be able to handle the day-to-day pressures that were inside of my life. Then, in 2012, I decided that I was going to learn hypnosis. I had a client that had some problems and we would go through the tapping. Then, she would do well for a few days, but then she would reset back. She would go back to where she was before. We kept going in circles, and I knew I had to work on her subconscious mind to be able to fix the problem. That’s when I decided to study hypnosis, and it’s been an amazing journey since then.
What are the principles behind EFT and what are its benefits?
EFT stands for Emotional Freedom Technique and it’s based on acupressure points that meet at certain meridians that correspond to different parts of your body. Some correspond to organs, some to the nervous system, but the key is that we’re using our thought fields. You can think of it as if you were to blow up a balloon and put your thoughts inside of it. In order to use EFT, we take our thoughts and we bring them to the front of our mind. We’re using our rational conscious mind to identify the problems that we have and attack them.
The mind tends to shield us from what the root causes of our problems are, so we come up typically with it very general idea of what the problem is in the specific case. The benefit of EFT is that it helps to break down the outer layers of what the conscious mind thinks is permissible to deal with and starts finding the root causes. It’s like peeling an onion. We go through layers and soon we get to the root cause. When we get there, the problem disappears because we’ve dissipated all the energy that we had stored in this problem.
Why the tapping part of it works is that when we have problems, we don’t store them in our brains. We actually store them in our body, so by tapping on the meridians we release the energy that’s being held in the body system and that’s what helps dissipate the problem.
Can you walk me through an EFT session?
Absolutely. We start with a problem. I like to think about something that the client has an issue with. For example, I see a lot of people have issues with sugar, so a person may get tempted to eat some. They may get tempted to have that candy, but do they really need it? Probably not, and they definitely don’t want to overdo them.
I would start by tapping on my karate chop point and saying, “Even though I want that candy bar, I still deeply and completely love and accept myself. Even though that candy bar is very tempting and it’s very delicious, I love and respect myself. Even though that candy bar is so amazing to my taste buds, I still deeply love and accept myself.”
Then I’ll tap at the eyebrow and say “That candy bar is delicious.” I’ll tap on the side and say, “I want that candy bar because it’s delicious and sweet.” I’ll tap on the eye and say, “I want the candy bar, but is it good for me?”
Then I’ll tap under the nose and say, “I really want that candy bar because I need an energy boost. I need the sugar to boost my energy,” followed by tapping on the chin – “But that candy bar is really not good for me. I don’t need all that sugar, do I?”
Then on the collarbone – “But I really want the candy bar. I really want it.” Then I’ll tap under the arm “I don’t really need it.” So, I’m very conflicted. I want it, but I don’t really need it.
I’ll proceed to tap on a few more places, with every step being accompanied but conflicting statements from both sides, and eventually, I’ll tap, for example, under the arm, and say “I feel so guilty if I eat that candy bar. I would just be thinking about it the rest of the day” and then “I don’t want that candy bar, and I’m ok with that. I’m really okay with it.”
That’s how I would work with people on not wanting a candy bar. I’ve done it with a few clients and it works. When they’re done with it, after about five minutes, they shift away from the candy bar. They actually don’t want it. It’s not that they are restraining themselves from it because I told them. They’ve convinced themselves, and they realize, “Hey, I don’t need it. I’m better without it.”
You also do Past Life Regression. Can you share a memorable experience from one of your sessions?
In one case, I was working with a woman. What’s important to note here is that souls have a tendency to travel together through eons. So, a mother might become a daughter, a daughter might become a mother, a mother might become a son, and so on, but we tend to have a soul group, a group of souls that we travel with through the eons.
Now, in this case, the woman was a mother and had a daughter. They were in the same roles in a past life. In that past life, around 85 years ago, what happened was they were driving on the road in an old truck. As they were driving down the road, there was another truck coming. They swerved to miss the truck, they wound up in the ditch, and both of them died.
The interesting part about this is that in this current life, that woman had a similar accident but didn’t die. More importantly, she protected her daughter and prevented her daughter from dying this time around. The memory of that event was a horrible soul memory, but she brought it into this life as instructions: “When this happens, do this to survive.”
How can you help people take their life back into their own hands?
After 2020 and COVID-19, people have gone into an anxiety state that we’ve never seen before. They’ve become anxious about all kinds of things. They’ve become anxious about being vaccinated. They’ve become anxious about not being vaccinated. They’ve become anxious about getting ill. They’re anxious about watching their family members become ill and dying. They’ve become anxious about interacting with other people in social environments. They’ve become anxious about the little pod that they survived inside of the pandemic. For some families, it brought them closer together, while for others, it ripped them apart. It was all the stress and anxiety that were playing a part in this.
When people who got stronger inside their family pod got back into society, they felt very uneasy. They became dependent upon very few people, and going out and meeting more people became “dangerous”. For others, who were just totally destroyed by having to stay in their homes and not interact with people, when they had the opportunity to get out, they just partied like it was 1999. They couldn’t stop anything from happening and they went absolutely overboard. The result was major anxiety, and this is what’s going on in society now.
We also have a lot more people working from home. What happened to a lot of people is that those who were not able to adjust to working with somebody on a Zoom call found it very difficult. It was very insidious because people weren’t traveling anymore. All of a sudden, the bosses decided that they were available earlier, during lunch, after work, etc. People found themselves, who were working at normal 9-to-5 jobs, now working from 7 AM to 10 PM. They would get emails, demands from their bosses, and unreasonable expectations.
So, there was a lot of stress that came down from 2020, through 2021, and into 2022. This is where I work with people. I’m helping them overcome all their anxiety and stress and begin to normalize their lives to what they used to be. It’s interesting because I have been doing online therapy since 2014. So, for me, going into the pandemic, I already had all the tools and already knew how to conduct sessions online very successfully. That’s what really sets me apart from other therapists. I had all these functions in place. Now, I’m helping people overcome their anxieties and their stresses, and reestablish that work-life balance.
Is there anything else that you’d like to add?
I do wish to add that is that online therapy works. We have now gotten into this new model where doctors are doing their evaluations online and psychotherapists are offering their services online. A lot of businesses switched to providing their services online. That’s a good thing and a bad thing at the same time.
The positive aspect for the client is that they can be in their own house where they’re most comfortable and be able to do the therapy session. That means no travel expenses, and it also saves them time. Additionally, it gets them out of many uncomfortable situations, so their stress levels decrease, as a lot of people would feel stressed out when going to see a therapist. That’s something that people should consider when discussing online therapy. I work with people from all over the world and I can say that it works and we can do powerful work online!
To learn more about Chris and his work, you can visit www.efthypnotherapy.com
