I’ve had a fear of crossing bridges for a long time. It started with a fear of heights which eventually included bridges, possibly starting around the time of the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989. If you recall that tragedy, it included the collapse of a double-decker freeway I’d been on many times as I was raised in that area, as well as a section of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.

Last year I started doing EFT and one of my first projects for emotional freedom was to recover from my fear of bridges and cliffs. I live in a long, deep river valley and there are several highway bridges east of here that have frightened me for years. With the encouragement of my boyfriend, Bob, I did a lot of EFT and recovered from my fears, at least, while he was driving. *

Just yesterday I was driving on a road west of here that I’ve called “The Five Bridge Road” for six or seven years now. It involves driving along high cliffs and there are five bridges, two of which have frightened me severely, so much that I’ve avoided that road by driving a little further and taking the freeway to go around it.

My boyfriend doesn’t believe in driving further and spending money on driving over Anderson Pass just to get to Yreka. “Why not take the short road - it’s only eight miles!” He is so practical. So yesterday while I was driving I decided to do just that, hoping that my fear of bridges was gone thanks to EFT.

I had no problem getting over the first two bridges, but as I approached the third, my old feeling of tightening up around my arms and heart started, and I pulled off the road right before crossing the bridge. “I can’t do it,” I said.

“Why not?”

“There’s something I didn’t tell you,” I said to him. “I found out this week that someone jumped off that bridge recently.”

I’d been at work a few days before when a co-worker, who was reading the newspaper, discovered that a friend of hers had died. She started crying, then made some phone calls. Before long she found out that the boy, who was only 18, had jumped off the Pioneer Bridge. Now there I was, looking at the place where a sad and dejected gay teenager had jumped off, and it was like another aspect of my fear came to me. Someone had told the girl I worked with that lots of people had jumped off that bridge in the past, and I was wondering if my long-standing fear of this place had anything to do with my sensitivity. Maybe I’d been picking up the feelings of despair and depression around the bridge, and that’s why it had always frightened me so badly.

My boyfriend got out of the car as I sat there doing some emergency EFT on the feelings I was having.

Setup phrase: “Even though I’m afraid to drive across the bridge because of what happened here, I deeply and completely accept myself.”
Tapping: Distress over what happened…

I had to repeat this twice, then I knew I could do it. My boyfriend got back into the car and I drove across the bridge, without a twinge of fear. There was a wreath hanging in the middle of the bridge, a sad testament to the tragedy that had taken place and the suffering of the people he left behind.

* Learn EFT at home! Get Gary Craig’s FREE e-book now!