Velislava Stoycheva

From IT to EFT

In 2017, I learned about EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) and started using the method to work on my own traumas. A year later, I completed a certification course at BADEP with Irena Relyovska-Barton, and began to apply what I had learned on my friends and loved ones with great interest and curiosity.

I am a practical, results-oriented person and I was delighted with the effectiveness of the technique. The changes and growth I saw in myself, as well as the difference I saw in my clients, inspired me to take a life-changing step in my professional life. I left the IT field, where I had been working for 17 years, because I realized that I want to help others find their way to inner peace, be liberated from their painful past and the limits it imposes on their lives today, and to handle the challenges of the present with greater ease.

In 2019, I joined the online self-training program of EFT founder Gary Craig, who personally guides his students in learning his latest advancement, Optimal EFT.

In 2024, I will complete the The Gary Craig Official EFT™ Training Center Individual Certification Program with Sheri Baker as my mentor.

From pain to inner strength

For me, true freedom arrived when I realized that you can only change yourself; when I started seeing my painful emotions as road signs, and the people and situations that caused them as arrows pointing to things I need to work on in myself. The best part was that I felt relief and saw results instantly – as I was working with EFT, my difficult emotions were starting to release and my point of view began to change. I could see new possibilities open up before me, because we can only make permanent changes to what’s happening outside of us through internal change.

What is more difficult, but all the more rewarding, is inner work on our own selves, which helps us see how our well-being depends on us.

My personal story

I used to feel that I could never find acceptance as I was. My coping strategy (which, at first, was completely unconscious) was to adapt my behavior, beliefs and preferences to other people, including my partners. I tried to conform to what I thought they expected of me in order to earn their love and approval. Covering up my “unacceptable self” provided me with some measure of safety, even if I wasn’t aware of it.
Now, I can see quite clearly that people in my life had created opportunities for me to notice these tendencies in myself and to change them, but I was not ready at the time.

I was only able to see all this after it had become unbearable. A relationship came to an end and I lost my sense of self, I was overflowing with resentment, anger, disappointment, blame, pain, sadness, questions left unasked and unanswered. Depression was my constant companion and I just wanted to disappear. I kept looking for a way to cope without resorting to medication (I tossed a prescription for antidepressants in the trash as soon as I got it).
I spent nearly 10 years running in circles, trying to find help using individual and group psychotherapy, with countless different practices, methods, seminars, self-help books and all kinds of techniques. But none of them managed to change my feeling that my painful past was still following me everywhere.

Everything changed for me when I found out about the Emotional Freedom Techniques and started applying them regularly. It almost felt like miracle work. The impossible began to seem possible. I will always have unresolved issues, but knowing that I can use this tool to address them gives me a sense of security and tranquility. I feel grounded, I have choices and boundless freedom.
I gained a new understanding of the difficult periods in my life, I liberated myself from the painful emotions I had been carrying, from my sense of hopelessness, from the need to hide myself because I fear disapproval.

I reclaimed my inner power!