Have you ever wondered why, even though you genuinely want to change something in your life, it feels as though a part of you is holding on?
You may want to overcome anxiety, heal from chronic pain, let go of a fear, or break free from a habit that no longer serves you. Yet every time you take a step forward, something seems to pull you back.
This doesn’t mean you’re not trying hard enough.
Very often, what keeps us stuck is something known as a secondary gain.
What Are Secondary Gains?
Secondary gains are the unconscious benefits that can come from maintaining a difficult condition, symptom, or behaviour.
This doesn’t mean that anyone consciously chooses to suffer. Rather, a part of the mind or nervous system has come to associate the symptom with something valuable or necessary.
Perhaps it’s receiving more care and attention.
Perhaps it’s finally allowing yourself to rest.
Perhaps it’s feeling accepted.
Perhaps it’s a sense of safety.
Or perhaps it’s avoiding a difficult decision or a situation that feels overwhelming.
In these cases, the symptom becomes an unconscious way of meeting a deeper emotional need.
A Few Examples
Someone lives with chronic back pain.
While they are confined to bed, the people around them care for them, help them, and offer them more attention than they felt they received before.
Another person experiences intense anxiety whenever they have to speak in public. As a result, they avoid presentations, new responsibilities, or career opportunities that, deep down, feel frightening.
Someone who constantly feels exhausted may, for the first time, give themselves permission to rest without feeling guilty.
In all of these situations, no one truly wants the pain, the anxiety, or the exhaustion.
What they unconsciously fear losing is the benefit that comes with it.
How Can EFT Help?
In EFT, we don’t see the symptom as the enemy.
Instead, we approach it as a message—one that may be pointing to an unmet need.
During an EFT session, we don’t only explore what is causing distress. We also explore what purpose the symptom may be serving beneath the surface. The goal is to help you recognise the deeper need it has been meeting and discover healthier, more empowering ways to fulfil that need.
You don’t have to suffer in order to give yourself time and space, ask for support, rest, or set healthy boundaries. These are needs you can learn to honour without guilt—and without your body or emotions having to “speak” through symptoms.
Questions such as:
- If this problem disappeared tomorrow, what would change?
- Is there anything you might lose if it were gone?
- What need is this symptom meeting for you today?
- Is there another way to meet that same need?
often open the door to profound insight.
When the true benefit is recognised and the underlying need can be met in a healthier way, the nervous system no longer needs to hold on so tightly to the old pattern.
What Can EFT Offer?
EFT can help you discover not only what is keeping you stuck, but also why a part of you continues to hold on.
Through this process, you can develop a deeper awareness of the unconscious patterns that influence your thoughts, emotions, and behaviours, release the emotional charge they carry, and create healthier ways of meeting your needs.
Change then becomes less about willpower and more about understanding, safety, and working with yourself rather than against yourself.
When a Part of You Says “No”
Sometimes, the answer isn’t to push yourself harder.
Sometimes, it’s to listen to the part of you that continues to hold on to the symptom—not with judgment, but with curiosity.
Instead of asking, “Why can’t I let this go?”, we begin asking, “What is this trying to protect me from?”
Very often, when that part realises it can experience the same safety, care, rest, or sense of connection in healthier ways, it no longer needs to keep the problem alive.
EFT offers a gentle and compassionate way to begin that conversation, creating space for lasting change that comes from within.
EFT sessions are intended to complement—not replace—medical care, psychological treatment, or psychotherapy.
