Reply To: Pleasantly Surprised Newbie Needs Advice, Please
Frances PonickHi, Paul,
Thank you for your sensitive reading of my state of mind. 
I love that I don't have to figure everything out, although I must admit that part of the challenge is trusting what appears to be a somewhat random process. I'm taking some steps to sort it out while still allowing for spontaneity and impulse.
Recently I purchased PQT, so now I'm working with Click Tracks, Belief Blasters, and PQT. I use CT for just plain misery—for times when accessing or even guessing beliefs of any kind is just too hard—as many times as needed to remove jagged edges and at least feel neutral, and I'm experimenting with the other two.
At first I just wrote a few notes or nothing at all. Lately I've begun to track the basics, meaning just the date, whatever tool I've used, the phases or action (tapping, for example), and thoughts that come to mind when the session is done.
Meditation has taught me that small, steady effort is best for me (even though I always want instant action—oh well!). I'm aiming at daily sessions of no longer than 30 minutes. Not there yet, but they will come if I'm nice to myself and don't scold or cajole.
BTW, I'd have to say that figuring out how to be genuinely kind to oneself can be very hard to do, yet it's well worth the effort. Lots more to say, but I'll save it for another time—the short version is that I discovered that, like meditation, it's a habit one acquires. If you let it, each failure can become an opportunity to try again. The big success? When you can resume your efforts to be nice to yourself without first stopping to yell at yourself for screwing up! :
Warm regards,
Fran
PS I was born in Dublin. My father was born in Galway and spent time in Belfast as a small boy. Talking about his childhood one time, he mentioned that he and his sisters used to sleep under the bed, because soldiers would drive through the streets at night shooting through upstairs windows. Even in his nineties, he remembered sleeping under the bed in Belfast at that time as nothing special, but rather simple common sense. It's amazing what people can get used to in order to survive, isn't it?