This short little book by William & Carleen Glasser  is full of wisdom, and though it takes less than two hours to read, I have summarized the advice in the book below.  I recommend that you buy the book and keep it as a refresher whenever your marriage or relationship starts going off the rails. Most of the chapters end with a question a couple can ask themselves, and I have added this question in bold at the end of each summarized point. Of course, if you need more explanation or convincing on any of the points below, the book is available at the Edmonton Public Library.  William Glasser is the author of Choice Theory and a proponent of Reality Theory in Psychology.

1.       External Control can kill a marriage - You will be unsuccessful at controlling each other, but it will destroy your marriage if you continue to try.
If your mate continually tries to control you, what could you do to benefit your marriage?

2.       We choose all our behavior- our 5 basic needs are Survival, Love and Belonging, Freedom, Fun and Power.
 How compatible is the way you are attempting to satisfy your basic needs with the way your partner is choosing to get his or her needs met?

3.       Never use the Seven Deadly Habits.   The seven deadly habits are criticism, blaming, complaining, nagging, threatening, punishing and bribing. (Inflexibility is tacked on as an eighth deadly habit, later in the chapter.) Replace these with caring habits of supporting, encouraging, listening, accepting, and trusting/being trustworthy, respecting each other, and negotiating differences.
Which of the caring habits do we need to work on first in order to get along better?

4.       Get acquainted with each other's quality world. This world is made up of pictures of the people we most enjoy, the images of the things we get most pleasure from and the systems of belief that govern our lives. What is it you need to negotiate to make each other's quality worlds more compatible?

5.       Understand total behavior: If you are willing to change your thinking and acting (the front wheels of your relationship) which you have voluntary control over, then your feelings and physiology (your rear wheels)  will be positively affected.  Which wheels are in control of our marriage- our front wheels or our back wheels?

6.       A little creativity can save your marriage. Surprise your partner in an argument and say, you know what, I see your point. Make an effort to show appreciation for each other. Bring in some fun and keep laughter alive. When is the last time we used our creativity to have a good time together?

7.       At your discretion, share what you are doing for your marriage with your children. The authors include a little skit that you can go through with your kids and use to explain what you are attempting to do.

I hope to see some of you out at the Literacy and Learning Day Conference on Saturday, April 19, at NAIT.

These three statements were recommended on the EFT w---t l---s forum and people seem to have gotten good results using them, finding the pounds melting effortlessly away.
Even though I have no control over what I eat, I accept myself.
Even though I have no control over when I eat, I accept myself.
Even though I have no control over how much I eat, I accept myself.
Tap the karate chop point (side of the hand)  while repeating each statement three times. If you get tired of this, go through the other points while saying the statements out loud, and definitely let me know how it works for you.

Some of you know that I co-moderate the EFT anxiety forum. This posting by Starsailor (used with her permission) should give some hope to anyone that has suffered from this debilitating problem. Starsailor also gives some excellent advice on how to get started quickly with EFT.

Hi there, I had very bad panic attacks last year but haven't had one in a few months now. Some days I was so bad that I couldn't even sit up. But I have succeeded in getting rid of them - just the occasional flare up now and again -  so I would say you have come to the right place.If you want to learn EFT very quickly, just tick the on the link below, enter your email address and hit the button. 

 http://www.emofree.com/downloadeftmanual.asp 

Your manual will be emailed to you and you can learn how to do basic EFT in less than twenty minutes.  Also, spend as much time anywhere on emofree.com as you can, learning as much as you can.  It might be easier for you to read the manual and learn the EFT procedure first, so that you are familiar with the terms like "reversal", "the PR point", "basic recipe", and all the other terms, otherwise what you read on the site  won't make too much sense. Once you are familiar with the terminology, try the archives link below for lots of case histories.

http://www.emofree.com/Archives.aspx

Although not necessary, it might help you to order the DVDs because watching other people succeed, even on issues not related to yours, can provide reassurance for you during the really tough times.
Once you are up and running with the technique, four things that I can tell you that might help you are:   (Read  On)
1)  By now, your problem will have at least two causes.  The first one is the original fear that started off the panic attacks, and the second one, which grows with time, is the fear of the actual panic attacks. So firstly you need to try and collapse the issues that caused the panic attacks, but additionally you need to tap many times a day on fear of the panic attacks: 

• Even though I have this fear of the panic attacks, I deeply and completely accept myself.
• Even though I'm scared that these panic attacks will never go away, I deeply love and accept myself.
• Even though I have this fear of the panic attacks because they take all the power out of my legs, I deeply...
• Even though I have this fear of the panic attacks because I can't breathe, I deeply...[Obviously you would substitute in whichever physical symptoms you have]
  

2)  Prefixing - this was a huge help to me.  What you do is that you prefix every problem with "not safe to let go of" and/or "cannot let go of".  A lot of the time I would get stuck and the fear would just not go away, but then I would add in the prefixes and it worked extremely well.  So the way this goes is as follows:

• Even though it is not safe to let go of this fear of the panic attacks, I deeply and completely accept myself.
• Even though I cannot let go of this fear of the panic attacks, I deeply....
• Even though it is not safe for me to let go of this fear that the panic attacks will never go away, I deeply....
• Even though I cannot let go of this fear that the panic attacks will never go away, I deeply....

Do several rounds on each of these and you may notice that one works better than others, and then you can sort of stick with that one.  But don't forget that if one of them stops working well for you, try the other ones again.
3)  Plain old acupressure, without the EFT, was very helpful to me also. The points that helped me most are H7 on the wrist, P6 on the inner forearm and GV26 under the nose.  Push and hold any of these points for a minute or so.  Frequently all the strength went out of my arms and I couldn't push on the points with very much pressure, so if this happens to you, use an object such as a pencil or a button or something hard to help increase the pressure without you having to push so hard. If you don't know where these points are, google them to get some diagrams.
4)  Learn how to do Pat Carrington's choices method and do that sometimes too i.e. incorporate some positive language in there. You are in a spiral of negativity now and you will be pushing negative thoughts into your head all day long.  Even if you only get five minutes of positive phrases per day, it'll make all the difference.  You need to use anything all all that puts something positive into your life.  Don't aim for anything spectacularly high ("I choose to feel completely calm and comfortable now") because you will just reject that outright.  Instead, aim for the best that you can do under the circumstances: 
I choose to feel a little better now. 
I choose to remember other people live with this condition and I'm managing to do just that  [which is a great achievement, by the way] . I choose to remember other people have beaten this condition, and there's a good chance that I will either lessen it or beat it too.
I choose to remember that there are thousands of case histories in the EFT archives and they can't ALL be lying, so this procedure must really work.
Good luck and I know how horrible it all is but learn the tapping and then persist, persist, persist and you'll find that the gaps between the panic attacks grow longer and longer.