Think of tapping therapy as the golden middle between eastern and western medicine. It combines elements from acupuncture and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and promises results from session one. What is really possible with EFT tapping and what happens during a session? Here's a sneak peek in my therapy room.
EFT tapping therapy - How it all started
A lesser-known fact about emotional freedom therapy is that it was developed by a US Stanford engineer. His personal interest in psychology led him to develop his own therapeutic approach. Without any medical training under his belt, he got obsessed about testing the results of his endeavours.
I’m not talking about smart devices and lab tests though. I’m talking about finding a way to allow clients to evaluate for themselves the success of the therapy he gave them. One hell of a Rubik’s cube, and he solved it, by simply introducing an intensity rating routine at his sessions.
If, for example, a client showed up frustrated because her husband made another marriage-killing comment about her spending habits, he would ask her to rate the frustration on a scale from 0 to 10. At the end of the session, he would say the husband's comment out loud and ask her to rate the intensity of her frustration again. And...voila! One man's quest for practicality raised the bar for deliverables in counselling rooms across the world.
How is tapping different to traditional counselling?
While most people focus on the tapping points and the immediate relief EFT can bring, the real differentiator is EFT's revolutionary understanding of stress.
Let’s take a look at the theory behind emotional freedom therapy. Think of an event in your life that stresses you and causes tightness in the stomach. Let's say, your boss made a dismissive comment about your performance. Obviously, it's his comment that stresses you out. If he hadn't make that comment, you wouldn’t be feeling this tightness in the stomach, right? EFT begs to disagree.
According to the EFT school of thought, it is not the comment that causes the distress. Instead, it’s the underlying disruption in your body’s energy system. Sounds like the same thing? Think again. Past events cannot be changed. But if the problem is the energy disruption, then all it takes to let bygones be bygones is to balance out the energy disruption. And that’s exactly what emotional freedom therapy does.
What happens during an EFT tapping session?
Step one is detective work. The tapping therapist starts with identifying the problem and rating its intensity. This involves understanding current frustrations, physical discomforts and negative beliefs.
The tapping therapist will then ask you for a specific event from your childhood years, when you got to feel the same way. For example, at 7 I spilled all of my breakfast on the sofa, mum lashed out and I got anxious. And now it's time for the tapping to begin.
1. State the problem
Every round of tapping starts with stating and accepting the problem of the childhood event, not the current problem.
You tap and say | What happens in the body |
“Even though mum is screaming at me for spilling the breakfast on the sofa and I'm anxious, I deeply and completely accept myself." | The body tunes into the energy disruption underlying the anxiety. |
Balance out the disruption (#stress_release) You tap around the 9 tapping points while repeating the problem:
You tap and say | What happens in the body |
“I’m anxious” | The energy flow is being restored |
Test results
How anxious are you now when recalling the childhood event?
What you do | What happens in the body |
You do as many tapping rounds as necessary until the intensity gets close to 0-2. | Once the disruption is balanced out, you will feel a sense of calmness about this memory. |
Time to test what you achieved by re-rating the intensity of your current problem.
The beauty of emotional freedom therapy is that it moves the needle on current problems, without having to analyse them.
Fun fact: When a client starts with a 10/10 rating and finishes with a 1/10, I love asking them if they remember the starting rating. The most common guess is 8/10 followed by a pleasantly surprised face, when I fill them in. Why is that? Because once the disruption is restored, it's hard to re-create the negative emotion.
The science behind emotional freedom therapy
Does EFT sound too good to be true? You bet it does. That’s what got scientists in the UK and the US to put their lab coats on and do research. Here’s what they found.
"EFT has been shown to reduce cortisol, the body's primary stress hormone, leading to a state of calm and improved nervous system regulation."
Source: SageJournals
"The results of this study confirm our hypothesis on the positive role of EFT on headache relief through stress management in patients suffering from Tension-Type Headache."
Source: Elsevier
"EFT is found to be efficacious for a range of psychological and physiological conditions. Comparatively few treatment sessions are required, treatment is effective whether delivered in person or virtually, and symptom improvements persist over time."
Source: FrontiersinPsychology
Will emotional freedom therapy work for me?
If I answer that, you’ll probably think I’m biased. So, I’ll let the U.S. National Institutes of Health do the job.
"EFT has been found efficacious in widely disparate groups, including hospital patients, war veterans, victims of sexual violence, school children, college students, teachers, health care workers, cancer patients, athletes, pre-surgery patients, mothers, dental patients, psychotherapists, diabetics, and survivors of natural disasters."
Source: US National Library of Medicine
Time for an EFT tapping recap
Now imagine for a moment the most annoying thing your partner or a family member does. Are you irritated because of them or is it due to a disruption in your own body? If you are tempted to say "duh, it's them!", you might want to consider some emotional freedom therapy! Here are my tapping services. Just saying.
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