What’s up with EFT Tapping?
Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), is a mind-body method of tapping on specific meridian points on the body while focusing on negative emotions to promote emotional healing and well-being.
Tapping on acupressure spots related to meridian lines of Traditional Chinese Medicine feels deeply relaxing and when you’re also staying aware of pain it allows that awareness to move deeper and to release tension and trauma.
It can seem unusual to tap on one’s eyebrow, below the eye, collarbone while reminding oneself of the painful sensations, emotions and thoughts, and it can be surprising when emotional or physical pain reduces. This strange-looking process is becoming more well known and used, and it works!
My journey with tapping
I discovered tapping in 1998 when I had an old workplace event two years prior that I felt was unfair and was not able to let go of. I would wake at night remembering this and feel anger. I had done prayer and knew all the right things about how it was no longer serving me, and yet it didn’t change the night waking. A spiritual retreat friend pointed me to a website, saying “ go there, do that weird process” and I found a simple description of “tapping on specific body points while being aware of your issue”. I spent about 20 minutes first tapping through these points ranting and cussing. The next round through these points, I found myself acknowledging that it happened, it was unfair, I lived. By the next round I was chuckling at how I walked into a situation that I should have foreseen. By the end, I was bored by it and at peace when remembering it and was able to remember the good things about my workplace and colleagues. After this, I found myself more relaxed, clearer and assertive at work - a much more effective way to be.
With new-convert zeal, I began to follow the stories of all the ways people used this little miracle. I tapped for bee stings, deadline anxiety, feelings over misunderstandings with friends. I experienced time and again the feelings calming, new understandings arise. I would bug friends and family to tap. My pre-teen daughter who no longer loved my flaky interests threatened to ban me from her friends unless I promised not to mention tapping, even if someone had a skinned knee or headache.
I really sensed the power of this when immediately after a difficult wisdom tooth extraction, I tapped for about a half hour on anticipated pain. When freezing came out, I found that there was absolutely no pain unless I pressed where the actual tooth was extracted (ouch!!), and the pain-free lasted until it healed
Over the next years, I did online training by Gary Craig, EFT’s developer and then a one-year intensive training and certification using EFT as emotional coaching with Nancy Forrester and the National EFT Training Institute. Training included theory and practice in identifying and healing trauma, making life changes for a client as well as doing my own work.
As I moved from a research career and trained to be a psychotherapist I now belong to the Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology (ACEP) and participate on their Research Committee. I love using EFT tapping still in my own life and as an important part of my therapy work.
Emotional Freedom Therapy
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Therapy using EFT is part of the new wave of somatic therapy. It uses CBT techniques, such as awareness building, imaginal exposure, reframing of interpretation, and systematic desensitization.
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To make a change, we may explore to find negative beliefs and thoughts holding a pattern in place, and the events that gave rise to these thoughts. Where might you have learned you were not enough, or didn’t deserve.
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Sometimes current self-defeating patterns are rooted in trauma. EFT can be used to address traumatic memories within a process to create safety and allow gentle change.
Tapping as Self Care
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Tapping is an easy, safe and effective self care that can be tried for any arising physical or emotional upset. It does not replace medical care.
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Setting a daily time for 10 minutes of tapping can start to calm an overwhelmed nervous system for those struggling with stress or anxiety.
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When you are feeling particularly strong stress or anxiety, finding a space to do some tapping in-the-moment is great first aid.
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“Rant and tap” can be helpful to release anger and bring new perspectives and clarity.
Research shows that EFT tapping works
EFT tapping is well supported with clinical trials as well as a very large body of documented case studies. Recent systematic reviews (Church 2022 ; Feinstein 2019) summarize the clinical evidence.
As of August 2024, 99 randomized control trials, 95 pre-post outcome studies, 6 meta-analyses and 11 systematic reviews have been published on energy psychology methods, mostly EFT tapping in English-speaking, peer-reviewed journals.
EFT meets APA criteria for evidence-based practice for depression, anxiety, phobias, post-traumatic stress disorder. It has also been shown effective for physiological issues (e.g. pain, insomnia); professional and sports performance. Meta-analyses evaluating the effect of EFT treatment have found the amount of clinical improvement to be “moderate” to “large” and in some situations such as anxiety and depression this is larger than effect sizes for many medications.
A real-world study (Andrade 2004) confirmed effectiveness. 5000 people with anxiety presenting to public health clinics in Ecuador were randomized to a treatment program that used either tapping or cognitive-behaviour therapy (CBT). The tapping program had 25% more symptom free at treatment end than CBT (76% vs. 51%) with fewer sessions (average of 3 vs. 15).
EFT has been found to reduce cortisol, the stress hormone, improve biological markers of stress, and has shown beneficial effects in functional brain scans. Studies comparing EFT to the same process without tapping have shown that the tapping itself works.
Evidence supports that EFT tapping is an effective therapy.
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Feinstein D. Energy psychology: Efficacy, speed, mechanisms. Explore. 2019 Sep 1;15(5):340-51.
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Church D, Stapleton P, Vasudevan A, O'Keefe T. Clinical EFT as an evidence-based practice for the treatment of psychological and physiological conditions: A systematic review. Frontiers in psychology. 2022 Nov 10;13:951451.
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Andrade, J., & Feinstein, D. (2004). Energy psychology: Theory, indications, evidence. D. Feinstein, Energy psychology interactive, 199-214
Research shows tapping effective for:
• Pain
• Anxiety
• Depression
• Food cravings
• Trauma & PTSD
• Phobias
• Peak athletic . performance
• and more