Tapping for Anxiety
Emotional Freedom Technique, or EFT tapping, is an acupressure technique used to support the body in relieving unpleasant emotions or pain through holistic healing. It brings together aspects of emotion regulation with Chinese medicine to help your body communicate with your brain. Similar to how acupuncture uses very small needles to stimulate healing and energy flow in the body, acupressure can stimulate the same energy centers in a different way for healing.
EFT tapping for anxiety uses gentle touch on specific meridian points on your body while focusing on the anxiety you’re experiencing in that moment. By focusing on the emotion itself while tapping, your brain reduces the intensity of the emotion. What my clients often find interesting is that it is not a distraction skill, yet the intensity of their emotions drops similarly to if they had done something distracting instead!
If you ever watch someone use tapping, you will often see the person tapping their fingertips on the pressure points on the body. If you do not like the sensation of tapping or it feels overstimulating to you, you can either (1) gently press on the point with light pressure or (2) rub the point with light pressure. Tapping is meant to be calming, so you want to use a method of touch that is calming for you.
Does tapping really work for anxiety?
Yes! There is a lot of research out there showing the effectiveness of tapping in reducing the intensity of anxiety. In fact, the NIH National Library of Medicine (National Center for Biotechnology Information) has identified EFT tapping as an evidence-based practice for treating anxiety, along with depression, phobias, and PTSD!
How to use tapping for anxiety
There are 5 steps for using eft tapping for anxiety, focusing on 10 pressure points on the body. With tapping, you’ll be applying gentle acupressure for anxiety to specific points that promote healing.
1. Name the emotion and rate the initial intensity
Before you can begin tapping on anxiety, you need to clarify what the anxiety is. First, you want to try and name the specific type of anxiety (worry, panic, fear, dread, perfectionism).
Second, you’ll rate the intensity of that feeling on a 0-10 scale (0 = cool as a cucumber, 10 = feels like a heart attack).
Third, you’ll identify a few words to describe the anxiety more. This could be physical signs (tight muscles, upset stomach, sweating, talking about it a lot) or internal experiences (frequent-flyer thoughts, urges to do something specific, feeling scatterbrained or hyper-focused). It helps to have 1-2 physical and 1-2 internal experiences to describe the feeling. You’ll use these in step 3. I find it helpful to write down the emotion, descriptive words, and problem on a note to help me remember them in the sequence.
Tap on the outside edge of your palm while saying the following statement three times
“Even though I have this anxiety, I deeply and completely love and accept myself.”
If in step 1 you were able to name a more specific type of anxiety (worry, dread, nervous), use that word in place of anxiety in the statement above.
2. The set-up
3. The sequence
Starting from the top of your head, go through each of the 8 points shown below while stating the descriptive words. You’ll say one word with each point, rotating through the words.
Where should you tap for anxiety?
Top of head: the in the middle of the top of your head, center from both sides and front/back
Eyebrow: the inner start of the eyebrow, on the brow bone
Side of eye: the outer edge of the eye, on the bone
Under eye: the center point under your eye, on the bone
Under nose: the space between your nose and your upper lip
Chin: the dimple of your chin
Collarbone: find the point of your collarbone that sticks up a bit, and go out 1 inch and down 1 inch (soft tissue, no bone)
Underarm: 4 inches below your armpit, for women, it’s about where your bra band sits.
It’s okay for the words to repeat, and any word can be said at any point. You can also choose to repeat words that you feel are particularly strong feelings or sensations. You can also replace words with synonyms or more specific descriptions if anything pops into your brain while doing the sequence. You can also use these fill-in-the-blank phrases to say while tapping on different points: “I have this ___” “This ___ in my ___” “It feels ___” “All this ___”
For example, “I have this worry”, “this worry in my stomach”, “it feels queasy”, “all this restlessness in my body”, “I feel impatient”, “I’m hyper-focusing on the details”, “it feels worrisome”, “all this worry”
4. The close
Tap on the Gamut Point. NOTE: this point is small, I find it helpful to use gentle pressure to just hold this point rather than tap on it.
While tapping/holding the Gamut Point, say one of the following resolving statements:
“It’s safe to let it go.” “I deeply and completely love and accept myself.” “I am calm.”
BONUS: place your hands over your heart and repeat the resolving statement to bring a sense of closure to the cycle.
5. Rate the final intensity
Once you’ve completed 3-4 rounds of the sequence and close, you’ll rate the intensity of the emotion again on the same 0-10 scale. Ideally, you’ll notice a drop in the score as the intensity is less than when you started. If you don’t notice a drop in intensity, scroll down to “How do I know if my tapping is working?” for tips.
When we talk about a cycle, we talk about using these 5 steps in sequence, with step 3 being repeated several times before moving on to step 4.
How long should you tap for anxiety?
One cycle of tapping includes the steps listed above, and 3-4 rounds of the sequence repeated in a row. You may find that afterward, the intensity has dropped enough and you’re all set. Sometimes though, you may have another emotion or a few that all need to be tapped on, so you may do several cycles of the steps, each focusing on different emotions.
How do I know if my tapping is working?
After completing all of the steps for EFT tapping, you should notice a drop in the intensity of your anxiety. Some of the descriptor words you used initially may no longer feel present. If your initial score is in the 7-10 range, the goal of EFT tapping is to bring the intensity down to a 0-3.
If you notice that it doesn’t drop at all or only drops a number or 2, you may need to go back to step 1 and narrow down the focus. Sometimes when a problem is “too big” and we try to tap on it all at once, it gets stuck and doesn’t change. You can narrow the focus by:
(1) getting more specific with the emotion name, and doing multiple cycles to focus on each part of the bigger emotion. For example, if you’re feeling anxious about an upcoming presentation you might do 1 cycle on nervousness about speaking in front of others, a second cycle on stress of remembering all the information, a third cycle on worries about knowing the answers to any questions you might get from the audience, and so on.
(2) getting more specific with parts of the problem triggering the emotion. For example, if you’re feeling anxious about an upcoming family gathering you might do 1 cycle focusing on your worries about what mom might say, a second cycle focusing on nervousness about what your siblings may bring up, a third cycle on dread about grandpa’s opinions that will undoubtedly be shared, and so-on.
If you’ve tried these methods and are not feeling the benefits of tapping, it may help to connect with a therapist who specializes in tapping for anxiety to support you! If you’re in Illinois, North Carolina, or South Carolina, Kimberleigh can help! Click here to schedule a consult now!
Do you have to speak during EFT tapping?
One of the key parts of tapping for anxiety is the language used to describe it while you’re doing the tapping. It can be powerful to speak the words out loud when you’re doing the tapping, but it is not required. If you’re focusing on saying the words in your mind while doing the tapping, you will notice the same benefit. You may even notice the benefit of tapping without speaking or thinking specific words at all but pairing the words with the tapping does increase the effectiveness.
How do I get help with EFT tapping for anxiety?
Now that you know what tapping is and how it works, get support from Kimberleigh at Mindfully Balanced Therapy to start using it in your life! Kimberleigh can walk you through the exercise, help you identify the words to use with the tapping exercises, guide you through tapping on specific emotions that arise in sessions, and support you with troubleshooting when it feels like tapping isn’t working how you expect it to. Click here to schedule a free consult call today!