By: Joyce Willis, MC, LPC
This article will introduce the EFT therapy technique. You’ll learn what EFT is and how it’s used at The Meadows to enhance therapy.
What Is EFT?
Emotional freedom technique (EFT) is a treatment method that’s essentially acupuncture without needles. It focuses on the body’s meridian points to restore balance to your energy. Originated from Chinese Medicine, meridians are also known as energy hot spots. These points balance energy flow to maintain your health. When these meridians are imbalanced, it can cause disease or sickness.
EFT is a treatment method that uses a tapping technique to stimulate various points on your body, relieving negative emotions or experiences. EFT tapping is combined with stating an identified problem followed by an affirmation phrase. Tapping balances meridians disrupted through trauma.
Trauma is anything that’s less than nurturing. Trauma can range from neglect and abandonment to emotional, physical, or sexual abuse. EFT helps balance the energy system and relieve psychological stress and pain.
Balancing energy allows the body and mind to heal. EFT is safe and easy to apply to many issues that we might struggle with. EFT releases blockages in the body associated with the problem you’re struggling with, allowing that feeling to release and move throughout the body.
EFT is an effective way of releasing unwanted feelings. Once these feelings are gone, more positive beliefs can emerge. EFT also empowers patients to handle their emotions because they can tap on unwanted or painful feelings. EFT can create lasting changes in your thinking and lead to a more balanced and positive life. It’s also easy to learn and can be done with a therapist or yourself.
What Is EFT Tapping?
EFT tapping breaks down into five steps. Depending on how many issues or fears you have, you can repeat this sequence as many times as needed to reduce or eliminate those negative feelings and experiences.
1. Identify the Issue
To maximize the benefits of EFT, you must identify the issue or fear that you have. This is what you’ll focus the tapping technique on. We recommend focusing on one problem or fear at a time, but it’s not entirely necessary to enhance the outcome.
2. Test the Initial Intensity
Once you decide which issue or fear you want to release, you should rate its intensity on a scale from 1-10. This allows you to determine the severity of your emotional or physical pain and discomfort surrounding this. Establishing a benchmark allows you to evaluate your progress once you complete the EFT sequence.
3. Establish the Setup
Before you begin tapping, you should acknowledge your issues or fears and accept yourself despite the problem. This helps you determine what affirmation phrase you’re going to use. Affirmation phrases shouldn’t address someone else’s problem. They must focus on how the problem or fear makes you feel to relieve your pain or discomfort adequately.
4. Begin EFT Tapping Sequence
Although 12 key meridians mirror each side of the body, EFT primary focuses on these nine that correspond with an internal organ:
- Karate chop (KC) small intestine meridian
- Top of the head (TH): governing vessel
- Eyebrow (EB): bladder meridian
- Side of the eye (SE): gallbladder meridian
- Under the eye (UE): stomach meridian
- Under the nose (UN): governing vessel
- Chin (Ch): central vessel
- Beginning of the collarbone (CB): kidney meridian
- Under the arm (UA): spleen meridian
You’ll begin with the karate chop point, where you’ll recite your setup phrase. There’s a recommended sequence for tapping to balance your energy. You’ll repeat this sequence as you continue tapping the issue away.
- Eyebrow
- Side of the eye
- Under the eye
- Under the nose
- Chin
- Beginning of the collarbone
- Under the arm
As you continue the tapping technique, recite a reminder phrase to maintain focus on your problem area.
5. Test the Final Intensity
Once you complete the tapping sequence, rate your final intensity from 1-10 and compare your results to your initial benchmark. If you haven’t reached 0, repeat the sequence until you do.
EFT Setup Phrases
If your issue is worrying about money, your reminder statement might be:
“Even though I feel anxious about money,” with the added affirmation, “I still deeply and completely accept myself.”
When you’re ready to begin the tapping technique, you’ll recite the entire phrase:
“Even though I feel anxious about money, I still deeply and completely accept myself.”
As you’re tapping on each of the points, you can shorten the phrase, so you’re not saying the entire phrase for each tapping point. For instance, when you tap on your eyebrow, you can simply say: “anxious.” Then, moving to the side of your eye, you can say, “money.”
As you move through the remainder of the tapping points, you can incorporate the rest of the reminder statement; under eye, “deeply and completely,” under nose; “accept myself.” You can continue tapping this way, with shorter phrases that make up the complete reminder statement until you move your discomfort down to 0 or 1.
Then, you might want to repeat the sequence one more round with the reminder statement and re-rate your discomfort to ensure you indeed are at 0 or 1 with your discomfort around the issue.
Tapping can be done on ourselves with any emotion, any block or belief that we no longer want to hold onto. We can tap when we’re angry at a loved one: “Even though I am angry that ____ yelled at me, I still deeply and completely accept myself.”
We can tap when we’ve had a bad day; “Even though I have had a bad day, I still deeply and completely accept myself.” We can tap about leaving our pet while we go on extended vacation: “Even though I feel guilty for leaving Fido while I go on vacation, I still deeply and completely accept myself.”
You’ve probably noticed that the affirmation stays the same no matter the reminder statement. This is important to disrupt the carried emotions and re-charge our body’s energy into a positive direction, restoring the naturally recurring flow of the human body.
EFT is an excellent technique for self-care and balancing yourself. For people suffering from trauma and addictions, balancing with EFT can help. Although the memory might stay, the emotional charge will be gone. We can resolve everyday issues and move on to be more balanced throughout the day. EFT leads to positive changes in thinking and more balanced life.
EFT at The Meadows
Emotional freedom technique (EFT) is an adjunct therapy that heavily aids in trauma treatment. Emotional healing techniques also reverse your body’s positive energy flow with drug, alcohol, and sex addiction. When we experience these issues in our lives, it’s like we’ve put the battery into our body in the wrong way.
Using EFT tapping re-sets the battery and puts it in the right way. Tapping can change the biochemistry of the body. Continued tapping on trauma and addiction issues leads to emotional freedom. When dealing with trauma, addictions, and intensity issues, we recommend using EFT with a trained therapist. We strongly recommend practicing EFT with an EFT-trained therapist first before doing it by yourself.
At The Meadows, we utilize therapist-assisted EFT to help patients with specific issues. Therapists trained in EFT will take patients through the “Tell the Story” technique to lead them through issues they need to work on. The “Tell the Story” technique helps patients work through emotions that have disrupted the body’s energy system. The EFT-trained therapist will work with patients on specific events and tap through extreme circumstances and issues.
By working on the specific events and tapping through extreme circumstances and issues, patients will balance themselves in the Core Issues. Patients will begin to realize their inherent worth, develop more functional boundaries, understand the reality of their humanity and realize they are human and perfectly imperfect, have a better understanding of their needs and wants, and learn to be interdependent. Patients will also learn how to balance themselves to live in moderation in every aspect of their life.
About Joyce Willis
Joyce Willis is a Licensed Professional Counselor and currently a therapist at The Meadows. She earned her Bachelor of Education degree from the University of Akron. After teaching for several years, Joyce earned a Master’s degree in counseling from the University of Phoenix. She’s been in the counseling profession since 1996 and has worked extensively in the addictions field throughout that time. Her specialties include treatment for addictions, grief, trauma, depression, and anxiety. Joyce has a particular interest in mindfulness and helping people connect their emotional, spiritual, mindful, and physiological selves with compassion and respect.
Resources
The EFT Manual by Gary Craig
On this website, you can check out information about The Personal Peace Procedure and further information about Gary Craig, the founder of EFT.