What is Emotional Freedom Technique?

Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) is a form of psychological acupressure that combines elements of cognitive therapy with gentle tapping on specific meridian points to release emotional distress and physical pain. It is better defined as energy psychology that also utilizes the body's energy system.

EFT is not just positive thinking or affirmations. It is a comprehensive approach that addresses emotional blocks, limiting beliefs, traumatic memories, physical pain, and overall energetic imbalances through targeted tapping sequences. EFT does not depend on someone's ability to analyze or intellectualize their struggles and conflicts.

Instead, it uses gentle tapping on meridian endpoints as a tool to bring thoughts, memories, experiences, and struggles held in the body's energy system out into the open where they can be processed, released, and transformed. This allows for the ability to dialogue between different aspects of your emotional and energetic system leading to healing.

EFT uses specific tapping points, affirmations, breath work, and somatic awareness to express and release your experiences in a way that bypasses the thinking mind. This is important for those who feel stuck in cycles of anxiety, overwhelm, or emotional reactivity. If you have difficulty processing certain emotions or feel trapped by recurring negative thoughts, EFT can be beneficial to your therapeutic process and healing.

The Benefits of EFT Tapping include:

• Developing emotional regulation, reducing anxiety and overwhelm and fostering nervous system balance

• Build safety and trust in your body by calming the fight-flight-freeze response and inner reactivity

• Empowering individual self-soothing skills and tapping into the body's natural healing capacity

• Build more confidence and skills in managing intense emotions and stress responses

• Improved coping with triggers, life transitions, and overwhelming situations

• Promote emotional release by providing a healthy outlet for processing and letting go of stuck emotions

• Promotes self-discovery through tapping by acknowledging and releasing feelings that have been trapped in your nervous system and working through energetic blockages

• Relieves stress for body and mind while promoting deep relaxation

How Can EFT Tapping Help Me?

EFT has been found to be effective in reducing and managing symptoms of anxiety disorders, PTSD, depression, chronic pain, phobias, and emotional overwhelm by promoting healing through the body's energy meridian system.

Anxiety

EFT provides a way to calm your nervous system and reduce anxiety in the moment it's happening. The racing thoughts and physical sensations that often accompany anxiety can feel impossible to control through willpower alone. With the gentle tapping process, I can help you learn to regulate your nervous system and find calm. This allows you to work with your anxiety, rather than being overwhelmed by it.

Depression

EFT provides a means of supporting and lifting the heavy feelings of depression by encouraging gentle movement of stuck emotional energy. Depression can bring on persistent states of "feeling heavy" or "emotionally numb." Tapping provides a way to "start moving energy again," giving voice and release to emotions that feel too difficult to process. As an accessible form of therapy, EFT can be adapted to whatever energy level you have available.

Highly Sensitive Person

EFT is particularly helpful for HSPs who often absorb emotions and energy from their environment. It provides tools for managing situations where you feel overwhelmed by others' emotions and helps you learn to separate your feelings from external influences. EFT is effective for managing intense emotions, transitions, and establishing energetic boundaries through tapping and processing these experiences.

What is an EFT session like? Do I need to believe in energy work to benefit from EFT?

You do not need to believe in energy work to benefit from EFT. In fact, many clients are initially skeptical! EFT is psychotherapy that utilizes gentle tapping as one of many therapeutic tools, the most important being you and your lived experience. There is no set way that an EFT session is conducted as each session is person-centered and unfolds in accordance to your individual needs. However there are certain aspects that are consistent:

• The session will be a safe, confidential, trusting and a non-judgmental environment.

• There is no pressure to use tapping or utilize specific techniques in the first session, or any session, as it is your individual session and you choose when, how, and if to incorporate tapping.

• Although tapping can be a nonverbal process, it can be useful to reflect on what you're experiencing verbally with the therapist, but again, this is your choice.

• At the beginning of a session, I will invite you to share what's been going on in your life, what's been on your mind, areas of stress or overwhelm, and whether there are any goals you'd like to discuss. Don't worry. You don't have to come prepared with all this! It's our work to figure it out together! Each session is, essentially, a problem-solving session. You describe your current situation, your feelings about it, and then we work together to assist you in making steps to resolve that emotional charge in a way that empowers you and aligns with the kind of peace you'd like to experience. My goal as a therapist is for you to cultivate emotional freedom, self-regulation, and inner calm.