Frequently Asked Questions about EFT

Yes. EFT now has a substantial and growing body of peer-reviewed research behind it.

It has been investigated in randomised controlled trials, systematic reviews and meta-analyses for problems including anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress, stress, food cravings and chronic pain. Research has also examined physiological changes associated with EFT, including cortisol levels.

Australian psychologist and researcher Professor Peta Stapleton of Bond University has conducted and published extensive research into EFT, and organisations such as EFT International maintain large databases of published EFT research.

Research is continuing, and as with virtually every therapeutic approach, the strength of the evidence varies between different conditions. However, EFT is no longer a technique supported only by anecdotal reports. There is a significant scientific literature investigating its effects.

It’s a perfectly reasonable question. EFT can look almost too simple when you first see it.

EFT combines several elements. While tapping, we deliberately bring a troubling thought, memory, emotion or physical sensation into awareness. This means we aren’t simply distracting ourselves from the problem. We are working with the emotional response while the nervous system is receiving the sensory stimulation created by tapping.

Research into the mechanisms of EFT is continuing, and there are different theories about exactly why it works. What matters most in a session, however, is not whether you subscribe to a particular theory. We can observe whether the intensity of your emotional response actually changes.

No.

You don’t have to believe in acupuncture meridians, subtle energy or any particular explanation of EFT. You don’t even have to be convinced that tapping will work.

Healthy scepticism is perfectly welcome.

Rather than asking you to believe in EFT, I would much rather help you try it on a real issue and notice what happens. If a feeling that was an 8 out of 10 becomes a 3, or if you think about something that normally upsets you and discover that it no longer has the same emotional charge, that experience is more useful than an argument about theory.

No practitioner can responsibly guarantee that any therapeutic approach will work for every person or every problem.

What I can say is that EFT has been successfully used with a very wide range of emotional difficulties, and clinical research supports its use in a number of areas.

I have also been working with EFT since 2013 and have repeatedly seen people experience meaningful shifts in problems that had been troubling them for a long time.

An advantage of EFT is that we can usually get some indication relatively quickly of whether we are moving in the right direction. We continually observe what is changing rather than simply talking about the problem and hoping that something is happening.

If you’re unsure whether EFT is appropriate for your situation, we can discuss it during a free Discovery Session before you decide whether you would like to proceed.

People use EFT for a very wide range of emotional and behavioural issues. These can include:

• anxiety and excessive worry
• stress and feeling overwhelmed
• fears and phobias
• painful or upsetting memories
• relationship and breakup distress
• grief and loss
• rejection
• anger and resentment
• guilt and shame
• confidence and self-esteem
• procrastination and emotional blocks
• performance anxiety
• cravings and emotional eating
• unwanted habits
• stress associated with physical pain or health problems

EFT can also be useful when you understand your problem perfectly well intellectually but knowing why you feel something hasn’t actually changed the way you feel.

That is a situation I see quite often.

Not necessarily.

The length of time you have had a problem does not always tell us how long it will take to change it.

One of the most striking things about EFT is that an emotional response that has existed for many years can sometimes change surprisingly quickly once we identify and work with the experiences or triggers maintaining it.

That doesn’t mean every long-standing problem disappears in one session. Complex problems often contain many different aspects — memories, beliefs, triggers and emotional associations — and these may need to be worked through individually.

But I would not assume that because you have carried something for twenty years, you must spend another several years trying to resolve it.

Sometimes surprisingly quickly.

I have seen meaningful changes occur within a session and, on some very specific issues, within minutes. This potential for relatively rapid change is one of the reasons I find EFT such a useful modality.

At the same time, it is important to distinguish between resolving one particular emotional trigger and resolving an entire complex problem.

A specific fear or painful memory might change rapidly. A broader issue involving many experiences, relationships, beliefs and triggers will usually require us to work through a number of different aspects.

The aim is not to make EFT take as long as possible. It is to identify what is keeping the problem in place and work through it as efficiently and thoroughly as we can.

There isn’t a standard number that applies to everybody.

Some people notice a substantial improvement after only one or a few sessions. More complex or long-standing issues may require a series of sessions because there are multiple aspects to work through.

We will monitor your progress as we go. EFT lends itself particularly well to this because we can frequently check the intensity of feelings, reactions and physical sensations during the session.

I don’t believe in keeping someone coming to sessions simply because a predetermined programme says they should. The number of sessions should be guided by what you want to achieve and the progress we are actually making.

We begin by discussing what you would like help with and identifying a useful starting point.

I may ask you about particular situations, thoughts, memories, emotions or physical sensations associated with the issue. We then use EFT while paying attention to what happens.

Usually you will tap on yourself while I guide you through the process and tap along with you.

As the emotional intensity changes, other thoughts, memories or aspects of the issue may come to mind. We follow these clues and work with what emerges.

An EFT session is therefore not normally a matter of repeating the same tapping script again and again. It is an interactive process in which we investigate the structure of your particular problem and work through its different components.

Not necessarily, and certainly not in a deliberately overwhelming way.

When we work with an upsetting experience, some emotional activation is often useful because it gives us something specific to work with. However, EFT includes gentle approaches that allow us to work gradually with highly charged material.

You do not necessarily have to describe every detail of an experience to me, and there are ways of beginning at a distance from a particularly painful memory rather than plunging directly into its most distressing part.

You remain in control of the process. If something becomes too intense, we can slow down, change direction or stop.

Talking can be extremely useful. Understanding what happened, seeing patterns and putting an experience into words can all be valuable.

But sometimes people reach a frustrating point where they understand their problem very well and still feel exactly the same way.

You might know intellectually that you shouldn’t be afraid, shouldn’t feel guilty, shouldn’t care what somebody thinks or shouldn’t still be upset about something that happened ten years ago. Yet your emotional response doesn’t seem interested in your logical conclusions.

EFT gives us a way of working directly with that emotional response.

This is one of the reasons it can be particularly useful for people who say, “I know all of this already. I just can’t stop feeling it.”

You absolutely can learn basic EFT yourself, and I encourage people to use it as a self-help tool.

There is, however, a significant difference between knowing where the tapping points are and knowing what to tap on.

When EFT appears not to be working, the problem is often not the tapping itself. We may be focusing too generally, working on the wrong aspect, missing an important underlying event or belief, or unconsciously avoiding the part of the issue that carries the greatest emotional charge.

An experienced practitioner can listen for these clues, ask questions you may not think to ask yourself, notice changes as they occur and help you navigate more complicated emotional material.

A useful comparison is exercise: knowing how to perform an exercise doesn’t mean there is never any benefit in working with an experienced trainer.

Not necessarily.

There are many reasons why tapping on an issue may produce little or no noticeable change.

One of the most common is being too general. Tapping on “my anxiety”, “my confidence” or “my childhood”, for example, may not be nearly as effective as identifying the specific situations, memories, sensations and meanings that make up the larger problem.

Sometimes an apparently simple issue also has protective layers. Part of you may genuinely want the problem to disappear while another part associates changing it with danger, vulnerability, guilt or some other unwanted consequence.

None of this means EFT will necessarily work in every case. But an unsuccessful attempt at self-tapping doesn’t automatically tell us what would happen with more skilful, individualised work.

EFT can be particularly interesting for cravings because the intensity of a craving can often be measured before and after tapping.

Research has investigated EFT for food cravings and related eating behaviours, and reductions in cravings are also commonly reported in practice.

Addiction, however, can involve much more than the immediate urge to consume something. Stress, emotional triggers, habits, social circumstances, beliefs and past experiences can all contribute.

EFT allows us to work not only with the craving itself but also with some of these underlying emotional triggers.

For significant substance dependence or other serious addictions, EFT should be used as part of an appropriate broader treatment plan rather than as a substitute for specialised medical or addiction care.

EFT is not a substitute for medical diagnosis or necessary medical treatment, and I do not diagnose or treat medical conditions.

However, this does not mean that EFT has nothing to offer when physical symptoms are involved.

Stress, fear, emotional distress and physical discomfort interact with one another, and EFT has also been investigated directly in research on pain and other health-related outcomes.

If you have a medical condition, I encourage you to continue receiving appropriate medical care. We can use EFT alongside that care to work with emotional distress, stress responses, fear, pain-related reactions or other appropriate aspects of what you are experiencing.

They can be very long-lasting.

When the emotional charge associated with a particular experience or trigger has been thoroughly resolved, people often find that they can remember the same event or encounter a similar situation without experiencing the reaction they previously had.

Sometimes an issue appears to “come back”. In EFT this often turns out to be a different aspect of the problem.

For example, someone may resolve anger about what happened but later discover sadness about what they lost as a result. Or one particular memory may lose its emotional charge while another related memory remains.

This doesn’t necessarily mean the original work has been undone. It may simply mean that there is another part of the larger problem that still needs attention.

EFT is non-invasive and the physical tapping itself is gentle.

However, EFT is used with emotional material, and strong feelings or memories can sometimes arise during any form of meaningful therapeutic work. This is one reason why working with an appropriately trained practitioner can be useful, particularly for complex or traumatic issues.

We work at a pace that is appropriate for you, and you remain in control throughout the session.

If I believe that an issue is outside my scope of practice or that you would be better supported by another type of professional, I will tell you.

Yes. EFT is particularly well suited to online work because you normally tap on yourself rather than having the practitioner physically manipulate or touch your body.

I demonstrate the tapping points on screen and guide you through the process exactly as I would if we were sitting in the same room.

Research has also investigated remotely delivered EFT, with positive results reported from online and virtual formats.

For many people, online sessions have the additional advantage of allowing them to do the work from the privacy and comfort of their own home.

I have been practising EFT since 2013, and over those years I have worked with people on a wide variety of emotional problems, personal challenges and performance issues.

My approach is not based on taking you through a standard script. I listen carefully to what is happening for you, look for the specific emotional triggers and underlying aspects that may be keeping the problem in place, and adapt the EFT process accordingly.

I am particularly interested in helping people achieve actual changes in how they feel rather than simply acquiring more intellectual understanding of why they feel that way.

EFT is something I have continued using for more than a decade because I have repeatedly seen what it can do.

At the same time, I will not promise you a particular outcome before we have even worked together. If I don’t believe I am the right person to help you with something, I will say so.

The free 20-minute Discovery Session is an opportunity for us to meet before you decide whether you would like to book an EFT session.

You can tell me what is happening, what you would like to change and what you have already tried. I can explain how I would approach the problem using EFT, answer your questions and give you an indication of whether I believe working together is likely to be useful.

There is no obligation to book afterwards.

The purpose of the Discovery Session is simply to help both of us decide whether EFT — and working together — feels like a good fit.