If you have been living with chronic pain for months or years, you may already have tried many things: medication, physiotherapy, exercise, massage, injections, changes in diet, perhaps even surgery. And the last thing you probably want to hear is that your pain is “just in your head”. It isn’t. Pain is a real physical experience, but modern pain science has shown that persistent pain is more complex than simply having damaged tissue somewhere in the body.
The nervous system, brain, stress, emotions, sleep, past experiences and our sense of safety can all influence how strongly pain is experienced. This is one reason Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), commonly known as Tapping, may be worth exploring as part of a broader approach to managing chronic pain.
EFT does not require you to pretend the pain isn’t there, think positively or convince yourself that everything is fine. Instead, we work with what you are actually experiencing: the pain itself, your reaction to it and, where relevant, stressful or emotional experiences that may be keeping your nervous system on high alert.
What is chronic pain?
Chronic pain, also called persistent pain, generally refers to pain that continues for more than three months or beyond the expected healing time of an injury. It can occur with persistent back or neck pain, arthritis and joint pain, fibromyalgia, migraines and headaches, pelvic pain, nerve pain, pain following injury or surgery, or persistent pain for which no clear structural cause has been found.
Sometimes there is an obvious ongoing physical cause. Sometimes an injury has healed but the pain continues. And sometimes investigations do not identify a single cause that adequately explains the severity of the pain.
Australian health service Healthdirect explains that in chronic pain, the nerves carrying pain signals — or the way the brain processes those signals — can become unusually sensitive. That does not mean that the pain is imaginary. Pain is produced by the nervous system in response to information coming from many sources, and the amount of pain we experience does not always correspond directly to the amount of tissue damage present.
Why can stress and emotions affect physical pain?
Anyone who has lived with pain for a long time knows that pain does not happen in isolation. You may worry about whether it will ever go away, feel angry that your body has let you down, become frightened of movements that have triggered pain before, or grieve the things you used to be able to do.
Pain can also interfere with work, relationships, sleep, exercise, social activities and independence. You may feel frustrated with doctors, treatments or other people who do not understand what you are going through. All of that can create additional stress, and stress, fear and emotional distress can in turn increase nervous-system arousal and make an already sensitive pain system more reactive.
This can create a cycle:
pain → worry or distress → increased nervous-system arousal → greater sensitivity → more pain → more worry
Working with the emotional part of this cycle does not mean ignoring physical causes. It simply gives us another possible way of influencing the overall pain experience.
Where does EFT Tapping fit in?
EFT combines focused attention with gentle fingertip tapping on a sequence of points on the face and upper body. While tapping, we acknowledge what you are actually feeling rather than trying to push it away.
For example, somebody experiencing lower-back pain might start with:
“Even though I have this aching pain across my lower back, I accept myself.”
While tapping through the points, we might use a simple reminder phrase such as:
“This aching pain.”
That may be enough to begin with, but chronic pain work often goes further than simply tapping while focusing on a physical sensation. We can also become curious about what surrounds the pain emotionally.
What might we tap on when working with chronic pain?
There is no single “chronic pain tapping script” that is right for everybody. Two people can have the same medical diagnosis and very different experiences of it.
1. The physical sensation
Rather than simply calling it “pain”, we become very specific. Where exactly is it? Does it feel sharp, burning, throbbing, aching, heavy, tight or electric? Is it constant or moving? Does it have a temperature, colour, shape or texture?
If you begin at an intensity of 8 out of 10, is it still an 8 after tapping? Has its character changed even if the number has not? Paying attention to these details helps us notice changes that might otherwise be missed.
2. Fear of the pain
For some people, anticipating the next episode of pain becomes almost as stressful as the pain itself. You may be afraid to move in a particular way, worried about another flare-up or constantly checking your body for signs that things are getting worse.
We can work directly with that fear rather than treating it as something separate or unimportant.
3. Anger and frustration
Perhaps you are angry with your body. Perhaps somebody else caused the injury. Perhaps you feel that a doctor did not take you seriously, or perhaps you are simply tired of organising your life around pain.
You don’t need to suppress those feelings or replace them with positive affirmations. EFT gives us a way of acknowledging and working with them.
4. Memories connected with the pain
If your pain began after an accident, injury, operation or frightening medical event, the experience itself may still carry a significant emotional charge. Sometimes people also notice that their symptoms began or became substantially worse during an intensely stressful period of life.
That does not prove that an emotional event caused a physical condition. But if thinking about an experience still causes a strong emotional or physical reaction, it may be worthwhile working with that reaction.
5. What chronic pain has done to your life
Sometimes the most emotionally charged part isn’t the sensation itself. It is what the pain has taken away.
You may find yourself thinking:
-
“I can’t do what I used to do.”
-
“Nobody understands how exhausting this is.”
-
“I’m frightened that I’ll always be like this.”
-
“I’m letting my family down.”
-
“My body has betrayed me.”
-
“I can’t make plans because I never know how I’ll feel.”
-
“I’ve tried everything and nothing works.”
These feelings are understandable, but carrying them continuously can add another layer of distress to an already overloaded nervous system.
What does the research say about EFT for chronic pain?
Research specifically investigating EFT for chronic pain is still relatively limited, and EFT should not be described as a proven cure for chronic pain. However, some of the findings are encouraging.
A randomised clinical trial of 147 people with chronic pain
One of the most relevant studies was published in the European Journal of Pain in 2025. Researchers studied 147 adults living with chronic pain who took part in a six-week EFT programme. Participants received EFT either through live instruction or through a self-paced online programme.
Compared with a wait-list control group, the people receiving EFT reported significantly lower pain severity and pain interference at the end of treatment. In other words, not only did their reported pain decrease, but it interfered less with everyday life. Quality of life also improved.
Importantly, improvements in pain severity, pain interference and quality of life were still present at the six-month follow-up. The researchers found no significant difference at follow-up between the live and self-paced versions of the programme, suggesting that EFT may also have potential as a self-management technique.
The authors themselves described the findings as offering early promise for EFT as a pain-management strategy rather than proof that EFT will work for everyone.
What has brain-imaging research found?
An earlier 2022 study explored what happened in the brains of people with chronic pain after a six-week EFT programme. The study involved only 24 people, so its findings should be regarded as preliminary rather than definitive.
Participants reported reductions in pain severity and pain interference after the EFT programme. Functional MRI scans also showed changes in connectivity involving brain regions associated with pain processing and pain-related thinking.
This is interesting because it suggests that changes associated with EFT may not be limited to people’s subjective reports. However, because the study was small and did not use the same kind of controlled design as a large clinical trial, considerably more research is needed.
What does the wider EFT research show?
A 2022 systematic review examined 56 randomised controlled trials involving 2,013 participants across a range of psychological and physical conditions. The studies included research into anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress, pain, insomnia and stress, and the authors concluded that the existing research supported a range of potential applications for Clinical EFT.
There are reasons to interpret that literature cautiously, however. A significant proportion of EFT research has been conducted by researchers who are also professionally involved with EFT, and the quality and size of individual studies vary.
A newer systematic review and network meta-analysis published in 2026 examined 17 randomised controlled trials focusing specifically on stress. It found reductions in both psychological and physiological measures of stress following Clinical EFT, but also noted that many of the included studies had some concerns or a high risk of bias.
So the fairest summary is that there is a growing and genuinely interesting research base for EFT, including research specifically on chronic pain, but larger and more independent high-quality studies are still needed.
What have people using EFT actually experienced?
Clinical research tells us what happens to groups of people on average, but individual experiences can be very different. Public online discussions about EFT illustrate this well.
In one discussion, a person described attending an EFT group workshop and finding the whole idea so ridiculous that they almost left. They stayed, and reported that by the end of the workshop their longstanding upper-back pain was no longer present.
Another long-term EFT user reported something quite different. They said tapping had helped them with many aspects of their life, but that chronic pain and inflammation were specifically two things it had not helped. Another contributor to the same discussion reported that EFT had helped eliminate particular emotional triggers that had previously produced extreme physical pain.
There are also people with chronic pain outside EFT-specific communities who report that tapping has helped them considerably. These stories are anecdotes, not scientific evidence. We cannot know from an online comment whether improvement was caused by EFT, how long it lasted, whether other treatments were involved or whether somebody experiencing the same condition would respond similarly.
Taken together, though, these very different reports make an important point: there is no honest promise that tapping will make chronic pain disappear. Some people appear to experience dramatic changes, some notice smaller improvements, and for others the physical pain may remain while fear, frustration or distress surrounding it becomes significantly easier to manage. Some people notice little or no benefit at all.
The useful question is not whether EFT always works for chronic pain, but what happens when we try it with your particular pain experience.
Sometimes the first change isn’t “the pain is gone”
When working with persistent pain, I don’t necessarily expect someone to move immediately from 8 out of 10 pain to zero. There are other changes worth noticing, and some of them can be meaningful even if the pain has not disappeared.
You may find that:
-
the intensity decreases
-
the painful area becomes smaller
-
the sensation changes from burning to warmth
-
the pain moves
-
tight muscles begin to relax
-
you can think about the pain without the same fear
-
you stop constantly anticipating the next flare-up
-
an upsetting memory no longer creates the same bodily reaction
-
you feel safer moving your body
-
the pain bothers you less, even though you can still feel it
With chronic pain, reducing how much of your attention and life the pain controls can be worthwhile even when complete pain relief does not occur.
“But my pain has a physical cause”
It may well have. EFT is not based on the assumption that every physical symptom is psychological.
You can have arthritis, inflammation, nerve damage, disc degeneration, scar tissue, an autoimmune condition or another diagnosed physical problem and still have stress and nervous-system factors influencing how intensely pain is experienced. These possibilities are not mutually exclusive.
We therefore don’t need to decide whether your pain is “physical” or “emotional”. A more useful question is whether there are factors we can change that might make your nervous system less reactive and your pain easier to manage.
Can EFT replace medical treatment?
No. EFT should be regarded as a complementary approach, not a replacement for appropriate healthcare.
Persistent or unexplained pain should be medically assessed. New, rapidly worsening or otherwise concerning symptoms also need appropriate medical attention. If you are already receiving treatment, EFT can potentially be used alongside medication, physiotherapy, exercise, psychological pain-management approaches and other care recommended by your health professionals.
Do not stop prescribed medication or alter medical treatment because your symptoms improve with EFT without discussing this with the relevant healthcare professional. The goal isn’t to choose between conventional healthcare and tapping; where appropriate, they can complement each other.
What happens in an EFT session for chronic pain?
We usually begin with what is happening right now. I may ask you to describe your pain and give its intensity a number from 0 to 10, and we might then tap while focusing on the sensation and observe whether anything changes.
From there, I will ask questions and follow what emerges. Sometimes it is an emotion, sometimes a memory appears, and sometimes it is a thought such as “I’ll never get better.” At other times, you may suddenly remember what was happening in your life when the pain began.
And sometimes there is no dramatic psychological discovery at all. We simply keep working with the physical sensation and your reaction to it. An EFT session is not about trying to find a hidden emotional reason for your illness; we follow what your own experience gives us to work with.
Do I need to believe in EFT for it to work?
No particular belief is required. Some people become interested in tapping immediately, while others think it looks decidedly strange.
Both reactions are perfectly fine. In fact, scepticism itself can become part of what we tap on:
“Even though I really don’t see how tapping on my face could possibly affect this pain…”
Then we see what happens. If nothing changes, that is useful information. If something changes, that is interesting too.
Could EFT help with your chronic pain?
There is no way to know beforehand. EFT isn’t a miracle cure and I cannot promise that it will remove your pain.
What it gives us is a structured way of exploring whether stress, fear, emotional experiences and nervous-system sensitisation may be contributing to your current pain experience, and whether changing some of those factors changes the way you feel.
For some people, the change can happen surprisingly quickly. For others, it develops gradually. For some, the main benefit may be less distress, less fear and a greater feeling of control rather than complete elimination of the pain, and occasionally there may be little change.
That is why I prefer curiosity to promises.
Would you like to explore EFT for your pain?
If you have been living with chronic pain and would like to find out whether EFT could be useful as part of your pain-management approach, you are welcome to book a free 20-minute Discovery Session. We can talk about what you are experiencing, what you have already tried and whether EFT seems appropriate for you.
There is no obligation to continue.
[BOOK A FREE 20-MINUTE DISCOVERY SESSION]
References and further reading
-
Stapleton, P., Wilson, C., Uechtritz, N., Stewart, M., McCosker, M., O’Keefe, T., & Blanchard, M. (2025). A randomized clinical trial of emotional freedom techniques for chronic pain: Live versus self-paced delivery with 6-month follow-up. European Journal of Pain, 29(3), e4740. DOI: 10.1002/ejp.4740.
-
Stapleton, P., Baumann, O., O’Keefe, T., & Bhuta, S. (2022). Neural changes after Emotional Freedom Techniques treatment for chronic pain sufferers. Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice, 49, 101653. DOI: 10.1016/j.ctcp.2022.101653.
-
Church, D., Stapleton, P., Vasudevan, A., & O’Keefe, T. (2022). Clinical EFT as an evidence-based practice for the treatment of psychological and physiological conditions: A systematic review. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 951451. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.951451.
-
Stapleton, P., & van Elst, A. (2026). Clinical emotional freedom techniques for psychological and physiological stress reduction: A systematic review and network meta-analysis. Explore, 22(5), 103474. DOI: 10.1016/j.explore.2026.103474.
-
Healthdirect Australia. Chronic pain — causes and management.
The information on this page is general in nature and is not intended to diagnose or treat any medical condition. EFT is a complementary approach and should not replace appropriate medical assessment or treatment. If you have persistent, unexplained, new or changing pain, please consult an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
0 Comments