Before I begin to detail the process and specifics of tapping I want to introduce it by describing an overview of the process and an example of its effectiveness.

Fear of Cancer

The first client I used the technique with was a young woman I will refer to as Susan, who had just been told by her MD that she probably had thyroid cancer. She was a client because she struggled with frequent anxiety that was often health related anxiety – her doctor’s words therefore were the worst trigger for her worst fear. She was an anxious wreck to say the least so I felt the need to help reduce her fear despite my intention to further practice tapping on myself and friends before using it with a client. So it was my first use of the technique with a client but something I felt obliged to use to reduce her intense fear. I explained Tapping to her including the eastern medicine foundation as well as it’s proven value as a CBT technique. I showed her the 11 acupoints we would tap on and explained the process we would follow.

The Reminder Phrase

It was easy to formulate a simple statement, called the Reminder Phrase, that expressed how she was feeling: “I’m terrified I may have cancer”. The reminder phrase is a negative thought, feeling or sensation that is repeated when each of the 11 acupoints are tapped and constitutes one complete tapping sequence.

The Setup Statement

A positive statement is added to the reminder phrase when the first acupoint is tapped – called the Setup Statement.  Thereafter just the negative statement is repeated on the other points. I helped her give a rating from 0 to 10 to rank the level of fear she had with the statement and she labeled her fear as being a solid 10. I will make this sound less confusing in the next blog post when I more clearly describe the acupoints and the process.

So I proceeded to have Susan follow along with me as we started tapping the first point on her hand, saying out loud the setup statement: “I’m ok even though I’m terrified I have cancer”. We went to the next point on the top of her head, and tapped on it saying out loud the reminder phrase “I’m terrified I have cancer”. Onto the 3rd point above her eye, tapping, saying “I’m terrified I have cancer”. Then to the next point at the outer edge of her eye saying “I’m terrified I have cancer”. We continued this process until we tapped on all 11 points. At this point one should take a deep breath and observe what is going on inside and whether there has been any shift in thoughts, feelings or sensations. Any decrease in the feelings about the reminder phrase should be identified, and Susan noted a 2 to 3 point drop in her anxiety, giving it now a rating of 7 or 8. We then did another full sequence of tapping on all 11 points, with the setup statement at the first and the reminder phrase at the rest. Frequently the amount of decrease in distress after a sequence is about 2 to 4 points as it was for Susan. After 2 sequences her anxiety was about 4 or 5. We did a 3rd and perhaps a 4th sequence and at the end of it she took a couple deep breaths, was quiet, thoughtful and then said with a genuine look of pleasant surprise that her anxiety was gone. She followed that with a wry smile, and said “oh my god, did you hypnotize me? My anxiety is gone. I’m still remembering what the doctor said but I’m not feeling afraid”.

Success

This first experience in using tapping convinced me there is significant validity to this technique and something I must further research and practice. It is indeed the missing tool I was unaware I was missing to facilitate a quicker drop in anxiety by directly tapping into a person’s fear and tapping it away. This is but the first of many similarly amazing examples of the power of tapping that I will later describe.