I have recently been combining a new technique with Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to enhance the benefits of CBT and quickly reduce the physical and emotional symptoms triggered by fearful thoughts. This technique falls in the category of what are referred to as Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) but more commonly referred to as Tapping. It derives from eastern medicine techniques such as acupuncture and acupressure. It involves light touch or tapping on certain body points, or acupoints, of the body’s energy meridians – the same meridians targeted in acupuncture. But with tapping there are no needles, just light touch or tapping.

Though the technique is purported to be effective due to the activation of these meridians, one does not need to believe in these meridians to benefit from tapping. Aside from the possible effect on energy meridians, tapping is a powerful CBT technique alone -achieving the fundamental goals of CBT – cognitive reframing and desensitization.

My personal and professional experience with the technique clearly demonstrates its CBT value but it also seems to act directly on the limbic system – the amygdala – the emotion center of the brain. The result is a very quick shift in feelings, thoughts and sensations and a drop in the fear hormones of adrenaline and cortisol, and an increase in endorphin levels – “the feel good” neurotransmitters. The speed of these changes suggests something else occurring beyond the rationality of CBT. As a person with an empirically verifiable, scientific perspective I believe that tapping is indeed also acting on the energy meridians that acupuncture targets. There have been more than 100 valid and reliable studies demonstrating the efficacy of the technique and this is one of the largest, most recent studies that confirms the physical and mental health benefits:

Clinical EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) Improves Multiple Physiological Markers of Health

I am very excited to have found this technique as it fills a void that I have struggled with throughout my years of treating people with anxiety – a technique that can very quickly target, reduce or even eliminate the powerful physical and emotional symptoms of anxiety. It is a technique that can reduce the symptoms of distress without reliance on a logic process, because too often anxiety is impervious to logic. Tapping can figuratively tap into the feeling brain without having to go through the thinking brain so to speak – it can quickly reduce negative emotional and physical symptoms – often to the surprise of the tapper. The quick shift in feelings, thoughts or sensations often peels down to an underlying layer – peeling the onion so to speak – resulting in rapid resolution of the symptoms. In my next post I will begin examples of these success stories starting with an example of a woman with intense anxiety the result of a recent cancer diagnosis.