What is EFT tapping and why is it so valuable for you as a highly sensitive person? Learn everything you need to know about this technique in this article!
Estimated reading time: 9 minutes
As a highly sensitive person, it can be challenging to navigate through this fast-paced, loud society. Hence, it is important to have a personal growth toolbox to rely on. There are hundreds of valuable personal growth techniques to add to this toolbox.
Recently, I stumbled upon the technique EFT tapping. After reading some of the experiences with eft tapping, I wanted to give it a try myself.
I asked myself ‘does EFT tapping really work?’. After all, it sounds too good to be true to remove some of your limiting beliefs simply by tapping on your body.
After giving it a go, I realized how powerful EFT tapping is for me as a highly sensitive person. Therefore, I decided to spread awareness around this technique by writing this article.
What Is EFT Tapping?
EFT tapping is an evidence based stress management technique. It originates from research performed by Gary Craig in the 90’s. The letters EFT stand for emotional freedom techniques.
Research shows that EFT is a powerful technique to reduce the emotional impact of past memories and situations that trigger emotional distress within a person.
Moreover, it helps the person to reduce emotional distress over time. This helps the body and mind rebalancing itself.
By tapping on acupoints on the body while expressing meaningful, short phrases, the person using EFT tapping can regulate their emotions regarding past events.
When you as a highly sensitive person practice EFT tapping, you evoke your midbrain’s anxiety reflect and replace it with a relaxation response instead. In addition, the stimulation of these acupoints helps you to produce serotonin. Moreover, it regulates your cortisol levels, which are responsible for feeling stress.
What Can EFT Tapping Be Used For?
When I first stumbled upon this technique, I asked myself whether EFT tapping does work for my anxiety. After deep-diving into the world of EFT tapping, I realized that it actually tackles many more health challenges.
For instance, it is a valuable method to tackle depression. When you are depressive, you usually struggle with many negative, limiting beliefs. By tapping into them and replacing these thoughts with positive statements you may feel better over time.
In addition, you may use EFT tapping for tackling PTSD and other trauma conditions and phobias. EFT tapping helps you to reprogram your brain. Hence, you can replace the painful memories, fears, and physical sensations with more positive thoughts and responses.
I tried it myself, as I’ve been struggling with PTSD for many years. After trying EFT in combination with EMDR, my anxiety and bodily responses regarding the trauma have been significantly less.
However, EFT tapping may also be used for other purposes. For instance, it is a powerful tool within your manifesting routine or to clear money blocks. The sky is the limit when using this technique!
Why Is This Method Effective For A Highly Sensitive Person?
The highly sensitive person has a more active nervous system compared to less sensitive people. Hence, highly sensitive people often experience anxiety.
However, our mind often tricks us into believing that certain situations are dangerous, while they don’t necessarily have to be. HSP’s notice the tiniest details around everything. Our mind and body automatically associate these details with past experiences.
So if you have experienced something traumatic or intense, your body may warn you in the future by triggering your anxiety. The tiniest details associated with this situation may trigger this anxiety. After all, your body and mind want to protect you from it happening again.
Nevertheless, some of the details you noticed and registered may not necessarily be warning signs that the same will happen to you again. They simply were part of that situation.
Therefore, EFT tapping can be a powerful method in the toolkit of a highly sensitive person. By reducing the anxiety around specific situations or details from those situations, HSP’s may feel more calm and balanced in daily life.
How To Do EFT Tapping As A Highly Sensitive Person
Time needed: 15 minutes
EFT tapping can be practiced on your own or together with a practitioner. In this mini-guide, you will discover how to do EFT tapping as a highly sensitive person.
- Understand the tapping points
Before you get started, it is important to know where to tap. On the illustration below, you see the acupoints that you can tap during your EFT practice.
- Use the right pressure
It is important to use the correct pressure while tapping. You don’t want to tap too lightly, because that would not trigger your brain response properly. However, you also don’t want to experience physical pain while tapping. Therefore, try to experiment with the tapping pressure. Use two fingers and slightly tap on the acupoints described in step 1. Especially for the highly sensitive person, it is important to experiment with the right EFT tapping pressure.
- Identify the situation you want to apply EFT tapping on
Before you get started with your practice, you should identify the situation you want to use EFT tapping. For instance, this could be a limiting belief, a specific emotion you are experiencing, or a situation from the past. Try to be as specific as possible before starting your practice. For instance, you may want to reduce the emotional distress regarding a conflict with your friend or reduce limiting beliefs about your money mindset.
- Write down your EFT tapping script
If you struggle with memorizing it, make sure to write down your EFT tapping script before getting started. You can do so by writing down what ails you and then follow up with a phrase of acceptance. For instance, you may use this sentence: “Even though I experience (insert situation), I deeply and fully accept myself.” You can create your own loving sentence, too. It is important to acknowledge the situation and then follow up with loving and compassionate words of comfort.
- Identify the intensity of your emotions before tapping
Before getting started with the actual tapping, make sure to rate your emotions around this situation on a scale from 1 to 10, where 10 is the most intense. This way, you can evaluate afterward whether you felt some relief from your EFT tapping practice.
- Start tapping
After identifying the acupoints, correct pressure, and situation you want to use EFT tapping for, start tapping. Begin at the top of your head and work your way down your body, as seen in the image in step 1. Repeat the statement you created in step 4 loudly while tapping each acupoint.
- Evaluate your emotions
After tapping for approximately 10-15 minutes, evaluate how you are feeling about the situation you tried to influence. Again, rate it on a scale from 1 to 10. In the beginning, you may not notice a big change in your emotional distress. However, it is important to repeat your EFT tapping practice multiple times on different days, in order to see the desired result.
Frequently Asked Questions About EFT tapping
After discovering what EFT tapping is, you still may have some questions. Below, I answered some of the most frequently asked questions about EFT tapping for the highly sensitive person.
While EFT tapping is a wonderful self-help method to try out, be cautious about using it to heal major traumas on your own.
EFT tapping to recover from PTSD or major trauma should only be applied in cooperation with an experienced practitioner. Why? During your practice, you have to dig up certain, unpleasant memories in order to be able to heal them.
This may be too confronting and intense to do on your own. If you, however, have been working on your healing journey for years and want to tackle minor, less traumatic situations from the past, it is completely safe to do so on your own.
Just like with every self-help method, also EFT tapping does not take away all your pain and struggles within one session. You need to practice EFT tapping consistently in order to feel its effects.
Also, if you want EFT tapping to work, you need to be open-minded about it. When you are closed-minded and skeptical about it, you won’t reach the emotional state which is needed to heal.
There is no specific guideline on how often you should tap. As it isn’t harmful to your health, you can tap as often as you like.
You could start to tap once a day for 10-15 minutes per session. Or you could do 3 minor tapping sessions throughout the day. In the end, you should find a frequency that fits your schedule and is able to maintain in the long run.
Valuable EFT Tapping Resources
Now that you have learned more about EFT tapping, you may want to discover some resources. As a highly sensitive person, there are many EFT tapping resources available to you. Below, I summarized them for you.
EFT Tapping Books
Below, you can find a list of valuable books to practice EFT tapping as a highly sensitive person:
- The Tapping Solution: A Revolutionary System for Stress-Free Living
- Emotional Freedom Techniques and Tapping for Beginners: EFT Tapping Solution Manual : 7 Effective Tapping Therapy Techniques for Overcoming Anxiety
- Tapping Into Wellness: Using EFT to Clear Emotional & Physical Pain & Illness
Valuable Video Resources
There are many wonderful EFT tapping video channels out there, but I as a highly sensitive person am particularly a fan of Melanie Moore’s channel. Her videos have been very useful for me, and I hope that they are useful for you as well:
Apps
If you want to implement EFT tapping in your daily practice, you may want to download a free EFT tapping app.
For instance, you may want to check out the Tapping Solution App. This app offers multiple guided tapping meditations and in-app purchases.
Another app you may want to try is the Go EFT Tapping app. This app also offers various tapping sessions to its users, as well as in-app purchases.
Have Fun Tapping!
Now that you read everything you need to know about EFT tapping for the highly sensitive person, it’s time to get started!
What will you use this technique for?
