Emotional Freedom Techniques for Mental Health – Part 1

EFT Tapping was developed as a tool to self empower people to feel better about
thoughts, feelings, beliefs and events that have been troublesome and sticky, keeping them stuck. It was designed for you to be able to get relief on your own. However, for persistent problems that seem to resist shifting, you may get deeper relief by working with our EFT Consultant, tapping expert and author Chris Wheeler.

Meet Chris

For more than two decades, I’ve dedicated myself to supporting folks like you to unlock and clear mental, emotional, and physical blocks that diminish your health, vitality and wellbeing. Using energy psychology tools like Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) or Tapping, we’ll gently navigate the events, thoughts, feelings and beliefs that have kept you feeling stuck on your journey to wellness. And create new levels of focus for your body, mind and spirit so that you can be in a place of thriving.

My goal is to help you achieve a new sense of peace while ensuring you have this healing tool, literally, at your fingertips that you’ll be able to use for the rest of your life.

Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) Tapping FOR MENTAL HEALTH

As I hop onto my computer to start this chapter, I see another new study verifying the positive effects of Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) Tapping for mental health conditions. This time, it’s for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

In this 2024 study, tapping was found to significantly improve PTSD symptoms as well as depression, anxiety, sleep and physical symptoms associated PTSD as measured by the PTSD Checklist for DSM-5 (PCL-5), completed by participants before and after treatment. Thirty individuals participated in a weekly EFT session for five weeks. The sessions were 30 to 40 minutes in length.

Imagine feeling better with just thirty minutes of tapping a week!

If you’ve not experienced tapping, you simply use your own fingertips to tap on a specific set of acupuncture points while focusing your attention on something that’s bothering you. Tapping has been used by millions around the world to feel better about a myriad of ailments for more than 25 years. Over the last decade, researchers have established tapping as being effective for numerous emotional and physical challenges including physical pain, insomnia, food cravings, anxiety, stress and high cortisol levels.

In this book, EFT tapping is perfectly placed to give you another tool to advance your wellness, by addressing the possible emotional conflicts driving the challenges in your physical health.

Let’s start simple, naming and tapping on the physical pain. Everyone has experienced pain at one time or another and I have countless cases over 25 years where clients came to me with unrelenting neck pain. They’d tried all kinds of physical and supplemental treatments and while there may have been some improvement, the condition persisted.

So I’ll walk you through some basic tapping for neck pain. Feel free to check out my guide on how to do tapping and follow along to start practicing how to use this helpful healing technique.

To start tapping

On a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 being the worst it could be and zero being no pain, identify the degree of the pain or discomfort you have in the moment. Please write this number down somewhere. It’s important to write down the number because often, as the pain and discomfort shifts through tapping, a person can lose sight of how bad it was to begin with.

We start by continuously tapping on the side of hand acupuncture point, while repeating a setup statement that addresses and neutralizes the negative aspect (neck pain) while offering a positive affirmation (I love and accept myself).

Repeat setup statements while tapping the side of hand point:

Even though I have this pain in the neck, I love and accept myself.
Even though I have this pain in the neck, I love and accept myself.
Even though I have this pain in the neck, I love and accept myself.

Repeat the setup phase three times. Then, follow with tapping on each of the tapping points with two fingers from either hand, tapping four or five times, while repeating a reminder phrase at each point to continue focusing our attention on the problem we’re dealing with.

Reminder phrase while tapping the rest of the tapping points:

You’ve done the side of hand points then you follow with:
Eyebrow: This pain in my neck
Side of Eye: This neck pain
Under Eye: This pain in my neck
Under Nose: Neck pain
Chin: This neck pain
Collarbone: This neck pain
Under Arm: This pain in my neck.
Top of Head: This neck pain

Going through the setup and the tapping points constitutes one round of tapping. Then check in with the number that represents your discomfort now and write it down. Often the number shifts. Sometimes it gets a bit worse, sometimes better, and sometimes it goes away completely.

You might do a few rounds of this simple setup and reminder phrasing, checking the number representing your discomfort each time. If there’s not much movement or improvement, let’s go a little deeper, getting more and more specific about the nature of the pain.

What’s the quality of your pain?

Notice if the pain has a particular quality, like stabbing or throbbing. With my clients, I might even ask if the pain has an emotion, a temperature or color and I’ve never had someone be unable to describe the pain in these ways. Most people have never thought of their pain in any sort of detail, so this is a great exercise especially when you’re adding tapping to the mix. Just take a couple of deep breaths and focus on the pain and notice the words that spring to mind. There is no wrong answer!

So, we do some more tapping, starting with a new, more detailed setup statement while tapping the side of hand point. Here are a few examples of possible setup statements. You can use any or all of them, mix and match and play with the words and even change the physical symptom with something that affects you right now. You can’t get it wrong.

Repeat setup statements while tapping the side of hand point:

Even though I have this throbbing neck pain, I love and accept myself.
Even though I have this angry neck pain, I love and accept myself.
Even though I have this red, hot neck pain, I accept myself anyway.
Even though this neck pain feels like it’s stabbing me, I accept myself anyway.
Even though this neck pain is cold and dull, I love and accept myself.

Here are some reminder phrase examples to repeat (out loud if possible) while you continue to tap on the following sequence of points:

Reminder phrase while tapping the rest of the tapping points:

You’ve done the side of hand points then you follow with:
Eyebrow: This horrible neck pain
Side of Eye: This stabbing pain in the neck
Under Eye: This red, angry neck pain
Under Nose: This angry throbbing neck pain
Chin: This awful neck pain
Collarbone: This red, hot neck pain
Under Arm: This cold, dull neck pain
Top of Head: This hot, throbbing neck pain

Check the number representing your discomfort and write it down. Again, you can use any or all of these combinations of phrases, and definitely create your own. It just takes a bit of practice with tapping to feel more and more comfortable creating your own setup statements and reminder phrases. You can’t do it wrong.

What’s next

At this point, maybe the pain has subsided considerably. You can continue with several rounds of tapping, changing up the wording, including different qualities of the pain you’re experiencing. Notice the words that spring to mind as you’re tapping and include those words in your setup and reminder phrasing. Again, this takes practice so give yourself the gift of being persistent.

Use this as a template

This example of tapping can be used as a template for any physical issue you’re dealing with. Just replace “pain in the neck” or “neck pain” with any other ailment.

If you’re still experiencing the pain – in this example, neck pain, let’s go to another level. This is an important level when you have some sort of unrelenting physical symptom. Again, the medical, supplemental and physical treatments you’ve tried haven’t given you the outcome and relief that you want to have. So, with the benefit of having the support of using tapping, let’s navigate some of the possible emotional aspects of your physical ailment.

In the work I do with clients, my perspective is that there is always an emotional component to physical illness or discomfort.

For the many people I’ve worked with to help relieve their neck pain, I ask the simple question.

“Who in your life is a pain in the neck?”

One hundred percent of the time, my client has a definite response. And quite often the number describing their discomfort goes up and they lay a hand on the distressed area.

One case springs to mind of a woman in her seventies who had unrelenting neck pain for twenty years. She had weekly acupuncture and massage for the previous five years and was taking a myriad of supplements. Her pain on a scale of 0 to 10 was constantly at a 6 out of 10, dipping to a 3 or 4 after acupuncture or massage appointments. Within a few minutes of meeting I asked her, “who in your life is a pain in the neck?”

She rolled her eyes and immediately responded, “My husband is such a pain in the neck. He’s a pain in the ass as well, by the way!” (She also suffered with hemorrhoids but she didn’t make that connection until later).

So we did some simple tapping. We repeated the setup statement three times while tapping the side of hand point:

Repeat setup statements while tapping the side of hand point:

Even though my husband (name) is a pain in the neck, I love and accept myself.
Even though my husband (name) is a pain in the neck, I love and accept myself.
Even though my husband (name) is a pain in the neck, I love and accept myself.

Then we tap each of the rest of the tapping points with two fingers from either hand while repeating a reminder phrase.

Reminder phrases while tapping the rest of the tapping points:

Eyebrow: My husband is a pain in the neck
Side of Eye: My husband is a pain in the neck
Under Eye: My husband is a pain in the neck
Under Nose: He’s such a pain in my neck
Chin: Always a pain in the neck
Collarbone: My husband is a pain in the neck
Under Arm: My husband is a pain in the neck
Top of Head: My husband is a pain in the neck

After this round of simple tapping, we checked her current number and the pain in the neck was gone! In one round of tapping on a 20-year old pain, she was pain-free after acknowledging and tapping on the fact that her husband was a pain in the neck. We did a couple more rounds tapping on him being a pain in the ass and she later reported that her hemorrhoid issue had improved.

Tapping requires persistence and patience

While this was a wonderful, and not an unusual outcome, tapping for the emotional aspects of physical pain often requires more persistence. So, we do more tapping. (Always do more tapping!) And now we get a bit more specific about the pain… still using the pain in the neck due to her partner for our example. Here are some examples of setup phrases you can use, mix and match and craft to your own specific situation. You can say one of these phrases three times, or tap on all of them and see what feels the most true:

Repeat setup statements while tapping the side of hand point:

Even though they (use their name) are a pain in the neck when they won’t listen to what I say, I love and accept myself.
Even though they are such a pain in the neck when they leave a mess for me every day I accept myself anyway.
Even though they’re a pain in the neck when they criticize what I’m wearing, I accept myself no matter what they say.
Even though their criticism is a pain in the neck, I’m ok and I accept myself.

Continue tapping the points below while repeating the reminder phrases.

Reminder phrase while tapping the rest of the tapping points:

Eyebrow: They’re a pain in the neck
Side of Eye: Their criticism is a pain in the neck
Under Eye: They’re a pain in the neck when they’re being nasty
Under Nose: Their nastiness is a pain in the neck
Chin: What a pain in the neck when they criticize what I wear!
Collarbone: They’re a pain in the neck when they’re being messy
Under Arm: They’re a pain in the neck when they don’t listen
Top of Head: They’re a pain in the neck when they’re breathing!

Think of the metaphors

The use of metaphors like “my partner is a pain in the neck” can help to unlock some of the emotional components of the physical issues you’re experiencing. Here are some more examples:

For back pain

Who stabbed you in the back?
Who didn’t have your back when you needed them?
Who won’t get off your back?

Repeat setup statements while tapping the side of hand point:

Even though they (name) didn’t have my back, I love and accept myself.
Even though it felt like they stabbed me in the back, I still accept myself.
Even though they won’t get off my back, I love and accept myself.

Reminder phrase while tapping the rest of the tapping points:

Eyebrow: They stabbed me in the back
Side of Eye: They didn’t have my back
Under Eye: I needed them to have my back and they didn’t
Under Nose: Nobody had my back
Chin: Backstabbers!
Collarbone: I can’t believe they stabbed me in the back that way
Under Arm: I wish they would get off my back about everything
Top of Head: Just get off my back!

Stomach problems

What happened that still makes you feel sick to your stomach?
What happened that was hard to digest?

Repeat setup statements while tapping the side of hand point:

Even though I’m still sick over what happened, I deeply and completely accept myself.
Even though I can’t stomach what they did, I still accept myself.
Even though I still can’t digest what happened, I love and accept myself.
Even though their actions turn my stomach, I still love and accept myself.

Continue tapping the points below while repeating the reminder phrases.

Reminder phrases while tapping the rest of the tapping points:

Eyebrow: It still makes me feel sick
Side of Eye: I can’t stomach what happened
Under Eye: I can’t digest what happened
Under Nose: It’s sick what they did
Chin: I can’t digest what they said
Collarbone: What they did turns my stomach
Under Arm: I’m still sick about it
Top of Head: It sickens me

Eye trouble

What was it that you didn’t want to see?
What can’t you bear to watch?
What are you keeping your eye on?

Repeat setup statements while tapping the side of hand point:

Even though I keep seeing the look on their face in my mind’s eye, I love and accept myself.
Even though I can’t bear to watch how they treat each other, I love and accept myself.
Even though the images from that night still haunt me, I accept myself anyway.
Even though I have to keep my eye on everything, or it will fall apart, I deeply and completely accept myself.

Reminder phrases while tapping the rest of the tapping points:

Eyebrow: The look on their face haunts me
Side of Eye: I can’t bear to watch them
Under Eye: Those images still haunt me
Under Nose: I can’t stop seeing what happened
Chin: I have to watch over everything or it will crash
Collarbone: I have to keep my eye on everything
Under Arm: My mind’s eye keeps seeing awful things
Top of Head: I keep seeing the nasty look on their face

Jaw problems

What happened that you keep chewing on?
Was there a situation where you had to bite back your words?
What’s tough to swallow?

Repeat setup statements while tapping the side of hand point:

Even though I keep chewing on the things they said to me, I love and accept myself.
Even though I keep chewing on all the things I didn’t say, I deeply and completely accept myself.
Even though my jaw aches because I keep chewing on that problem, I accept my self anyway.
Even though my jaw is clenched so I don’t say what’s on my mind, I accept myself anyway.
Even though that situation is really tough to swallow, and I keep chewing on it, I accept myself still.

Reminder phrases while tapping the rest of the tapping points:

Eyebrow: My jaw aches from chewing on that problem
Side of Eye: I still clench my jaw when I think of what they said
Under Eye: I’m gnashing my teeth over what they did
Under Nose: It’s really tough to swallow what they did
Chin: I keep chewing on what I wish I’d said
Collarbone: If I don’t clench my teeth, I’ll say what I’m thinking
Under Arm: I keep chewing on what they did
Top of Head: I’m still chewing on what they said, I can’t let it go

Carolyn Dean MD ND
The Doctor of the Future