Emotional Freedom Therapy is often called tapping into our inner, suppressed emotions. EFT has some deep roots in psychotherapy as well as in ancient healing practices from the East.

It involves tapping with fingertips on acupuncture points around the body while focusing on the emotional problem to be solved. It helps to remove stuck emotions from the body-memory. Acupuncture theory teaches that energy flows through our body through pathways called meridians. This energy flow conditions our overall existence; how we think, how we feel, how our body moves. 

When our brain perceives potential danger, in order to survive our body instinctively mobilises the emergency stress response, preparing the individual to take action, excess energy is mobilised to the body to be “used up” for fight or flight. When this energy is not fully discharged, it does not simply go away; instead, it remains as compressed energy in a body. EFT helps release negative life experiences from the body and the psyche. 

Have you ever wondered what occurs in our bodies during the traumatic experience?  

Dr. Peter Levine, a pioneering researcher in stress and trauma, drew inspiration from observing animals and their ability to overcome life-threatening situations without displaying emotional trauma symptoms.

In the face of danger, humans, like animals, have a survival response system. When fight and flight are not viable options, we instinctively enter a third response: freeze. This immobilization, akin to “playing dead,” makes us less vulnerable. During this phase, the massive energy built up for fight or flight seeks release through shakes and trembling. If the immobility phase remains incomplete, the trapped energy signals to the body that the threat persists.

Traumatic memories often evoke a state of “speechless terror,” an experience beyond words. Think back to a moment in your life when fear was so intense that it left you momentarily frozen and unable to articulate the overwhelming emotions. Brain scan research reveals that during traumatic memories, the prefrontal cortex (responsible for language expression) is inhibited. This inhibition disconnects us from the ability to verbalize our experience, leaving only the heightened activity of the limbic system, particularly the right hemisphere amygdala, responsible for intense emotions.

Once the traumatic event concludes, expressing it in words becomes challenging. What remains is a vague “feeling of what happened,” colored by the meaning we attach to the event. This meaning often manifests as a core limiting belief—a mental block that can persist into later stages of life.

In therapy, our focus is not solely on what happened but on the perception formed about the event. Unprocessed memories linger with unfinished neurobiological responses, encompassing overwhelming feelings, physical reactions, images, sounds, and smells encoded as implicit memories in our body. For those experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the nervous system may become hyperaroused, blending past and present sensations.