Tapping Q & A - Getting the most out of tapping and EFT

Fear is our most basic emotion. Simply put, fear is our internal guidance pointing out what might harm us so that we can stay safe. We commonly think of it in terms of fight, flight, or freeze. All three of these responses are designed to shield us from danger. We fight to defend ourselves, we run away (flight) to avoid it, and we freeze so that the threat can't see us. When tapping for fear, we usually use reframes around if something is truly dangerous to try to turn off the fear if there is no actual danger. This is a great start, but deciding whether or not something is really dangerous only scratches the surface. If we stop there with our tapping, we may be missing valuable detail. This week in the podcast, I explore the next level down: magnitude and probability. By adding these ideas to how we assess our fears we can deepen the healing and transformation available to us through tapping. If you are experiencing fear, anxiety, or resistance to taking action, then you will love this approach. Support the podcast! Http://tappingqanda.com/support Subscribe in: Apple Podcast | iPhone | Spotify | Pandora | Amazon Music | iHeartRadio

Subscribe in: Apple Podcast | iPhone | Spotify | Pandora | Amazon Music | iHeartRadio | YouTube You sat down to tap and nothing changed. If tapping is not working for you right now, I want you to know two things: this is normal, and there is a specific process you can follow to break through. In my 18+ years as an tapping practitioner, I have walked hundreds of clients through exactly this moment, and what I have learned is that getting stuck is not a sign that tapping has failed you. It is information, and that information has a use. Key Takeaways Every round of tapping produces one of three outcomes: you feel better, the intensity increases, or nothing changes. Two of those three are direct signs of progress, and the third gives you useful information about what to do next. When tapping seems to make things worse, it means you are tuning in more accurately to what was already present beneath the surface, not that tapping caused new distress. A six-step process (tap on the frustration, release the all-or-nothing mindset, explore the downside of healing, find the upside of staying stuck, do one minute of wordless tapping, then return to the original issue) reliably breaks through stalled rounds. Hidden "secondary gains" from staying stuck are one of the most common reasons tapping stalls, and most people are completely unaware they exist until they ask the right questions. Even if the original issue does not resolve immediately, working through this process removes the stress and pressure of being stuck, which often creates the clarity needed for a breakthrough. Three Outcomes You Can Get from Any Round of Tapping Every round of EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) produces exactly one of three results, and understanding all three changes how you respond when progress stalls. The first outcome is the one we all hope for: you tap and you feel better. Your distress drops, your body relaxes, and you are moving in the right direction. You can stop there or keep going to deepen the relief. The second outcome is that your distress actually increases. This feels like tapping is making things worse, but it is not. I will explain why in the next section. The third outcome is that nothing changes at all. The number does not move. This is the one that makes people question whether EFT works, whether it works for everyone else but not for them, or whether their particular issue is beyond tapping's reach. But "nothing changed" is not a dead end. It is a signpost, and the six-step process below is how you read it. Why Feeling Worse After Tapping Is Actually a Sign of Progress When intensity rises during a round of tapping, it means you are tuning in more sharply to what was already there, not that tapping created new pain. Think of it this way. You have a knee injury, and you go through your busy day barely noticing it. You get home, sit on the couch, exhale, and suddenly your knee is throbbing. Sitting down did not injure your knee. Resting gave your body the space to send you the pain signal it had been trying to deliver all day. Key insight: "Resting is not putting you in more pain. It is bringing attention to the issue that is already there. The same thing is true emotionally." The same thing happens when you retell a frustrating story to a friend and feel your anger rising with each sentence. Telling the story did not create the anger. It reconnected you with emotion that was already stored in your system. So if you tap and the intensity spikes, that is not pleasant, but it means you are closer to the real issue. And being closer to the real issue means you are closer to relief. If you have ever finished a session and felt unexpectedly sad or emotionally raw, that same principle applies. I explored exactly this in Episode 695: Why Do I Feel Sad After Tapping?, which walks through why post-session emotional shifts are signs of progress rather than problems. What Does It Mean When Tapping Produces No Change at All? When a round of tapping produces zero shift, it means something specific is blocking the path forward, and that block can be identified and addressed. In my experience, the block usually falls into one of two categories. Either a part of you has decided (outside your conscious awareness) that healing is risky and staying stuck is safer, or you have not yet tuned in with enough specificity to reach the real issue. Both of these are solvable. You do not need to know which one is operating before you begin. The six-step process below addresses both. The key reframe here is this: "nothing happened" is not the same as "tapping does not work." It is the same as "I need more information." And that information is available if you ask the right questions. If your sessions have been stalling for a longer stretch, Episode 648: What to Do When Your Tapping Transformation Feels Slow or Stuck goes deeper into diagnosing a tapping plateau when the stall has lasted weeks or months. Step 1: Tap on Your Frustration About Tappi

One of the reasons we resist taking action is that some actions simply can't be taken back. Our subconscious mind keeps us stuck because it's trying to figure out the perfect thing to do, but because the future is unknown, it's impossible to be certain. This leads us from thinking about the best choice, to stalling on making a choice, to things getting worse because we aren't doing anything at all (which is itself a choice). This kind of cycle can happen with any decision, but it's particularly likely when you're facing a choice between two options that both have downsides. When you're in that situation, the resistance is going to be higher because it feels like no matter what you choose, you lose. This week on the podcast, I share a simple tapping process that will help you take action, especially when you're faced with two choices that both feel bad. If you use this approach, not only will you break through resistance, you'll also be much happier with the choices you make. Support the podcast! Http://tappingqanda.com/support Subscribe in: Apple Podcast | iPhone | Spotify | Pandora | Amazon Music | iHeartRadio | YouTube

Subscribe in: Apple Podcast | iPhone | Spotify | Pandora | Amazon Music | iHeartRadio If you have ever finished a round of EFT tapping and felt a wave of sadness wash over you, you are not alone. Feeling sad after tapping is one of the most common experiences people report, and it is also one of the most misunderstood. That sadness is not a sign that tapping failed or that something went wrong. It is actually a signal that genuine healing just took place. Gene Monterastelli, EFT practitioner and educator with over 17 years of experience and host of the Tapping Q&A Podcast (690+ episodes), explains exactly why this happens and what to do about it. Key Takeaways Post-session sadness after EFT tapping is a grief response triggered by the sudden recognition of time and opportunity lost to the issue you just healed. Sadness after tapping does not mean tapping is not working; it means a shift has occurred and your system is processing what could have been different. The most effective response to post-tapping sadness is to acknowledge and witness it with additional tapping rather than trying to push through it or reframe it away. Left unaddressed, this sadness can become a subconscious barrier that prevents you from tapping in the future because your system associates tapping with feeling bad. Understanding the mechanism behind post-session sadness removes its power to interrupt your healing practice and actually deepens your tapping work. Why Sadness After Tapping Catches People Off Guard Most people expect to feel better after tapping, not worse. When you sit down for a round of EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques, a stress-reduction method that combines gentle tapping on acupressure points with focused statements), the reasonable expectation is relief. So when sadness shows up instead, it feels like a contradiction. This expectation gap is what makes post-tapping sadness so disorienting. You did the work. You followed the process. You may have even felt a real shift on the issue you were addressing. And then sadness arrives, seemingly out of nowhere, and the natural conclusion is that something went wrong. "It can feel like tapping's not working because you feel bad afterwards. The reality is that sadness is the sign of healing and transformation." Gene Monterastelli, EFT practitioner and host of the Tapping Q&A Podcast. The confusion deepens because most people categorize sadness as a negative emotion. If healing is supposed to feel good, then feeling sad must mean the healing did not happen. But that logic misses what the sadness is actually pointing to. What Causes Sadness After a Round of EFT Tapping? Post-tapping sadness is a grief response, and it follows a very specific and logical pattern. When you successfully clear a limiting belief, release a stored emotion, or heal something that has been holding you back, a new awareness opens up almost immediately. Your system recognizes that the thing you just transformed could have been transformed sooner. Here is how the sequence works. You tap on an issue. The issue shifts or clears. In that moment of clarity, you can suddenly see all the time, all the opportunities, and all the actions that were lost because you carried that issue for as long as you did. The sadness you feel is grief for that lost time. "What you immediately start to do is you immediately start to grieve all of the time, all of the opportunity, all of the action that was lost because you had been impacted by the thing that you had just tapped on." Gene Monterastelli. This is not a malfunction. It is a completely natural response to a real loss. The moment healing happens, the contrast between "life with this burden" and "life without it" becomes painfully clear. Is Sadness After Tapping a Sign That EFT Is Not Working? No. Sadness after tapping is evidence that something genuinely shifted. If nothing had changed, there would be nothing to grieve. The sadness exists precisely because healing occurred and your system can now see what that burden cost you. Think of it this way: if you had been carrying a heavy backpack for years without realizing it, the moment someone lifts it off your shoulders, you would feel the relief. But you might also feel a pang of frustration or sadness about all the miles you walked while unnecessarily weighed down. That frustration does not mean removing the backpack was a mistake. This distinction matters because misinterpreting post-tapping sadness can create a real obstacle. If you believe tapping made you sad, your subconscious mind files that away. The next time you consider tapping, a quiet resistance shows up: "Last time I tapped, I felt terrible. Why would I do that again?" Over time, this can erode your willingness to tap at all. Understanding the actual cause of the sadness, which is grief over lost time rather than a failure of the technique, breaks that cycle before it starts. How Post-Tapping Sadness Can Become a Barrier to Healing Left unexamined, post-se

The perfect time to tap is in the moment, when you are overwhelmed with emotions…and it is also the hardest time to remember to tap. That's mainly because remembering to tap in the midst of strong emotions is difficult, but it is not the only reason. The second, powerful reason why you don't tap in the moment has everything to do with how you were taught to tap. When most of us learned to tap, we were told that we "need to be as specific as possible". This is excellent advice, so much so it is now scientifically valid advice . The problem is not the advice, it is how our subconscious hears this advice. What we say is "be as specific as possible". What our subconscious hears is "tapping only works if I am specific." In the midst of overwhelming emotions it is hard to be specific, so the subconscious resists tapping at all because it doesn't think it will work. Listen to this week's podcast to learn exactly how I overcame this subconscious resistance, which was something I faced too. Implementing this one idea will not only get you to tap more in the moment, it will also super charge any other tapping you do. This concept transformed how I tap AND how I think about tapping. I know you will love it. Support the podcast! Http://tappingqanda.com/support Subscribe in: Apple Podcast | iPhone | Spotify | Pandora | Amazon Music | iHeartRadio | YouTube

One of the conundrums of tapping is the fact that you tap because you want to feel better, but you aren't as good at tapping when you feel bad because you are in a lower resource state. To put it another way, when you need tapping the most, you are the least effective version of yourself as a tapper. But just because you aren't at the peak of your tapping abilities does not mean you are destined to fail when you sit down to tap. This week in the podcast, I share a simple game plan where I teach you: what you can do ahead of time to tap effectively when you feel bad the first thing you should tap on when you don't feel great the second thing you should tap on right after that how to continue your tapping session to get the most out of it Having a plan for those times when you're not at your best is key for getting help when you most need it. And the best time to learn this is right now! Support the podcast! Http://tappingqanda.com/support Subscribe in: Apple Podcast | iPhone | Spotify | Pandora | Amazon Music | iHeartRadio | YouTube

It is all too common for tappers to look back at their path to healing and think, "What on earth was I doing? I know better than that! Why do I keep making bad choices when I know exactly what to do?" This comes up most often in my individual coaching sessions when my clients talk about reaching for distracting behaviors instead of tapping. They know at the moment that the best choice would be to tap, but instead they doomscroll social media, fall down YouTube rabbit holes, reorganize their spice rack (again), or mindlessly eat a bunch of unhealthy crap. Annoyingly, this does make sense, taken from the perspective of trying to keep themselves safe. Actor and writer Tom Lennon described it perfectly in an interview by Kevin Pollak on a book tour. When Kevin asked if he liked to write, Tom said something to the effect of, "You will know I have a writing deadline coming up because my kitchen floor will be so clean you could perform surgery on it." We do not choose distractions because we are weak, or because we believe they are the best choice. We choose them to feel more comfortable at the moment. The problem is that, in hindsight, we only see that we could have made a healthier choice. When I find myself in these moments, I don't tap to stop the unhealthy behavior. I actually do the opposite! I tap to do the unhealthy behavior, but the key distinction is I am choosing to do it consciously. When we move from being unconscious to a conscious awareness of our distracting behaviors, we regain control. And with control we can spend less (or even no) time on distracting behaviors and we don't beat ourselves up. In this week's podcast I am going to show you: How to catch yourself in the moment right before you unconsciously start doing the healthy action How to tap with compassion in the moment, without letting yourself off the hook How to tap so that you constrain (and often eliminate) the unhealthy behavior It is an unusual but incredibly powerful form of tapping. I know you will love it! Support the podcast! Http://tappingqanda.com/support [player] Subscribe in: Apple Podcast | iPhone | Spotify | Pandora | Amazon Music | iHeartRadio | YouTube Watch a video version on YouTube

If you are tapping, it almost always means you are focusing on something negative, like challenging emotions, physical pain, difficult times from your past, or limiting beliefs. This makes a lot of sense because tapping is a powerful tool for bringing about change and transformation. But just because tapping is great at responding to life's difficulties does not mean it's the only way to tap. Tapping for celebration is another great use for tapping that most of us miss. As we celebrate seventeen years of the Tapping Q&A Podcast this week, I share with you why you are missing out if you are not tapping while celebrating. The podcast covers how tapping for celebration: Accelerates your healing Encourages you to tap more Changes the way you feel in the moment beyond just relieving pain or discomfort You may not have experienced this type of tapping before, but after this episode, you will want to use it much more often! Support the podcast! Http://tappingqanda.com/support [player] Subscribe in: Apple Podcast | iPhone | Spotify | Pandora | Amazon Music | iHeartRadio | YouTube

When most of us first learned tapping we were taught to be "as specific as possible" when coming up with tapping phrases. This is sound advice, which is backed up by scientific research. But your success with tapping relies on more than just the words you say and what you focus on when you are tapping. How you feel in the moment has just as much impact on your tapping success. And when I say "how you feel" I don't mean the emotions you are feeling in the moment that you are tapping on. Rather, I am referring to every part of your resource state. Your resource state includes whether you are tired or rested, if you are sick, if you are in a quiet place where you can focus, if you are well hydrated, and when you last ate, to name just a few. It is something that most tappers miss and failing to take your resource state into account when you are tapping could be setting you up for disappointment and frustration. This week in the podcast we explore: How to assess your resource before you start to tap How to create realistic expectations for your tapping How to improve your resource state in the moment so you can get more out of your tapping Once you understand how your resource state impacts your tapping, it will be easy for you to transform both your expectations and your resource state. Support the podcast! Http://tappingqanda.com/support Subscribe in: Apple Podcast | iPhone | Spotify | Pandora | Amazon Music | iHeartRadio | YouTube

One of the most powerful tools in the healing and transformational tool box is having clear goals. This is true in big picture ways, such as what I would like to achieve this year, and small picture ways, such as what I would like to get out of this next round of tapping. I believe in this idea so deeply that in my Tapping Mastery Blueprint I teach the first thing you should do before starting to tap is to ask yourself the question "What is the goal of this round of tapping?" Although goals are powerful, sometimes they can get in the way of your healing and transformation. This happens when your goals are too big for the moment. Too much pressure and expectation can become measuring sticks for failing, killing off your motivation. This week in the podcast I share: How goals and expectations can hinder our progress How to spot when this is happening to you How to tap to release feelings of frustration and failure This is not about radically transforming your tapping goals, but how to recalibrate them in such a way that you tap more and get more out of each round of tapping. Support the podcast! Http://tappingqanda.com/support= Subscribe in: Apple Podcast | iPhone | Spotify | Pandora | Amazon Music | iHeartRadio | YouTube

One of the concepts I talk about daily with my clients and students is that the goal of tapping is a proportionate well informed emotional response. In most cases this is a process of giving the emotions space to be heard and understood. Once we know where the emotional response is coming from it creates the space for use to heal, transform, and create a proportionate well informed emotional response. One of the reasons why we love tapping is because it is so good at helping us to do exactly that. With that being said, sometimes it is best for us to not feel our emotions. I know that might sound a little bit radical, but whole heartedly believe it. This week in the podcast I explore the times when it is healthy and useful to tap in a way in which we aren't clearing our emotions, but instead we are putting a lid on them (for now). Even if you are skeptical of this idea, I would encourage you to give this tapping a try and then decide if it is a good fit for your healing journey. Support the podcast! Http://tappingqanda.com/support Subscribe in: Apple Podcast | iPhone | Spotify | Pandora | Amazon Music | iHeartRadio