EFT is a somatic technique that stands for Emotional Freedom Technique, aka “Tapping”. It uses meridian points from acupuncture and components of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to disengage the emotional charge and blocks associated with fears, beliefs, anxiety, and other stress related symptoms and behaviors.

Clinical trials published in peer-reviewed medical and psychological journals have demonstrated that EFT is effective for phobias, anxiety, depression, pain, and many other issues.

Studies on EFT are linked below:

https://eftinternational.org/discover-eft-tapping/eft-science-research/

Meridians, also known as acupuncture points, are pathways where energy, or qi, flows throughout the body. It is similar to wires in a house carrying electricity. Each of the meridian points are like endpoints to the wires. 

Tapping on the meridian points while verbalizing and focusing on emotional issues releases stuck energy, reduces distress, and rewrites neural pathways which results in calming your amygdala, and regulating your nervous system and emotions. It’s a gentle way to help heal physical, mental, or emotional issues and has been proven to reduce cortisol levels.

Trauma, which can be something big or small, is not just what happened to you, but how your body and brain learned to protect you after the event. 

The amygdala is a key part of the brain that controls how our nervous system responds to emotional distress. When it senses danger or discomfort, it triggers survival responses—fight, flight, or freeze—which can show up as yelling, crying, shutting down, anxiety, etc.. These reactions release stress hormones like cortisol, which can affect sleep, mood, energy, and overall health.

Trauma isn’t just the event itself—it’s how the mind and body experience it, especially when someone feels helpless, trapped, or alone. In those moments. The nervous system goes into survival mode to protect us. From infancy on, our bodies record experiences through sights, sounds, smells, emotions, and physical sensations, storing them as signals of safety or danger, even if we don’t consciously remember them.

Later in life, when something in the present reminds the brain of a past experience, the amygdala connects the two and reacts as if the original situation is happening again. This is why strong reactions can appear in situations that don’t seem to match the response—the body is trying to protect us based on old information.

The feelings can remain stuck in the nervous system and the body. Techniques like EFT /tapping can help calm the nervous system, release stored stress, and retrain the brain to feel safe again—allowing pain to soften and resilience to grow.

An example of how this plays out in real life:

As an adult, Sarah feels intense anxiety whenever she hears loud voices, her heart races and her palms are sweaty. This stems from her childhood when her parents’ frequent arguments with raised voices made her feel unsafe. Her nervous system, wired from those early experiences, now interprets yelling as a threat, triggering a fight-or-flight response (elevated heart rate, adrenaline surge) even in harmless situations, like a loud sports game or a nearby fan who is yelling for their team. This is an example of how unresolved childhood stress can prime the autonomic nervous system to overreact to similar stimuli in adulthood, holding onto that early sense of danger. EFT/tapping to the rescue!