How Tapping Freed Me of Severe Anxiety
“Why is my heart pounding out of my chest?” I asked myself last year after about six weeks in lockdown. While I have struggled with anxiety since I was a small child, I had not experienced constant heart palpitations. They would come on around late afternoon and last until just before bedtime. I tried deep breathing to stop them to no avail. It felt like a drummer lived inside my chest and pounded away every night.
I became desperate to stop my heart from constantly pounding. I decided I needed to meditate, that calming my brain down would help. I looked at various meditation apps and found one called The Tapping Solution. I downloaded the app onto my phone and watched the introduction video. I quickly found out that the app uses a therapeutic technique called tapping or emotional freedom technique which combines acupressure and modern psychology. From the first time I did a tapping session, the heart palpitations stopped.
There is a reason why. Tapping stopped my amygdala, the brain’s smoke detector, from going into a constant fight-flight-or-freeze loop. As Nick Ortner, developer of The Tapping Solution, says in his book, “Tapping seems to turn off the amygdala’s alarm--deactivating the brain’s arousal pathways. Tapping on the meridian endpoints sends a calming response to the body, and the amygdala recognizes it’s safe.”
Feeling safe is a big deal for childhood trauma survivors, particularly survivors of child sexual abuse. What my uncle did to me when I was a small child, caused my amygdala to remain on high alert. The COVID-19 pandemic kicked it into overdrive. By tapping at least once a day, I began to retrain my brain and body. Since the abuse I suffered as a child happened to my body, tapping on certain acupressure points helps remove my body's trauma.
Tapping helps PTSD
Post-traumatic stress disorder is an all too real after effect of childhood trauma. Many of us live with it and suffer in silence. The good news is that tapping can help. Studies show that tapping works to stop the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Researchers examined the effects of six sessions of tapping on seven war veterans just returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. They found that the severity of PTSD symptoms decreased by 40 percent, while depression decreased by 49 percent, anxiety by 46, and PTSD itself by 50 percent. That is after just six sessions. In another study, researchers looked at the effects of tapping in veterans and found that PTSD symptoms declined by 53 percent.
Tapping is an easy way to heal childhood trauma
The great thing about tapping is that you can do it yourself. While there are other types of therapies that can help with childhood trauma recovery, most require the aid of a therapist. Tapping does not. By tapping twice a day, while practicing meditation once a day, my anxiety is around 80 percent less after one year. Considering that I can remember feeling extreme anxiety as a small child, that is amazing.
While tapping is easy, it requires daily practice. When I wake up and do not want to practice it, I make myself do it anyway. It takes time to retrain the brain and body to not overreact to triggers. While we want quick healing because we live in a fast-food society, that is not how to works. Persistence and perseverance is the key to recovery.
If you are interested in beginning a tapping practice, pray this prayer:
Oh Lord, I surrender my brain and body to You, the One who created me. I ask You to empower me to begin tapping and keep practicing it daily. Let me feel Your presence as I tap for it is in Your presence that true healing happens.