So many of you are using EFT now, & it makes me deliriously happy! It’s a wonderfully empowering thing to know that you can actually get rid of your problems, & not stew in their juices for the rest of your life. I have had quite a few questions about EFT recently so I thought I’d address a bunch of them in one go. Let me know if you have any additional queries!

“I don’t know if I’m actually “doing it right”, if that makes sense. I do the whole tapping my head, eyebrows, under-eyes, under nose, between chin & lips, chest, side of chest, under chest… but it somehow doesn’t feel like enough! How many sessions do you recommend for one problem? Should a whole sequence of the above be on one over-arching issue or can I tap out completely different things?”

(FYI, the points are: top of head, start of eyebrows, side of eyes, under eyes, under nose, under mouth, collar bones, chest, side of chest, wrists!)

For some reason, I am able to tap out issues in just a couple of rounds (top of head down to wrists), but it wasn’t always that way. When I first started out & was dealing with some really big problems, I would do many many rounds on one problem, or even on one aspect of a problem. Sometimes I would go around tapping for ten rounds to clear something out. The general rule, however, is just to keep tapping until you feel the problem shift or move. I often find that if I’m tapping on something, I know it’s gone when I can’t remember what I was tapping on, or I start to laugh, or I feel no emotional attachment to the problem anymore. You will feel some kind of change if you’re doing it properly. If it doesn’t feel like it’s budging, try approaching it from a different angle or saying something else — even if it’s just “Even though EFT isn’t working & I feel like a moron doing this”. Say what you feel.

It can be tempting to tap on three things at once (“I’m fat, I’m ugly, I’m demotivated”), but it’s hard to get any traction if you’re thinking about too many things at once. If you feel like you have a laundry list of problems, write them down on paper so you’re not trying to keep track of them in your head, & then tap through them one by one, crossing them off as you go. Remember that detail is everything, so the more you say or feel, the better results you will get.

Try not to be afraid to go to dark places — allow your mind to go wherever it needs to. Often the problems we have on the surface (not concentrating in school) are related to deeper things from our past (parents always told you you’d be a failure). Tapping is like unpeeling an onion — sometimes it takes a while to get right down to the core of a problem, but it’s worth it!

“Basically I have a tremendous phobia of the dentist and I’ve got a problem with one of my teeth that I’ve been putting off for months now. It’s gotten to the point where I’m living off of painkillers just to dull the pain. Which obviously sucks. I won’t bore you with the details but I had some pretty horrible experiences with a dentist when I was little (I’m fairly sure it would amount to malpractice). I’ve changed dentist now but the fear remains. Do you think I would benefit from EFT? Can EFT work on phobias? And how would you recommend I go about it?”

Yes, EFT is fantastic for getting rid of phobias! Here are some articles on the main EFT site about dentist phobia: 1, 2, 3 & 4. A lot of those people have had the same kind of issue as you & they’ve explained how they’ve used tapping to remove their fears & memory of the trauma.

I think the best thing to do is sit down somewhere quiet, grab a sheet of paper & start making a list of reasons about why you’re afraid of going to the dentist. If that doesn’t work, you might like to try remembering what happened the time(s) that scared you off — as you play that “movie” in your head, you don’t need to speak, just tap around the points. But basically, think of all the individual pieces that add up to this fear. Past experience, pain, immobilisation, whatever — just tap out each thing.

It is absolutely possible to have no fear of going to the dentist & to have a complete turnaround in terms of how you see the situation (“he’s a horrible man who wants to hurt me” versus “he’s an educated dude who is helping me take care of my health”). I would also strongly suggest tapping on forgiving yourself for what happened all those years ago — you were a kid & it was not your fault. Lots of love to you.

“I’ve been having allergy problems for forever, but since I’ve gone to college they have been 5x worse and now have crossed the line into asthma. That, and all the stress of school and not eating properly has got me feeling down lately, which doesn’t help. But I am still at a loss for where to start — so I was wondering, if you didn’t mind telling me, what sort of things you tapped on to help with your asthma? I’m hoping to start tapping on that and work my way to other issues I’ve been having.”

My asthma had been a problem for me since I was about 7. I used to use a preventative inhaler every day & my actual inhaler probably every day or second day. I don’t know when exactly or why it started, but my father always had asthma too so maybe I just expected that I would suffer from it too. I actually inherited the unholy trinity of asthma, eczema & hayfever from him, none of which I have problems with now. Okay, all of that aside, here’s how I dealt with my asthma!

Asthma was actually the first thing I tapped on. My boyfriend was using EFT for emotional things & making great progress & I thought it was total bunk, so I decided that I would try it on something that would give me a definite, measurable result. Asthma was an obvious choice since it was such a huge part of my life.

I did some tapping on forgiving myself for having asthma, & forgiving my father for passing it on to me. Then I broke the issue down into segments. I would get asthma from all sorts of things — exercising, going from a hot to cold environment or vice versa, walking up hills, cold weather & cats. (That’s all I can think of now but I’m sure there were other triggers too.) I wrote all the reasons for getting asthma down on a piece of paper & then tapped through them individually. “Even though I get asthma from exercising, I deeply & completely love & forgive myself…”

I drank so much water & passed out. The next morning, I walked up the hill in the cold (three of those individual reasons in one experience!) to catch my bus, like I did every morning, & which also gave me asthma every morning. Surprise! No asthma. Brilliant. My asthma was gone.

However, a couple of years later, when I went back to my home town for the first time in ages, I got asthma again as soon as I stepped off the plane, & it plagued me the whole time I was there. I came home to Melbourne & it still wouldn’t go. I couldn’t figure out what the hell it was, & after lots of tapping I realised that it was actually fear about the future. I was afraid that I would have to go home & live in my home town, & afraid that I wasn’t ready to live in New York. As soon as I tapped that out, poof! It was gone again. Weird, man!

Oh, & re: eczema & hayfever… When I started using tapping & reduced my anxiety about life, my eczema disappeared, never to be seen again. At the same time, whenever I got hayfever I would just tap on having allergies, being allergic to pollen, & the physical symptoms (itchy eyes, runny nose etc.). I did this a few times & since then, it has never come back.

Remember to…

Drink lots of water
Go into as much detail as you can remember
Say what you feel or think
Allow yourself as much extra sleep as you need
Read other people’s testimonials on Emofree if you’re stuck
Keep tapping
Use it on everything! (Depression, binge eating, insomnia, social anxiety, panic attacks, anger etc.)

& now for some EFT success stories, in their own words! These are all emails from nonpareils that I have received recently! If you don’t think EFT works, these testimonials might change your mind…

“Although just about any of your articles can cheer me up or put a spring in my step, the ones on EFT have, I’d say, genuinely made my life take a turn for the better. I mentioned this in a comment on your latest EFT piece, about trying it for my depression, but wanted to just say “thank you!” properly and also let you know about my experiences with EFT since then. Basically, I feel as if some huge blockage or burden has fallen away from me. It’s incredible. The night I tried tapping on my depression, I was suicidal. I was willing to try absolutely anything that promised to help me feel better. After I tapped, I left that comment on your article, and then I started to feel incredibly shaky, cold and nauseous. I took that as a sign that the tapping had obviously done something. It was quite extraordinary. Two weeks later, I feel as if EFT has made a subtle but huge difference to my attitude.”

“I actually heard of the EFT exercises from a friend before, but I’ve never really tried it. Last night I did it for a series of problems that’s been nagging at me for a few weeks and it’s been an incredible relief – my mind stops wandering over to it now and replaying it in my mind. I have a question though – does EFT make you very tired? I slept for a good 11 hours after doing it for the first time, and today I still took a lunchtime nap. Not that it’s a bad thing; I usually have insomnia, but this incredible amount of unbroken sleep seems too good to be true!”

“i’ve read about your experiences with eft & i’ve always been very skeptical. my mother is a doctor so i tend to trust only things that can be scientifically proven & have evidence to back it up. so i’ve always skimmed over it & moved on. tonight i figured what the heck things are so awful right now that it can’t hurt. so i tapped on the karate chop point while crying & thinking about what was upsetting me. maybe it worked, maybe it was just the repetition & repeating things in my head but i felt calmer, something that i never feel when i think about things that upset me. i tend to avoid thinking about them at all because i find that it just makes me more upset & makes it harder for me to get back to “normal”. since i felt calmer & was no longer crying i decided to read more about it so i went to icing, watched the videos, read the whole article throughly, & chanted & tapped along with you video. i tapped about a couple of things including my depression & insomnia. then stopped so i could refill my water cup. i live in a dorm so i have to walk down the hall to get to the bathroom to get some water. by the time i got back to my dorm i felt tired & sleepy & ready for bed which might not be a big deal for some people but i have really bad insomnia. i usually take a prescription sleep medication to fall asleep & without it i can lay in bed for hours & typically won’t fall asleep until 4 in the morning. needless to say i’m pretty impressed. though i must admit i’m still quite skeptical & am trying to rationalize my calmness & sleepiness. maybe i just tired myself by crying for so long. maybe it’s just a placebo effect. or maybe it really did work. i’m actually quite interested in eft now & am so impressed that i had to shoot you an email before i went to bed. maybe you’ve introduced me to something that might actually work [unlike the millions of antidepressants that i’ve tried over to years]. thank you so so so much. if there’s anything else i should know or you think is important about eft that isn’t mentioned in icing or in the eft manual let me. good night & thank you for helping me get my first sleeping pill free night of 2008.”

“After that I did EFT at home every day. I didn’t believe it would work, just like most people don’t. So I tapped on “even though this feels really stupid and it will never help me feel any better because I’m so heartbroken…”. After a couple of weeks I noticed I was not tapping on the same feelings anymore. My heart was healing, my soul was healing, and I felt great. … I see the light and beauty in so many things now. I feel like I am now beginning to really understand life; I am understanding my Self & the connections between all people & all experiences – how everything has meaning, if you choose to let go and allow the Universe to reveal it to you. I feel very neutral most of the time, but when something nice happens or I see something fun or amazing, the joy in my heart is overwhelming! I haven’t had an anxious thought in over a week. I haven’t felt hopelessly lonely or depressed like I was, in about 2 weeks. I have stopped biting my nails. When I do feel yucky, I just do a few rounds of EFT and trust that it will help. This is a real accomplishment for me, because I’ve had anxiety since I was like 9 years old!”

“after reading about EFT on your blog, and watching your video and the videos you linked to from your site, i decided to give it a try. i was pretty unsure, and even believed it probably wasn’t going to work, but i told myself to remain open-minded. i tried the tapping techniques while sitting in the bathtub. i’d run through the tapping exercises 10-20 times each sitting. i did this for only 2-3 days in a row. at which point, i gave up because i wasn’t noticing any improvement. i figured i was wasting my time. as i said, there wasn’t an immediate improvement, so i stopped after day 3. this was about 4 months ago. something weird has occured though, i haven’t itched in a few months! even when showering in the morning– something that would normally set my legs itching– i’ve been fine. i haven’t called in late to work or canceled activities for a long time. i’m not saying that its completely gone… there were a few days when i noticed the beginning sensations of it and anticipated that my legs were going to burst into itching flames, but.. you know what?! … they didn’t. everything was fine. its like the early symptoms started, but then almost immediately subsided. i can’t explain it, but i’m starting to believe that EFT worked!”

“i suffer from depression and anxiety problems and, per your suggestions, have started using EFT with great results. a steady combination of your words and tapping away my problems has uplifted my soul so far beyond anything therapists or medication has ever done for me.”

“I wanted to thank you so much for introducing me to EFT. I read your article thoroughly for the first time today and did my first real session (previously I had only absentmindedly tapped my karate-chop point when I was anxious, which worked well, but was nothing like this, when I did the whole deal) Once I got going with it, I started to rant and it opened up to things I wasn’t even conscious that I was dealing with. Using EFT, when I eventually started saying things like “even though I’m not good enough and noone else will ever want me, I deeply and completely love and accept myself” I started to shake and cry, because deep down, I’d beat myself up all the time and call myself vain and shallow for considering myself confident, but then basing my good opinion of myself on my talents and looks. Using EFT as a starting point, I’m learning to base my self-worth on something more substancial, which will make me happier person, genuinely confident, rather than just propped up by all sorts of unsubstancial “stuff”. Your website has really touched my life. During a blah sort of day, I’ll go to galadarling.com and be mentally rejuvinated by simply hearing a positive voice in my head, reminding me to lick life’s icing when I’m at my bluest!. Your EFT advice, however, really takes the cake of all the ways you’ve improved my life without even knowing it! Thank you, thank you Gala!”

I am so happy for all of you & I hope you’ll continue using EFT! It changed my life & I know it can change yours.