Ep #359: How to Do EFT Tapping for Grief

Welcome to The Widowed Mom Podcast, Episode 359: How to Do EFT Tapping for Grief.

Welcome to The Widowed Mom Podcast, the only podcast that offers a proven process to help you work through your grief, to grow, evolve, and create a future you can truly look forward to. Here’s your host, Master Certified life coach, grief expert, widow, and mom, Krista St-Germain.

Hey there, welcome to another episode of the podcast. Today I want to teach you one of the simplest tools I know for helping your body settle down when emotions feel overwhelming. It’s called EFT tapping, and if you’ve been around my work for a while or been listening to the podcast, you’ve probably heard me mention it. I’ve done several episodes on it. I use it myself almost daily. I teach it to my clients. I taught it to my kids when they were little. My kids do it weekly. We even have tapping calls inside of my coaching program because it is such a practical way to work with emotions instead of fighting them.

And the best part is that it’s something you can do almost anywhere. You don’t need any equipment. There’s no long meditation practice. You don’t need any special training. It’s just you and a few minutes. So, in this episode, I’m going to walk you through what EFT tapping actually is, why it works, how you can start using it yourself when grief or emotions feel intense, and we’re going to do it together so you can get the feel for what it’s like if you want to give it a try. And by the end of the episode, you’ll know enough to do it on your own.

So before we get into this, just a reminder to subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen. That will ensure that you don’t miss an episode. It will also send a message to the podcasting gods that this podcast is helpful, and it will then be shown to more widows who need it. And that is what I really want to do with this podcast.

And just a reminder, if you are listening to this podcast audio only, I highly recommend that you go over to YouTube and you watch it there so that you can see the demo that I’m going to do during this episode of me teaching you how to tap. All right? Okay.

What is EFT tapping? So first of all, EFT stands for Emotional Freedom Technique, Emotional Freedom Technique. It is a method that combines two things. One, focusing on what you’re feeling, and two, tapping lightly on specific points on the body. And these points are the same points that have been used in acupuncture for I don’t even know how long. But instead of needles, we just use our fingertips. And when you tap on these points while acknowledging the truth of what you’re feeling, something really interesting, I kind of want to say magical, happens actually, which is that your nervous system begins to calm down.

And when your nervous system calms down, your brain becomes less reactive to whatever you’re thinking about. In other words, you can still think about the thing that’s upsetting you, but it doesn’t feel quite as overwhelming, and the emotional charge starts to come down.

Quick story that happened yesterday, which is that someone relatively new to my coaching program came onto a call and she asked me how to process emotions, and she wanted to know more about the now process that I teach. So we were walking through it. I suggested tapping. She said she had tried it, she didn’t really love it. And she just happened to give it a shot last night because we happened to have a tapping call inside of my program. And she reported back this morning and said that even though she was skeptical, she tried it. Her husband died a little over 14 months ago and she said that for the first time in 14 months, she slept for more than six hours. And she didn’t even tap on her grief. She tapped on something that was just kind of mildly annoying her in her real life, but it really didn’t have anything to do with her grief. And yet reported that now she is a tapping fan and slept for more than six hours, which hadn’t happened since her husband passed.

So, please keep an open mind. I realize that tapping seems a little strange. I totally understand that it that it does. It did to me too, and I just want you to keep an open mind because I’ve seen it, I’ve experienced it. I want it to help you too. Okay.

So, why does tapping work? Understanding it a little bit helps people trust the process more, even though you still just kind of got to go into it with a leap of faith. When something reminds you of your person, when you are having a wave of grief, when you are having anxiety about the future, some sort of intense emotional experience, your brain interprets that as a threat. Not because your grief is actually dangerous, but because your brain is designed to protect you. So, when we’re feeling threatened, a stress response gets activated. Our body releases stress hormones. Sometimes we notice our heart rate increases. We might get more tense, our muscles tighten, right? Our breathing might change, and all of a sudden it might feel like the emotion we’re experiencing is taking over our whole entire body. And that’s not the most fun, right? But it is our nervous system doing exactly what it evolved to do.

So, how do we support ourselves when that happens? Enter tapping. Tapping can help send a message to our body that we’re safe. When we tap on these acupressure points while we are acknowledging the truth of how we feel, we’re essentially telling our nervous system, “I know this feels scary, but we’re safe right now.” And that combination of being honest and being aware of what’s actually happening, plus physically calming our nervous system by tapping on these acupressure points, helps turn down the intensity. It helps create safety in the nervous system so that the emotion can flow through. And there have actually been many studies on tapping that show that while we tap our stress hormones like cortisol reduce, we experience improvements in the intensity of the emotion that we’re feeling. In other words, the intensity dials down.

It’s even been documented that PTSD can be helped with tapping. The Veteran’s Administration is now using tapping to help with PTSD. It also helps with emotional regulation. It also helps with belief shifting, which we won’t get into that too much today, but it’s just such a powerful tool. What I will tell you though, is that the most important thing that I think EFT tapping does is that it just helps you feel relief. It’s like an off switch for your body’s stress response. It helps because you feel more safe. It helps the emotion move through instead of getting stuck. And as you know, I teach that emotions are not problems to solve. They are simply experiences to allow, and tapping is a brilliant way to make allowing a little easier.

I find that tapping is especially helpful when emotions feel really intense. Maybe a memory pops up. Maybe you’re driving somewhere and all of a sudden you’re reminded of something you used to do together. Maybe you’re lying in bed at night and suddenly your mind starts replaying everything. Instead of trying to think your way out of the feeling when your body is not feeling safe, tapping helps your body realize that it’s safe so that you can feel the feeling and it can move through.

I remember one of the most powerful times I used tapping, and thank goodness I knew about tapping before Hugo died because it was so helpful to me so many times. I remember driving under a bridge in my car and there was a semi that came over the top of that bridge and it must have hit a bump, but it made a crashing metal noise, and my body went straight back to the accident that took my husband’s life, straight back to the accident. My heart was pounding, my breathing started escalating, and thank goodness, I already had tapping in my tool belt and I immediately started tapping while driving with one of those acupressure points. I used, I kept one hand on the wheel and I started tapping with my other hand on the collar bone point. And it helped my body calm back down relatively quickly. So, so helpful, grief grenades, intense emotions, any time the body just feels unsafe.

Another time it’s helpful is when your brain keeps looping on a thought. So when your brain starts looping on, I can’t do this without them. My life will never be the same. I’m going to make the wrong decision, right? We’re just looping on a thought and we can’t seem to get out of that loop. Instead of arguing with the thought, you can simply tap while you acknowledge that you have the thought. And often what will happen is the intensity around that thought will soften.

Another time tapping can be super helpful is when you’re anticipating something difficult. Maybe a deathiversary is coming up, maybe a holiday is coming up, there’s a social event that you’re going to go to and you know you’re going to be asked about how are you really doing, or you know that it’s probably likely that you’re going to cry and you don’t want to. You can tap while thinking about the upcoming event and help your nervous system calm down ahead of time. You can literally imagine what it’s going to be like, tap while you imagine it, and it will help you have an easier experience both now and of the event when you get there or the day when it arrives.

Inside my coaching program, we also use it for a fourth reason, which is to rewrite sticky belief patterns. And we won’t get into that too much today, but just know that if you’re up against a belief pattern, say you’re trying to go from I hate my life to I love my life, which is a pretty dramatic shift, or I’ll never be happy again to my best days are ahead of me. Some of those beliefs that are a little bit more challenging, or maybe it’s a really old belief, tapping can be really helpful in terms of releasing those sticky beliefs. So, just know that’s possible.

How do we do it? I’m going to walk you through what’s called the basic recipe of tapping. So, first, before we even start tapping on any acupressure points, we want to identify what it is we’re feeling. So we start by noticing and naming the emotion that we’re having. So maybe you notice that you’re feeling sad, maybe you’re feeling anxious, maybe you’re feeling angry, maybe you’re feeling lonely. We’re not trying to change it, we just want to give it a name. Sometimes what can help to do that is to put your hand on your chest, on your heart. I like to put both hands, and close your eyes, and as long as it feels safe to do so, right? If ever it feels unsafe to close your eyes, we want to open them. But if it feels safe to close your eyes, close your eyes and just notice what’s happening on the inside of your body and notice what the emotion is that you’re feeling. And then you just give it a name. All right? So, that’s step one.

Then we’re going to rate the intensity of that emotion. So, on a scale from zero to 10, where zero is non-existent, 10 is the most intense that emotion has ever been for you, write that number down, zero to 10. How intense is it? The reason we want to do that is because it makes it easier to track our progress. It makes it easier to notice whether the feeling is shifting as we tap. You would think we wouldn’t need to do that, but it’s actually very helpful. So name that emotion and give it a number.

And then we’re going to begin tapping. So let me show you the tapping points and then I’ll tell you how we talk through it while we tap. So the first tapping point is called the side of hand. It’s right here on the fleshy part of your hand. Some people have referred to this as the karate chop point, but side of hand is what I call it. I happen to use all four fingers on the side of the hand. That way I know I’m not going to miss that spot. You could use a couple of fingers, whatever feels right to you. I like to use all four. So that’s the side of hand and we always start there.

And then once we’ve tapped here, and again, we’ll come back and I’ll tell you what to say, we go through a full round of tapping. So this would be called the setup point, the side of hand. And a full round of tapping would start on the eyebrow. Now, I’m not tapping on the top of my eyebrow. I’m actually kind of tapping where my nose meets right by my eyebrow. So it’s kind of between my nose and the corner of my eyebrow. Tapping right there. That’s called the eyebrow point.

The side of eye is right beside the eye, on the outside of the eye. You can’t quite touch your eyelashes, but almost, on the outside of the eye. So kind of underneath the eyebrow, right on the outside of the eye, that’s called side of eye. So that’s the second tapping point.

And the third one is under the eye, but really close to the eye. There’s a little bone right there beneath your eye and so you’re just tapping right on that bone right underneath the eye. So that’s under the eye.

And the next tapping point is under the nose. Pretty self-explanatory. Under the nose. So it’s between the top lip and the nose. And the next tapping point is under the mouth. So right below the bottom lip and above the chin. Right here, under the mouth.

Collarbone. If you notice where your bra strap is, kind of right there. And you could tap on both sides if you like, or just one. That’s called the collarbone point.

Then under the arm is right underneath the middle of your arm, right where your bra strap is. That’s under the arm. And then top of the head. It’s just right in the middle of your head. So those are the basic tapping points.

Now, how do we do this, right? First of all, it doesn’t matter what hand you use. You can use one hand, you can use both hands. It doesn’t matter how many fingers you use. You can do whatever you want. I typically use a couple of fingers on each point. That’s what feels good to me. I tend to tap very lightly. Some people like to tap with a little more pressure. Some people find tapping too stimulating and they will just press and hold each point. And that’s also great, right? So you can do whatever you want.

Some people would say five to 10 times on each point. I tend to do a full breath on each point, so I tend to tap a little bit more on each point. Again, you do what you want to do. Sometimes you might feel like you want to stick with a point a little bit longer. That’s okay too. You cannot mess this up, right? We’re just going to be honest and we’re going to tap.

So, going back to that emotion that you noticed before and you named and you gave a number, all right? So let’s say you said anxious. I feel anxious right now, right? So we’re going to use that as an example. To set that up, the setup statement is two parts: honesty and grounding. So honesty is even though I feel this anxiousness, or even though I feel this anxiety. And I’m just being honest about that. That’s what I’m feeling. Even though, insert the problem statement, and we’re going to be honest about it. Even though I’m feeling anxious. All right? That’s the first part.

Second part is a grounding statement. Now, I’m going to give you a few options, but what’s important about the grounding statement is simply that it feels good in your body. So even though I’m feeling anxious, I’m open to allowing my body to relax. Now, if that doesn’t feel true to you, we’re not going to go with it. Even though I’m feeling anxious, right here and right now, I’m safe. That could be your grounding statement. Or it could be, even though I’m anxious, it’s okay to be honest about how I’m feeling. That could be your grounding statement. The classic grounding statement would be, even though I’m anxious, I deeply and completely love and accept myself. Now, for some people, that doesn’t work because they don’t believe it when they say it. So we don’t want to use a grounding statement that we don’t believe. So even though, state the problem, I’m feeling anxious, right here and right now, I’m safe. That’s the grounding statement, the opening statement. We do that three times. So let’s just do it together, right? So three times.

And in fact, let’s be a little more generic since I don’t know what feeling you’ve got going on. All right? So let’s just say, even though I have this feeling, because you’re having a feeling, right? Even though I have this feeling, right here and right now, I’m safe. And you would repeat that after me. Even though I have this feeling, right here and right now, I’m safe. Even though I have this feeling, right here and right now, I’m safe.

And then going to the eyebrow point, tapping on the eyebrow, this feeling. And you just repeat after me, either silently or out loud, whatever you feel most comfortable with. You can keep your eyes closed or open them, whatever feels good to you. Moving to the side of the eye, this feeling. And then under the eye, there it is. Under the nose, this feeling. And I’m just being honest, right? Under the mouth, right now I feel, fill in the blank. And tapping on the collar bone, this feeling. And then under the arm, this feeling. And top of the head, this feeling.

And then you can gently stop tapping, take a deep breath and blow it out. And then you check back in with that emotion and you notice what’s my new number? If I was at an eight, where am I now? Am I at a six? Maybe it went down a couple of points. Maybe it got higher. Worse before better is also a thing that happens very commonly and that’s okay. We just go back to it.

So that’s the idea. So, we do one round, we pause, we check in, we notice what changed. Maybe it got better, maybe it got higher. Maybe the emotion shifted. Maybe I started with anxiousness and now I’m feeling angry. And I need to now tap on anger, or maybe I started with angry and now I feel sad. So we just follow it. It’s all totally normal. And you just keep tapping for a few rounds until the intensity comes down. I usually do two rounds before I even check, because that’s what feels good to me.

What you will notice is that once you get good at this and you’ve practiced it just a little bit, the emotion will become less overwhelming. Your thinking will become clearer. When our body feels safe, then the part of our brain that is the highest functioning part of our brain, the executive functioning part of our brain, the part of our brain that allows us to think about our thinking comes online. So we can start thinking a little bit more clearly. The emotion gets less intense, the thinking becomes more clear. We start trusting that we can handle our emotions. And that really matters.

One of the biggest fears widows have is that we’re not going to be able to handle the feelings. And so we look for ways to avoid them. And because of that, they never really get processed. And because of that, we limit the choices that we make for ourselves in the future. So tapping can help your body learn that you actually can handle the emotions. And it really matters if you want to love your life again, if you want to get out of the grief plateau, you’re going to have to believe that you’re good at feelings. You’re going to have to be willing to feel feelings. If you’re not willing to feel feelings, you’re not going to make the changes necessary to create what you want next because you’re human and emotions can feel scary if we don’t have the right tools.

So, another thing I really want to emphasize before we go here is that tapping is not about making yourself feel good or making emotions disappear. The goal of tapping is to help your nervous system regulate so that the emotion can move through your body more easily. It’s about creating the conditions, not so that you only feel good, but so that whatever you’re feeling can flow through, can shift, can move. Because all the feelings are part of our human experience.

So if you imagine a stream of water flowing down a mountainside and a big tree falls down and blocks the flow of water, and now the water’s starting to pool around that tree and it can’t go down the hill, we’re not going to get rid of the water. We’re going to remove the tree. We’re going to get rid of what’s blocking the water from doing what it needs to do so that it can start flowing again. And that’s one of the things I love so much about tapping is that it’s a way to remove the block. It’s a way to create the conditions so that the water can flow, the emotional energy that needs to shift and move can. And that’s why I love it.

So, consider where might you use that this week? Maybe you’re going to notice an emotional wave. Maybe you’re already worried about something that’s going to happen in the future. Give it a try. Two or three minutes, notice what happens. You might be really surprised by how quickly your body responds. Remember, the worst thing that can happen is a feeling. Allowing feelings to flow through gets so much easier when our body believes that we’re safe. And sometimes our body just needs a little help settling down. It needs a little help understanding that we are safe. And that’s what tapping can do for us.

So, that’s what I have for you this week. If you found this episode helpful, I would love it if you would follow the podcast, rate it, leave a review so that more widows can find it. That’s what it’s all about. That’s what I have for you this week. Remember, I love you. You’ve got this. Take care, and I’ll see you next week. Bye-bye.

If you like what you’ve been hearing on this podcast and want to create a future you can truly get excited about even after the loss of your spouse, I invite you to join my Mom Goes On coaching program. It’s small group coaching just for widowed moms like you where I’ll help you figure out what’s holding you back and give you the tools and support you need so you can move forward with confidence.

Please don’t settle for a new normal that’s less than what you deserve. Go to coachingwithkrista.com and click Work With Me for details and next steps. I can’t wait to meet you.