Have you ever seen someone tapping on their face and chest and wondered whether it could help with anxiety? In this video, you’ll find out which doctors, self-help authors, actors and singers have spoken publicly about EFT tapping, what they experienced, and what research shows about anxiety and the fear of speaking in front of others. You’ll also hear why tapping can be useful for social anxiety, because you can do it at home.
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Disclaimer:
This video is for education. It is not medical advice and not a substitute for professional treatment. If you have a diagnosed condition or a history of serious trauma, please work with a qualified professional.
Transcript
Have you ever put off a difficult phone call all day? You worry that your voice will shake,
or that you won’t find the right words and the other person will notice how nervous you are.
Later that evening, you come across a video of someone tapping on their face and chest with their fingertips,
and you wonder whether something like that could really change how you feel.
But what if a psychiatrist from Harvard Medical School, an Oscar-nominated actress and some of the world’s best-known self-help authors have all said publicly that this method helped them or their patients?
In this video, you’ll find out who these people are and what they experienced.
And you’ll hear how one singer, who sometimes felt panicky through an entire concert, learned to manage her fear of the stage.
The method in that video is called EFT, but most people just call it tapping. The idea is pretty simple.
You think about a situation that makes you anxious, like that phone call,
and while you think about it, you tap lightly with your fingertips on a few points on your face and upper body.
You don’t need any equipment, and you can do it sitting on your sofa.
It does look a little strange. So who actually uses it, and why would a psychiatrist from Harvard Medical School put his name behind it?
Many people assume that tapping is something only a few people on the fringe do.
In fact, at least thirty-five well-known people have said publicly, and with their own name, that tapping helped them or that they recommend it.
Among them are authors, doctors, scientists, actors, singers and journalists. What may surprise you is where these statements come from.
These people work in very different fields, and they said what they said in their own words, in books, in recommendations and in interviews, at different times.
Most of them describe what they experienced themselves or what they saw in their own patients.
When people with such different backgrounds describe the same thing, it’s worth listening.
This also raises a question we’ll come back to later: Are these famous people just the lucky few for whom this method worked?
Before we get there, you’ll also hear about a doctor whose patient no longer needed her pain medication after tapping.
Let’s start with the world of self-help. Here, at least sixteen well-known authors and teachers have spoken out in favour of tapping.
Three of them show how far this support reaches. The first is Wayne Dyer, one of the best-known self-help authors in the world, who has since passed away.
Dyer worked personally with the author of a book about tapping. In his recommendation for that book, he wrote that he had great results with tapping in his own life.
And he gave the readers a clear piece of advice: put your skepticism aside, because it really works.
The second is Louise Hay, the author of You Can Heal Your Life and the founder of the self-help publisher Hay House.
In her recommendation for the same book, she wrote that tapping taught her how to dissolve problems of all kinds.
The third is Tony Robbins, one of the best-known life and business coaches in the world.
Robbins recommends a book that teaches tapping for chronic pain, and he points to the results its author has achieved with it.
So the support in the self-help world is broad. But self-help authors aren’t doctors. What do people with medical and scientific training say about tapping?
At least eleven doctors, psychologists and scientists have spoken publicly in favour of tapping.
Their judgement carries weight, because they have treated a great many patients or were trained to look at things scientifically.
Eric Leskowitz is a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School. After more than twenty-five years of treating patients,
he wrote in a book recommendation that EFT is the most promising new treatment he has come across.
Think about how many new treatments a psychiatrist hears about in twenty-five years, and he picked this one.
Mark Hyman is a well-known doctor and bestselling author in the United States, and he’s the doctor I mentioned a moment ago.
In the foreword to a book about tapping, he tells the story of a patient who was in severe pain. Hyman sent her to a tapping coach.
Afterwards, she was free of pain and no longer needed her medication.
Since then, Hyman has been sending difficult cases to that coach as well.
So this is a doctor who saw what tapping did for one of his patients and then changed the way he works.
Bruce Lipton is a cell biologist who used to work at a medical school, and he wrote the book The Biology of Belief.
In his book and in interviews, he recommends a group of methods called energy psychology to change beliefs that run in the background without you noticing them.
Energy psychology simply means methods where you think about a problem while you touch or tap certain points on your body, and EFT is one of them.
Lipton also appears in a documentary film called The Tapping Solution. Doctors and scientists are one side of the story.
But what about people who have to stand in front of others for a living?
At least eight people from film, music, television and the media have said publicly that tapping helped them. Two of their stories show especially well what this can mean.
Naomie Harris was nominated for an Oscar for her role in Moonlight, and she played Moneypenny in several James Bond films.
You might expect someone like her to feel completely at home in front of an audience.
Yet she has said that she doesn’t like performing on a theatre stage, because her nerves get so bad that she feels she might be sick.
She uses EFT when she’s under pressure, for example to prepare for a film scene she finds particularly difficult.
Earlier, I mentioned a singer who sometimes felt panicky through an entire concert. That singer is Hannah Reid, from the band London Grammar.
On stage, her nervousness sometimes didn’t ease at all, and she would feel panicky for the whole show.
She described her fear of performing as a phobia. After she started using EFT, that phobia turned into a nervousness she can manage.
And she said something that may matter even more: EFT showed her that she can help herself.
If you live with social anxiety, what both women describe will probably sound familiar.
It’s the fear of standing in front of other people, being watched and being judged, while your body reacts in a way you can’t simply switch off.
Which brings us back to the question from earlier: Are these famous people just the lucky few for whom this method worked?
Many people assume that success stories from celebrities are exceptions. The research shows something different.
Tapping methods have been tested in over two hundred clinical studies in English-language journals
and in more than a hundred more in other languages, so over three hundred studies in total.
A large report from eleven clinics in South America followed people with anxiety over five and a half years. They were treated either with tapping or with standard talk therapy.
With tapping, nine out of ten felt better. With talk therapy, it was about six out of ten.
The studies also include situations you may know very well. In one of them, nursing students who were anxious about giving a presentation in front of their class received a single EFT session.
On a scale from zero to ten, their anxiety afterwards was at about three.
In the group that got no help, it was at about eight,
and EFT also lowered the anxiety more than a breathing exercise did.
In another study, people who were afraid of speaking in front of others took part in a single group session of EFT.
Afterwards, they felt clearly less anxious than the people who were still waiting for their session.
So the famous people in this video aren’t exceptions. What they describe matches what studies and clinics have seen in a large number of ordinary people with anxiety.
But why would one method help such different people, from a doctor’s patient to a singer to a student in front of the class?
The answer is that anxiety feels very similar in every body. Whether you’re about to walk on stage or about to make that phone call,
your heart beats faster, your throat feels tight or there’s pressure in your chest.
The situations are different, but the feeling in the body is much the same. EFT works directly with this feeling.
You think about the situation that makes you anxious, you notice what happens in your body, and you tap while the feeling is there.
And this is what makes it so useful for social anxiety. You can do all of this at home.
You don’t have to put yourself in difficult situations first, and you don’t have to believe in the method either.
What counts is that you actually do it. Working at home isn’t a way of avoiding people.
You tap on the situations that make you anxious, one at a time,
so that your body gets used to staying calmer when you think of them. That prepares you, so that the real situations become easier later.
Think back to the phone call you put off all day at the start of this video,
and to the person tapping on their face and chest. That person is in good company.
Doctors, authors, actors and singers say this method helped them or their patients, and studies and clinics have seen the same in a great many people with anxiety.
If you want to see how EFT works for social anxiety, step by step and from your own home,
watch my video Working Through Social Anxiety at Home next. I’ve put it right here for you.