Sadness can be one of the hardest emotions to use Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT/EvEFT) for. It just doesn’t do it justice to tap on the phrase, “I feel sad.”1

Somehow the word sad doesn’t encompass all that goes along with our feelings because there are many different flavors of sadness.

When I am faced with sadness the first thing I do is tap on the sadness without any words. I close my eyes and simply let the sadness grow in my heart. I am not running from it. I am not running to it. I am just being present to the feeling of the sadness. I feel it and let it pass. The whole time I am just moving from tapping point to tapping point.

The reason we use words when we are tapping is to help us focus in on the issue. Sadness is such a physically visceral emotion that it is very easy to tune into without words. After I have spent a little time tapping without words I will tap on a patter like this:

Right now I feel so sad…sad is such an inadequate word for this emotion…this sadness is cutting me right to my core…as if a part of me is being wrenched out…or slowly burned from the inside out…this sadness is trying to teach me a lesson…it’s worried I am losing or have lost something that is very important…it is afraid I am never going to get it back…it’s afraid that I am going to be without and incomplete…whatever I feel I have lost I am thankful that I did have it in my life…even if it was not for as long as I wanted it…I choose to know I am whole and complete without anything else…I have simply forgotten how I am connected to everything…even when it is not present…I forgive myself for any weakness or failure I feel because I am feeling sad…sadness is natural…it is nothing more than my body’s way of telling me that I fear not being complete…or whole…I am glad there is a part of me that worries about this…I know this sadness will pass…now that I have recognized the lesson this sadness is trying to teach me I thank it and let it pass
[How to use these tapping phrases]