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Pod #700: Tapping for regretting not tapping enough

April 16, 2026 by Gene Monterastelli

It can feel so discouraging when you have great tools at your disposal, like tapping, that you know will have a positive impact on your life…but you are not using them.

This leads to self-recrimination AND hesitancy to use the tools in future for fear of failure, which means double the regret.

Every six or eight weeks, I set time aside to tap on all the emotions I feel for not tapping as much as I want to. Time spent tapping on my frustration and self-betrayal means I feel better in the moment and I tap more because I have a healthier relationship to tapping.

This is such powerful work and I encourage you to tap along with me.

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Pod #699: How Long Should You Tap on an Issue? When to Stop Tapping and Move On

April 14, 2026 by Gene Monterastelli

If you have been tapping for any length of time, you have probably asked yourself: when am I actually done? You get some relief, the intensity drops, but the issue is not completely gone. Knowing when to stop tapping on an issue is one of the most common questions I hear, and the answer is simpler than most people think.

TL;DR: Key Takeaways

Knowing when to stop tapping is not about reaching a SUDS (Subjective Unit of Distress) level of zero; it is about reaching the functional outcome you defined before you started.
Before every round of EFT tapping, ask yourself one question: “What is the goal of this round of tapping?” and name a specific, measurable outcome.
You do not need to eliminate fear or resistance completely to take action; you only need to reduce the emotional intensity enough to do what you need to do.
For complex, layered issues like negative self-image, the same goal-and-metric framework applies across multiple tapping sessions over days or weeks.
The three-step process for knowing when to move on is: name the outcome, name the metric, and stop when you reach it.

Why Knowing When to Stop Tapping Matters

Most people who learn EFT tapping go through a predictable arc. First comes the honeymoon phase where you want to tap on everything and you try to get everyone in your life to tap with you (I am speaking from lived experience here). Then the enthusiasm settles and you are left staring at a giant laundry list of things you could work on.

That laundry list creates its own kind of overwhelm. What do I tap on first? How long do I stay with it? When is it “enough”? Without a clear framework for knowing when to move on, many people either keep grinding on one issue long past the point of diminishing returns or they hop between issues so quickly that nothing gets meaningful traction.

Key Insight: “It's not about completely eliminating something. It's about putting ourselves in the position so we can think, feel, believe, and act in the ways that we want to.”

This reframe changes everything about how you approach your tapping practice. The finish line is not the absence of all discomfort. The finish line is functional freedom.

What Is a SUDS Level and Why It Is Not the Finish Line

SUDS stands for Subjective Unit of Distress, and it is a zero-to-ten scale used to measure emotional or physical intensity before and after tapping. If I have a pain in my shoulder, I rate it: zero to ten, how intense is this pain? I do a round of tapping, then I check again. If the number dropped from a seven to a five, I know the tapping is working.

SUDS is an excellent tool for tracking your tapping progress. The problem is that most people were taught to treat zero as the only acceptable endpoint. And the reality is that some issues will never reach a zero. Even when they could, chasing zero is not always the best use of your time and energy.

Key Insight: “There are some issues we are never going to get to a zero. And there are some issues where, even if we got it to a zero, it isn't necessarily the most useful thing for us to do.”

Think of SUDS as a speedometer, not a destination. It tells you how fast you are moving, but it does not tell you where to stop.

The One Question to Ask Before Every Round of Tapping

Before every round of tapping, I ask myself what I call Question One from my Tapping Mastery Blueprint: What is the goal of this round of tapping? Not “how much distress am I feeling” but “what is the outcome I want right now?”

This single question transforms the entire tapping experience. Instead of an open-ended session with no clear endpoint, you have a specific target. The goal might be to reduce frustration enough to get back to work. It might be to lower resistance enough to send a difficult email. It might be to shift the internal story that runs through your head when you look in the mirror.

When the goal is clear, you will recognize the moment you reach it. That recognition is how you know when to stop tapping and move on with your day.

How to Set a Measurable Tapping Goal

A useful tapping goal has three parts: the outcome you want, the metric you will use to measure it, and the action that proves you have arrived. Here is how this works in practice.

Reducing frustration to refocus. If my frustration is sitting at a seven on the SUDS scale, I cannot concentrate. But if I can bring it down to a three, the moment I engage with my next task, I will be so focused on what is in front of me that I will forget what I was frustrated about. My metric is: can I clearly think about the work in front of me? When the answer is yes, I stop tapping.

Clearing resistance to take an action. The goal is not to feel zero fear. The goal is to feel safe enough to take the action with the energy and engagement it requires. My metric is: am I actually doing the thing? I have had clients working through resistance who, 23 minutes into a 30-minute session, suddenly say “I need to get off this call because I need to go do the thing right now.” That is success. The tapping round is done because the goal was the action, not the absence of fear.

Key Insight: “The goal was not to get rid of the fear. The goal was not to get rid of the resistance. The goal was to take the action.”

You Do Not Need to Be Fearless to Take Action

I want to share a story that illustrates this perfectly. About 16 or 17 years ago, I was making my very first real offer to my email list. I was asking for the princely sum of $97 or $147, which at that point in my life felt like asking for $100 million.

I had the email written. I had it loaded into my email software. I was sitting in a Starbucks in Charles Village in Baltimore. And I hit send. The moment I hit send, I slammed my laptop shut and went for a 90-minute walk on a beautiful spring day because I was terrified of what was going to happen next.

When I got home, one or two people had bought and one or two people had unsubscribed. That was the entire consequence. I did not need to be fearless. I just needed to reduce the fear enough to press the button. And here is the important part: even if the fear had come rushing back 20 minutes later, it would not have mattered because the action was already taken.

This is why outcome-based tapping goals are so powerful. Once the email is sent, the conversation is started, or the decision is made, the fear and resistance become irrelevant to that particular action.

What About Issues That Take More Than One Session?

Not every issue resolves in a single round of tapping. Some struggles, like the story you tell yourself when you look in the mirror or a deep pattern of self-doubt, require sustained work across days, weeks, or even months.

The framework stays exactly the same. You name the outcome: I want to change the internal narrative I hear when I see my reflection. You name a metric: what words do I hear in my head when I look in the mirror right now versus what I want to hear? You tap, check in, and notice whether you are closer to the outcome than you were before.

If you are closer, that session was a success, even if you are not all the way there yet. If you are not closer, that is useful information too. It might mean you need to approach the issue from a different angle, address a deeper layer of resistance, or simply give yourself more time.

The trap to avoid is treating these longer-term issues with the same urgency as an in-the-moment frustration. You would not expect one gym session to transform your body. Give your tapping practice the same patience.

How to Know You Are Done Tapping on an Issue

Here is the simple three-step framework you can use every time you sit down to tap.

Name the outcome. What do I want to think, feel, believe, or do differently as a result of this tapping session?
Name the metric. How will I know I have reached that outcome? What will I notice in my body, my thoughts, or my behavior?
Check and move on. When you reach the metric, stop tapping on that issue. If you have not reached it and you have run out of time, note where you are and come back to it next session.

This process works whether you are tapping for five minutes on midday frustration or working through a years-long pattern of self-criticism. The scale changes but the structure does not.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I always need to get my SUDS level to zero?

No. A SUDS level of zero is not required for a successful tapping session. The goal is to reach the functional outcome you set before you started, whether that is being able to concentrate, take a specific action, or shift an emotional pattern. Many highly effective sessions end at a three or four on the SUDS scale.

How long should a single tapping session last?

There is no fixed time requirement. Some sessions take five minutes and others take thirty. The length depends on the complexity of the issue and the specific outcome you are working toward. Focus on reaching your defined goal rather than watching the clock.

What if the emotion comes back after I stop tapping?

That depends on whether you completed the action you were tapping toward. If the goal was to send an email and you sent it, the fear returning does not undo the result. For longer-term patterns, returning emotions simply mean there is more work to do in future sessions.

How do I choose what to tap on when I have a long list of issues?

Start by asking which issue is most affecting your ability to function right now. Tap on the issue that is blocking the most important action or causing the most immediate distress. You do not need to resolve your entire list before you get relief.

Can I tap on the same issue every day?

Yes, especially for deep or layered issues like self-image, grief, or long-standing patterns. Use the same goal-and-metric framework each session and track your progress over time. You should notice gradual shifts even if individual sessions feel incremental.

What is the Subjective Unit of Distress (SUDS) scale?

SUDS is a zero-to-ten self-rating scale used in EFT tapping to measure emotional or physical intensity before and after a round of tapping. Zero means no distress at all and ten means the maximum intensity you can imagine. It is a progress-tracking tool, not a mandatory endpoint.

What should I do if tapping does not seem to be working?

First, check whether your tapping goal is specific enough. Vague goals like “feel better” are hard to measure. Second, try approaching the issue from a different angle or addressing a related emotion that might be underneath the surface issue.

Pod #698: The way you are thinking about fear is all wrong

April 9, 2026 by Gene Monterastelli

Fear is our most basic emotion. Simply put, fear is our internal guidance pointing out what might harm us so that we can stay safe. We commonly think of it in terms of fight, flight, or freeze.

All three of these responses are designed to shield us from danger. We fight to defend ourselves, we run away (flight) to avoid it, and we freeze so that the threat can't see us.

When tapping for fear, we usually use reframes around if something is truly dangerous to try to turn off the fear if there is no actual danger.

This is a great start, but deciding whether or not something is really dangerous only scratches the surface. If we stop there with our tapping, we may be missing valuable detail.

This week in the podcast, I explore the next level down: magnitude and probability.

By adding these ideas to how we assess our fears we can deepen the healing and transformation available to us through tapping.

If you are experiencing fear, anxiety, or resistance to taking action, then you will love this approach.

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Pod #697: What to Do When Tapping Is Not Working: A 6-Step Process to Get Unstuck

April 6, 2026 by Gene Monterastelli

You sat down to tap and nothing changed. If tapping is not working for you right now, I want you to know two things: this is normal, and there is a specific process you can follow to break through. In my 18+ years as an tapping practitioner, I have walked hundreds of clients through exactly this moment, and what I have learned is that getting stuck is not a sign that tapping has failed you. It is information, and that information has a use.

Key Takeaways

Every round of tapping produces one of three outcomes: you feel better, the intensity increases, or nothing changes. Two of those three are direct signs of progress, and the third gives you useful information about what to do next.
When tapping seems to make things worse, it means you are tuning in more accurately to what was already present beneath the surface, not that tapping caused new distress.
A six-step process (tap on the frustration, release the all-or-nothing mindset, explore the downside of healing, find the upside of staying stuck, do one minute of wordless tapping, then return to the original issue) reliably breaks through stalled rounds.
Hidden “secondary gains” from staying stuck are one of the most common reasons tapping stalls, and most people are completely unaware they exist until they ask the right questions.
Even if the original issue does not resolve immediately, working through this process removes the stress and pressure of being stuck, which often creates the clarity needed for a breakthrough.

Three Outcomes You Can Get from Any Round of Tapping

Every round of EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) produces exactly one of three results, and understanding all three changes how you respond when progress stalls.

The first outcome is the one we all hope for: you tap and you feel better. Your distress drops, your body relaxes, and you are moving in the right direction. You can stop there or keep going to deepen the relief.

The second outcome is that your distress actually increases. This feels like tapping is making things worse, but it is not. I will explain why in the next section.

The third outcome is that nothing changes at all. The number does not move. This is the one that makes people question whether EFT works, whether it works for everyone else but not for them, or whether their particular issue is beyond tapping's reach. But “nothing changed” is not a dead end. It is a signpost, and the six-step process below is how you read it.

Why Feeling Worse After Tapping Is Actually a Sign of Progress

When intensity rises during a round of tapping, it means you are tuning in more sharply to what was already there, not that tapping created new pain.

Think of it this way. You have a knee injury, and you go through your busy day barely noticing it. You get home, sit on the couch, exhale, and suddenly your knee is throbbing. Sitting down did not injure your knee. Resting gave your body the space to send you the pain signal it had been trying to deliver all day.

Key insight: “Resting is not putting you in more pain. It is bringing attention to the issue that is already there. The same thing is true emotionally.”

The same thing happens when you retell a frustrating story to a friend and feel your anger rising with each sentence. Telling the story did not create the anger. It reconnected you with emotion that was already stored in your system. So if you tap and the intensity spikes, that is not pleasant, but it means you are closer to the real issue. And being closer to the real issue means you are closer to relief.

If you have ever finished a session and felt unexpectedly sad or emotionally raw, that same principle applies. I explored exactly this in Episode 695: Why Do I Feel Sad After Tapping?, which walks through why post-session emotional shifts are signs of progress rather than problems.

What Does It Mean When Tapping Produces No Change at All?

When a round of tapping produces zero shift, it means something specific is blocking the path forward, and that block can be identified and addressed.

In my experience, the block usually falls into one of two categories. Either a part of you has decided (outside your conscious awareness) that healing is risky and staying stuck is safer, or you have not yet tuned in with enough specificity to reach the real issue. Both of these are solvable. You do not need to know which one is operating before you begin. The six-step process below addresses both.

The key reframe here is this: “nothing happened” is not the same as “tapping does not work.” It is the same as “I need more information.” And that information is available if you ask the right questions.

If your sessions have been stalling for a longer stretch, Episode 648: What to Do When Your Tapping Transformation Feels Slow or Stuck goes deeper into diagnosing a tapping plateau when the stall has lasted weeks or months.

Step 1: Tap on Your Frustration About Tapping Not Working

The first step is to tap on how you feel about the fact that it did not work. This is the step most people skip, and skipping it keeps them stuck.

You sat down with hope. You did the thing. It did not deliver. That produces real emotions: frustration, disappointment, embarrassment, maybe even a sense of betrayal if tapping has worked for you before and suddenly stopped. Those feelings are now sitting on top of whatever you originally wanted to address, and they will interfere with every subsequent round until you clear them.

So before you go back to the original issue, do one round on the meta-experience. “Right now I feel….” This is not a detour. It is clearing the road.

Step 2: Let Go of the All-or-Nothing Healing Mindset

The second step is to acknowledge that healing is a process, not a single event, and to tap on the pressure you are putting on yourself to get it all done in one round.

Key insight: “Healing is not all or nothing. It is a process, and it is okay that it is a process.”

When we unconsciously treat healing as a binary (either I am fixed or I have failed), a single round that produces no visible change feels like proof of failure. That framing creates enormous internal pressure. Tapping on “even though I want this to be done right now, and it is not done, and that feels like failure” releases the grip of that all-or-nothing thinking. It gives you permission to be mid-process.

This expectation trap is one of the most common things I see derail people's tapping practice. I dedicated a full episode to it in Episode 674: The Myth of the One Big Tapping Breakthrough, which explores why expecting a single dramatic shift often prevents the steady progress that is actually happening.

Step 3: Explore the Hidden Downside of Healing

The third step is to ask yourself a question that sounds counterintuitive: what goes wrong if I actually heal this?

This is one of the most powerful questions in all of EFT, and the answers can be startling. I was working with a client who had chronic physical pain, and we were making zero progress. When I asked her what would go wrong if the pain healed, her answer broke my heart.

Key insight: “She said, ‘Everybody who is in my life is in my life to take care of me because of my injury. If I heal, I am no longer injured, and they are all going to go away.'”

Of course her system was blocking the healing. At an unconscious level, healing meant losing every meaningful relationship in her life. That is not irrational. That is protective. Once we tapped on that specific fear, the original pain began to shift.

Your version of this might be less dramatic, but the principle is the same. If any part of you believes that healing carries a cost (lost identity, lost relationships, lost excuses, new responsibilities), that part will pump the brakes. Asking the question out loud brings the hidden cost into the open where you can tap on it directly.

The fear that tapping might actually work is more common than people realize. Episode 668: When You're Afraid Tapping Might Work goes into depth on exactly this dynamic and how to address it.

Step 4: Find the Hidden Upside of Staying Stuck

The fourth step is the mirror image of Step 3: ask yourself what goes right if you do not heal.

The downside of healing and the upside of staying stuck sound like the same question, but they surface different answers. The downside of healing focuses on what you lose. The upside of staying stuck focuses on what you get to keep.

For example, maybe healing a pattern of procrastination means you would actually have to finish the project, put it into the world, and face potential criticism. The upside of staying stuck is that you never have to risk that exposure. You get to keep your free time, your safety, and your comfortable routine.

This is not a moral judgment. These hidden benefits are real and they are human. Tapping on them directly (“even though part of me likes staying stuck because it means I do not have to put myself out there”) is what allows the system to release its grip.

Episode 664: Does Staying Stuck Keep You Safe? explores this exact territory in depth, including how the nervous system can interpret staying stuck as a form of protection worth defending.

Step 5: Do One Minute of Wordless Tapping

After completing the first four steps, set a timer for sixty seconds and tap from point to point without saying anything at all.

Wordless tapping is a technique where you simply move through the EFT tapping points (top of head, eyebrow, side of eye, under eye, under nose, chin, collarbone, under arm) in sequence without any setup statement or reminder phrase. You have just given voice to a lot of material: frustration, all-or-nothing thinking, hidden costs, hidden benefits. Now you let your system process it without directing the conversation.

Think of it as giving your nervous system a minute to sort through everything you just stirred up. In my experience, this brief pause often produces more integration than another verbal round would.

If you find that you often struggle to know what words to use during tapping, Episode 672: How to Tap When You Don't Know What to Say covers a range of approaches for tapping without the right words, including why wordless tapping belongs in every tapper's toolkit.

Step 6: Return to the Original Issue with Fresh Eyes

After completing the first five steps, tune back in to the issue you originally sat down to tap on and notice what has changed.

In many cases, the original issue will already feel different. Sometimes the intensity has dropped without you directly tapping on it, because the real block was one of the hidden layers you just addressed. Sometimes the issue now has a sharper, more specific quality, which means you are finally tuned in to the actual target instead of a vague approximation of it.

Key insight: “Even if you are not making progress on the original issue, you are eliminating all the stress, all the overwhelm, and all of the pressure about being stuck, which is going to make you feel better. And when you feel better, there is often extra clarity about what is in front of you.”

Either way, you are in a fundamentally better position to tap effectively than you were before you started this process.

Why This Process Works Even When the Original Issue Persists

This six-step process works because it addresses the real reason tapping stalls: unrecognized emotional layers sitting between you and the target issue.

When you clear the frustration, the perfectionism, and the hidden gains of staying stuck, you remove interference that was quietly blocking every round you attempted. Even in cases where the original issue does not fully resolve in that session, you have made genuine progress. You feel less stressed about being stuck, which is its own meaningful outcome.

In over 18 years of working with clients and producing nearly 700 episodes of the Tapping Q&A Podcast, I have seen this pattern repeat hundreds of times. The people who learn to treat a stalled round as information rather than failure are the ones who get the deepest, most lasting results from EFT.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many rounds of tapping should I do before deciding it is not working?

Give any single approach at least two to three focused rounds before concluding it is stalled. A single round may not be enough to fully tune in to the issue, so a lack of immediate change after one round is not yet a sign that tapping is not working for that topic.

Can tapping make anxiety or emotional pain worse?

Tapping does not create new distress. When intensity rises during a round, it means you are becoming more aware of emotion that was already present but suppressed. This increased awareness is a sign of progress, not harm, and continued tapping typically brings the intensity down.

What is wordless tapping and when should I use it?

Wordless tapping means moving through the standard tapping without speaking any setup statement or reminder phrase. It is useful as a processing step after several verbal rounds, giving your nervous system time to integrate what you have addressed.

What is secondary gain in EFT?

Secondary gain refers to the hidden, often unconscious benefits a person receives from remaining in a stuck or symptomatic state. Examples include avoiding new responsibilities, maintaining relationships built around caretaking, or preserving a familiar identity. Addressing secondary gain directly through tapping is often the key to breaking through a plateau.

Why does tapping work for other issues but not this one?

Different issues carry different layers of emotional complexity and hidden resistance. An issue that will not budge often has a secondary gain or a deeper fear attached to it that has not yet been identified. The six-step process in this article is designed to surface exactly those hidden layers.

Pod #696: What to do when both choices are bad

April 3, 2026 by Gene Monterastelli

One of the reasons we resist taking action is that some actions simply can't be taken back. Our subconscious mind keeps us stuck because it's trying to figure out the perfect thing to do, but because the future is unknown, it's impossible to be certain.

This leads us from thinking about the best choice, to stalling on making a choice, to things getting worse because we aren't doing anything at all (which is itself a choice).

This kind of cycle can happen with any decision, but it's particularly likely when you're facing a choice between two options that both have downsides. When you're in that situation, the resistance is going to be higher because it feels like no matter what you choose, you lose.

This week on the podcast, I share a simple tapping process that will help you take action, especially when you're faced with two choices that both feel bad.

If you use this approach, not only will you break through resistance, you'll also be much happier with the choices you make.

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