Tapping Q & A with Gene Monterastelli - Get the most out of tapping and EFT

Emotional Trigger (Part 3 of 3)

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Is there anything I can do with EFT to help with my emotional triggers?


photo by ShimShamB

In part 1 of this series we looked at emotional triggers after they have been set off. In part 2 we examined the emotional triggers we know we have. In part 3 of the series we will look at how to take the emotional charge out of the triggers we might encounter in the future.

Looking into the future to see what’s coming up.
Many times our emotional triggers catch us off guard. There are other times when they are no surprise at all. We know what we’re walking into. We know we are going to encounter people, places, or experiences that are going to set us off. We simply need to take the time to consider all the people, places, and experiences of our day that might trigger us.

If we know what’s coming, we can do work ahead of time to help us respond in the way we truly want to. For a fuller explanation on how to tap on a specific event in the future read thisarticle on future tapping. 

Here is an example of how we can do work ahead of an event that we know is going to trigger us emotionally.

For example, you have a meeting later today with a co-worker who can be counted on to bad mouth you and your work. When this has happened in the past you’ve had feelings of self-doubt, making you useless for the rest of the day, because it’s the only thing you can think of.

You can’t avoid the meeting, and you can’t change the attitude or actions of your co-worker. You can change the way you are going to respond to this trigger.

First test 0 – 10 the truth of this statement: I am going to let my co-worker’s remarks about my work affect the way I feel about my work or myself.

If this statement rings true, we begin tapping…

I’m not looking forward to my meeting with Dave today…He always says horrible things about my work and about me…When he does I feel like a wreck for the rest of the day…When he says those things it makes me questions my own abilities…I don’t know why he says these things…Maybe he feels uncomfortable around me…Maybe he’s intimidated by my work…Maybe he’s afraid he doesn’t do very good work…This might be why he attacks me…I can’t change the way he thinks, what his fears are, or that he is attacking me…But I don’t have to take these things personally…Just because he says it doesn’t mean it’s true…When he says those horrible things about my work and about me I am just going to let them roll off my back…Because I know they aren’t true.

After doing this, recheck the statement. If it is not to a 0, tap through the sequence again.

Planning ahead to deal with the emotional triggers we are going to face in the upcoming day is powerful. Is it going to make it so your triggers have no effect at all on you? Maybe, maybe not. But it will lessen our emotional response to these triggers.

If you do still have some emotional response to the trigger, this again is good news. It tells you that you’re on the right track. The work you’ve done has made a difference, and now all you need to do is keep working on this issue.

Things to remember:

  • Be honest with yourself about your emotional triggers. It does no good to pretend they aren’t there. Tap to eliminate resistance to doing this work and then tap on the trigger itself.
  • Every time you encounter an emotional trigger it’s new information about you. This information is a gift. Don’t waste the gift. Take this information and use it to heal yourself.
  • Just because you are doing work on an emotional trigger doesn’t mean that you won’t be triggered by it in the future. But each time you work on a trigger, the closer you’ll be to having no negative emotional response at all.
  • You know the things you face in the future which are probably going to affect you. Take the time at the beginning of the day or right before you face one of your triggers and do some preventive work.

Emotional Triggers (part 1 of 3)
Emotional Triggers (part 2 of 3)

Emotional Triggers (Part 2 of 3)

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Is there anything I can do with EFT to help with my emotional triggers?


photo by Fergus Ray Murray

In part 1 of this series we looked at what emotional triggers are and what we can do after one of these triggers has been set off. In part 2 we are going to talk about the emotional triggers we know we have.

You know what your triggers are. Do something about them!

Our emotional triggers are not a secret. We know them. Our friends know them. Our family knows them. The problem is, it isn’t much fun to think about the people, places and experiences that sent us into a state of anger, frustration, sadness, or depression. Before we begin, it’s good to deal with the resistance we might have to making change and having to deal with these unpleasant thoughts.

This can simply be done by tapping (adding Choices phrases suggested by Pat Carrington)…

Even though I don’t know if I really want to face these emotional triggers, I choose to give this a try and see what happens…Even though I have some resistance to thinking about the people, places and things that set me off, I choose to find it pleasant and relieving to do so…Because if I think of them now I am going to bring up the feelings that come with these triggers…I don’t really want to go there…I also know part of the reason I have these triggers is because some part of myself thinks these triggers are protecting me and on some level are keeping me SAFE…But I know that even though this is true for part of me, it is not true for all of me, and it is in my best interest to take the sting out of these triggers…I give myself permission for the next few minutes to do work on these triggers…Even though it looks like I am stepping into an emotional mine field, I know this is good for me…I know by doing this work now I am going to respond better in the future…And if any strong emotions come up during this time I know I have the very powerful tool of EFT to deal with these emotions…By taking the time to do this work, I am demonstrating to myself that it is important that I take time to care for myself.

Once we are clear of any resistance to do this work, we can now take on our emotional triggers. Here is a simple exercise I recommend to my clients to help them find their triggers.

Sit in a quiet comfortable place where you can do your EFT work undisturbed. Make sure you have something to write with (pen or pencil) and some paper. Close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. Ask yourself these questions:

  • What are my emotional triggers?
  • What topics of conversation set me off?
  • Is there something, every time I see it, that causes an emotional reaction in me?
  • Who are the people who set me off?
  • Where am I (in what location) most often when my triggers are set off?
  • Who are the people I would like to avoid?
  • If I could live life over again, what one person or experience would I avoid?

As you ask yourself these questions, when a trigger comes up, open your eyes, write it down, and close your eyes again to think of more. Do this for five or ten minutes. Even if you get to a point where no new triggers are coming up, continue to sit with the questions, looking for more.

When you get to a point where no more triggers are coming up, ask yourself, “What triggers am I afraid to bring to mind?” After doing this, you will have a great list of emotional triggers to do work on!

You don’t have to work on all the triggers in one sitting. You might decide to work on only one or two during a single Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) session. With this list you have a great starting point. Even if it takes a few weeks to work your way through your list, you can’t help but make progress. What matters is that eventually you resolve everything on your list.

Also, come back to each item on your list several times; there may be several aspects to each. Make sure you clear every aspect.

In part 3 of this series we will explore how we can look into the future to see what situations are going to contain emotional triggers for you. This way you can easily take the sting out of the triggers that cause problems frequently.

Emotional Triggers (part 1 of 3)
Emotional Triggers (part 3 of 3)

No Words At All – AKA: I don’t know what to say (part 4)

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Is it really necessary to verbalize the issue and give a number rating when doing EFT?

Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) is a very flexible tool. There are no hard and fast rules of how you must do things. However, it is important that you understand the intention of each step. If you know why you are doing a step, it will give you flexibility in exactly how to do the step.

1) The words we say
The words are not magic. There is no perfect phrase.

We say phrases out loud to help us stay focused on the issue we want to work on. It is possible to be verbalizing phrases about our issue and be thinking of what we need to do when we get home.

Initially, our intention is to make sure we are focusing on the issue we want to improve. This can be done by thinking about the issue, saying phrases out loud, or thinking of a symbol (sight, sound, memory, feeling in the body) that is related to the issue.

I have found saying phrases out loud is helpful because putting a feeling in the body into words requires both sides of the brain and helps us to tune in more. This is not a requirement. If a client is in tears, we are fully tuned in. Adding verbalization is not going to bring the issue more into focus.

Remember, the goal is to engage the issue.

2) Rating the level
We give a rating is before and after tapping to evaluate progress. You don’t have to use numbers for this.

I often ask clients, “How big is the issue and where does it live? If you were to create a model of this feeling, what would it be made of? What color is it?” These questions give us another way to access information about the issue. As we tap, the visual of the issue can change in size, shape, color, texture, and location. When this happens there is progress, in the same way a SUDS level would go down. I have one client who creates very vivid visuals of the issue we’re working on. We never use number to rate her issue; after each round of tapping we simply check her visual.

Remember, the goal is to be able to identify progress with the issue.

Trouble on the phone

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I have hesitancy (read as fear) when making phone calls. How can I use EFT on this issue?


photo by Jason Nicholls

When we are using Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) for any issue of fear there are two basic approaches I use with my clients.

[Note: As always it is best to have a pen and paper on hand to take notes as you do any of these techniques.]

Movie Technique
The movie technique is one of the most common approaches for dealing with something that has an emotional charge form the past.  Here is longer description of the movie technique.

The movie technique is straightforward. Pick one experience in your past where there is an emotional charge. In this example think back to a time you needed to make a phone call and it was hard to make or you weren’t able to make it at all. This is the “movie” we are going to use.

Give the movie a name, something simple like “calling the radio station”. Play the movie in your head. As you do this, pay attention to what emotions arise.

Pay attention to the emotions that are coming up now as you play the movie. The emotions you feel now might be different from the emotions you felt at the time. We are concerned how it affects you now, not then.

Whatever emotions arise, write them down on your paper. Again, be as specific as you can. It is possible that you have more than one emotion (eg fear, overwhelm, desperation, anger). Write each of these emotions down.

After you have written down the emotion(s), write down why you feel this emotion. (e.g., I am afraid because they are going to ask me to do something I don’t want to do, and I can’t say “no”.)

It is possible to have different reasons for one emotion. You might feel fear, but for three different reasons (e.g., they are going to ask me to do something, they are going to say no to what I asked, they are going to feel I am wasting their time, they won’t remember who I am). If there are multiple reasons for one emotion, write each of them down.

Next, on a scale of 0 to 10, how much do you feel each emotion when you play the movie? It is important to note this for each thing you have written down. If you have three reasons to fear, they are very likely to have different levels of intensity. Rate each one separately.
Now that you have your list of emotions and reasons, pick one to start tapping on. It is important to do this one issue at a time. The most logical place to start is with the emotion that has the highest intensity, but this is not always the case. Trust your intuition.

After you’ve done a round of tapping, re-rate the intensity by playing the movie in your head again. Do as many rounds of tapping as you need to get to zero. Each time you finish a round, replay the movie and re-rate.

Once you have eliminated the first fear/reason/issue, move on to the second. Before you tap on the next issue, check to see if the original levels of intensity you wrote down for the remaining issues are still accurate by replaying the movie again, tuning into these remaining issues. It is important to check these levels because they may have changed.

It’s not uncommon to have lots of different emotions about one memory. When the first is eliminated, the others can be reduced because they are connected. It is also possible, as we worked on issue number one, that none of the others changed at all.

Once you have rechecked all the remaining issues, move on to a second issue. Again, choose the one that makes the most sense to do next. Repeat this process until you can replay the movie, having no negative emotional charges remaining.

To continue the process, either now, or at a future time, pick another memory, repeating the steps.

See yourself  in the future doing what you fear.
The process is exactly the same as the process we just did, but instead of playing a movie that is in the past, you are going to make up a movie in the future. For example, in this case, you need to make a phone call in future. Play the movie in your head of what you imagine is going to happen.

Again be as specific as possible with the movie. Who are you calling and why? See yourself looking up the phone number, dialing the phone, hearing the phone ring, hearing someone answer, and hearing the response to whatever you say.

The process is exactly the same. Play the movie, write down your emotions, rate the intensity of each emotion, and tap.

You can repeat this process a number of times with as many future events as you would like to try.

Emotional Triggers (Part 1 of 3)

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Is there anything I can do with EFT to help with my emotional triggers?

I can remember from my childhood a “conversation” between my mother and sister, the way only mothers and daughters can have a “conversation”).

Mother: You are doing that on purpose just to push my buttons!

Sister: How can I not? Your buttons are this big! (Holding her hands about three feet apart.)

We all have emotional triggers; those people, places, memories and situations that just set us off. One moment we’re fine, the next we’re a mess of anger, frustration, or even sadness. Sometimes this happens in reaction to words someone says. Other times it happens because we’ve returned to a place in our past that has an emotional charge. The trigger could be as small as the song on the radio, a single word, or an image in a commercial on TV.

Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) is a great tool for dealing with the emotions that come up after our emotional triggers have been fired. We simply need to tune into what’s going on and what we’re feeling and then notice what happened that set off those feelings. But this isn’t always the easiest thing to do.

The environment around us, at an unexpected time, often touches off these emotional triggers.  Generally, when it is fired we are in a public setting. This can make it difficult for us to find the time and space we need to tap.

The environment around us, at an unexpected time, often touches off these emotional triggers. Generally, when it’s fired we are in a public setting. This can make it difficult for us to find the time and space we need to tap.

Also, when we have a significant emotional response from an emotional trigger, we are very wrapped up in the emotions. We aren’t thinking of much else because of the intensity. I know when I experience any emotion over a 7 on the SUDS (Intensity) scale I don’t always have the presence of mind to think, “I should be tapping on this.”

One of the reasons I love EFT is that it’s not only helpful with emotions that come up in the moment, but it can also be used to reduce the potency of or even eliminate the trigger that caused the emotion completely.

For example, I received a call from a client named “Julie”. She was very excited and wanted to tell me about a reception she had attended the night before. During the happy hour before the awards banquet, she was chatting with a few colleagues. One of them, “Jane,” turned to Julie out of the blue and insulted the quality of her work.

Julie explained that in the past she would have said nothing at the time, but for the rest of the evening she would have replayed the conversation over and over in her head, each time agreeing more and more with the person’s assessment of her work and ability, each moment questioning her own abilities. Finally, she would have cried herself to sleep that night.

Instead, she said, “I have done so much EFT work on my self-esteem that I knew what she said wasn’t true. Instead of getting mad, frustrated, or depressed, I just said a little prayer in my head for Jane. I prayed that somebody would affirm the work she was doing.”
That story is the perfect example of how doing work ahead of time will prevent our emotional triggers from going off.

There are three ways to reduce or eliminate the power of these triggers with EFT: take care of the emotion that has been triggered by recent experiences; work on the triggers we already know we have (our ongoing triggers), and look ahead to see what possible triggers are coming up in our future.

Take the time to deal with the emotional triggers that have been set off during the day
Every time an emotional trigger is set off it is a good thing. And, I am not one of those people who love pain. Every time we have an emotional response we gain information. A negative emotional response means we’ve encountered something that is associated with a root problem, belief, or memory that is better healed now than later.

Every symptom we have is attached to a root problem, feeling or belief. It’s very easy for us to forget that every time we work on a symptom, we are also working on the root of the symptom. When we reduce our response to an emotional trigger we are dealing with at least a piece of the core issue. The next time we encounter the same type of trigger our response is going to be less, or even non-existent.

In the best of all worlds, the moment we notice unwanted emotions we would immediately tap them away. When we don’t, or can’t, tap the moment the emotion impacts us, it’s important to come back to this experience at a later time. The experience has given us valuable information about a weakness in ourselves that is better healed.

I take time at the end of every day, before I go to sleep, to review my day. I think of every moment in which I had a disproportionate emotional response. I revisit each of these memories, tapping on them until they no long have an emotional charge.

By doing this, I can get a good night’s sleep because I’m no longer feeling the stresses of the day, and I’m making progress on the core issues that underlie the emotional triggers I have.

Emotional Triggers (part 2 of 3)
Emotional Triggers (part 3 of 3)