How Long Does It Take For EFT To Work?

Karin Davidson - EFT Tapping Articles Written by Karin Davidson

EFT works instantly. If you focus on the negative feeling and tap, the feeling will lessen. I use EFT daily; when the dog is barking next door for too long, when I get an upsetting email, when I’m worried about something or someone, when I’m waiting to hear a result of a test, when I’m under a lot of stress and even when I’m on a long trip and can’t get to the restroom.

Tapping for the negative emotions in our daily lives helps ease our stress and live happier lives, but it won’t solve our problems permanently. There are skills you can use in EFT, however, to clear the reasons for the way you are feeling instead of just easing the negative feeling.

Using EFT with the reasons can then permanently clear your learned negative reactions. Wouldn’t it be nice to be in control of your feelings rather than your feelings being in control of you?

As a trainer, practitioner and video training producer in EFT, I’ve seen thousands of sessions. I’ve also worked with a wide variety of issues. Recently, I worked with a young football fan sitting next to me on a plane for his fear of flying. He was flying with his buddies to see his team in the playoffs. He said he’d try anything. It took seven minutes.

On the other side of the spectrum, I had a young woman with diagnosed clinical episodic depression and she was so depressed that she refused to tap on her own between our sessions and she could only handle coming to see me once a month. It took six years.

You can see there are many variables to how long it takes for EFT to work. With the flying phobia, there was a single event where he developed that fear, so it didn’t take much tapping to clear it. With the young woman, her lack of focus, resistance to helping herself, and inability to tap on her own, it took maybe six times as long as it should have. The good news is that she overcame many other problematic issues along the way in those 6 years.

Do You Want to Use EFT to Clear Issues Faster?

Follow these helpful instructions:

  1. Don’t tap globally. It’s not “I’m always sad.” Tap on what sad feels like to you: “this hard knot in the center of my throat that makes me want to cry.”
  2. Look for the event where you FIRST learned the behavior. If you can’t remember the first time, start with the earliest you can remember. If you hate men, when is the first time you can remember that you hated men? Was it just one man the first time? What event taught you to hate him? How did that protect you? Learn the “movie technique” or the advanced EFT technique called Matrix Reimprinting and clear your feelings around that event.
  3. Look for aspects. You have a fear of flying? What exactly are you afraid of? Not being in control? The crowds? Being locked in a tube? Falling out of the sky? The pilot not being skilled enough? Terrorists? The engine noise? Germs? Tap on all you find.
  4. Work with one aspect at a time. See all those aspects above? Tap on one at a time. Measure the intensity of “not being in control” by giving it a number up to 10. Zero is that it isn’t bothering you at all and 10 means that you want to run screaming out of the room. Write the number down. Tap a few rounds on that aspect until it’s a zero. Then you can move on to the next aspect. Remember that as you tap one aspect down, another will seem stronger. Don’t switch aspects until you’ve got the first one down.
  5. Break it down. If you are “always sad,” work on getting more specific. What you are sad about at that precise moment? Work with one thing at a time. What are you sad about right now? Pick one thing and explore that. Let’s say you can’t get up in the morning and that makes you sad. So start asking! What bad thing am I worried might happen if I get out of bed? Am I afraid of something? Do I feel protected if I stay in bed? From what? What good thing will happen if I stay in bed? Take notes and tap on all of those. Work on one piece at a time. You can’t move an entire mountain unless you move one rock at a time.
  6. Always, always tap on the negative. We are often taught to stop focusing on the negative. It’s “bad” for us. That’s true unless we tap while we are focusing on the negative. It’s the tapping that clears the negative feelings. Even when we force ourselves to think positive, it doesn’t work for long. We are trying to use will power instead of clearing the negative feelings first. EFT works when we tap while we focus on those negative feelings. Clear those negative feelings and the positive flows all by itself.
  7. Do the Personal Peace Procedure. Write a list of all your negative events. Start with what you can remember in your childhood because we build the basis of our reactions before the age of 8. You will have well over 100. Work with one everyday using the movie technique. Clear all the aspects around each event. It can take 20 -45 minutes. Give that as a gift to yourself. Imagine what you can clear in a year!
  8. Don’t give up. It took time to accumulate issues, so remember they don’t normally disappear in an instant, especially when you are working on your own. EFT can take time to work. Remember to work on one event and one emotional aspect of that event at a time. Issues are sometimes interlinked and one must be cleared before another can be fully cleared. Just keep tapping.

I often say EFT is simple, people are not. Yes, EFT works quickly, but if your issue is sticky, don’t give up. And keep tapping for those daily annoyances right while you’re feeling it, it’ll make you feel better. And sometimes simply feeling better is everything.

Karin Davidson Bio

Karin Davidson

Karin Davidson is a highly sought after speaker on using meridian tapping techniques for self help and helping others. She is certified hypnotherapist, a Reiki master, an EFT Trainer, the first Matrix Reimprinting Trainer in the USA, co-founder of the Meridian Tapping Techniques Association and co-author of the EFT Levels Comprehensive Training Resourse coursebooks. Karin was a […]

Read more...

Comments

comments



Blog Comments:

6 Responses to “How Long Does It Take For EFT To Work?”

  1. Mary says:

    Thank you. You article has given me courage and determination to keep tapping and not give up. I just found out about this a couple weeks ago and am in the process of reading Nick’s book and tapping multiple times a day. I’m finding there are things I’ve suppressed and I don’t even know what they all are, so I’m tapping on the emotions or symptoms. But it is very temporary relief. I do at times find either my mind is blank and I feel like I’m just going through the motions or I have so many flashes of memory that I don’t know where to start. I try to pick one but sometimes get off track or never seem to tap down to a low number on one issue. My arm gets tired before the feelings are gone… I will try some of your tips. I want to feel better and be better for myself and my family. Thank you again.

  2. Lynne says:

    I found your site while looking for tapping so that I will not feel so much hatred towards the work I do. I have to telemarket or ask people for sales. I not only want to stop hating it I would like to love it. I would also like to believe that if there is an easier way to do this that I am aware of what that is & able to have they system to make this happen set up & used with ease. Thank you for any suggestions, Lynne

  3. barb sherey says:

    hi, I would like to know if after a while , can we do the positive. that seems to be working for me…. is that the correct way of EFT?

  4. barb sherey says:

    hi I would like to know if I could use the positive instead of the negative on the EFT??. it seems to be working for me ….I THANK YOU in advance.. blessings barb

    • admin says:

      It is important to clear the negative first. To be able to work on that first and remove the charge it has. Once you can do that and it doesn’t effect you any longer then you can focus on the positive. You first need to clear the weeds in the garden before the flowers can grow…as they say. 🙂 The flowers won’t flourish if they are being chocked by the weeds.

Leave a Reply

Your Comment