FOR A LONG TIME, I was in hiding. I was truly terrified of losing my reputation, my credibility, and everything I had worked so hard for professionally. I was afraid of being labeled “a kook,” “off the deep end,” “a nut,” or “crazy,” and being blacklisted within the Harvard community (where I trained and worked; I’d heard of this happening before, so there was precedent) and within the scientific community at large. I allowed the fears to keep me quiet, even when I wanted to share with so many what I had discovered. I had come across a technique that really impacted people’s lives in many amazing ways—physically, emotionally, in past and present relationships, with work-related situations, and with issues involving self-worth, confidence, self-compassion, acceptance, and self-love. However, there wasn’t much evidence (at the time) to support it beyond anecdotal reports; it involved energy meridians, and doing it looked pretty strange. So, except for telling a handful of non-medical friends, I stayed silent until a few years before I began my transition from clinical work to full-time coaching.

IT WAS 11 YEARS AGO that I first learned about Emotional Freedom Techniques (also known as EFT or “tapping”), and it forever changed the way I worked with others. I don’t remember exactly how I came across it, except that I was very interested in and seeking out more holistic ways to help people really transform their lives. I was working as an adult psychiatrist, and I was dissatisfied with the ways I was taught and told how I was “supposed” to be helping people to heal. I was bringing into sessions techniques such as mindfulness and meditation (when they were much less mainstream than they are now) to help patients connect with themselves and their truth–not someone else’s version of it they these methods to help people change their lives for the better that I first discovered EFT, and attended my first 3-day training, with many more in the years that followed. I had been taught to believe—to become more empowered to create and live a life on my own terms. It was a product of this natural growth towards understanding and using

SEVERAL THINGS DREW ME TO EFT from the very beginning. I knew the key to really helping people have the life that they wanted was to help them get to a place of greater self-acceptance, self-compassion, and self-love because from there, all else would follow. I knew the importance of helping others to release the negative emotions weighing them down and open up the limited tunnel vision for what they thought was possible for them. I knew that negative emotions were entwined with the beliefs that were anchoring in thought and behavior patterns that were no longer serving those I was working to help, preventing them from living the life they truly wanted to create and experience. I knew that strong emotions could override conscious thought processes (even when we are working to change them), and result in unhelpful behaviors (including those that are unconscious) and the oftentimes, unwanted or unintended outcomes wrought from those behaviors. EFT helped with ALL of that and more (including helping me overcome my own burnout as a physician, as well as many of my clients).

EMOTIONAL FREEDOM TECHNIQUES is, at its most basic, a stress-reduction technique that is similar to acupuncture, though without the needles. EFT involves tapping on specific acupressure points (associated with the same energy meridians used in acupuncture) on the hands, head, and upper body while focusing on an emotion (most often, one that is unpleasant) and the specific situation associated with that emotion. In this way, EFT combines a cognitive process with emotional and energetic components, often adding in a somatic component when asking the person tapping to localize the emotion they are feeling to a place within the body. So, EFT is the epitome of a holistic approach, in that it truly is a mind-body-emotion-energy technique.

SINCE I DISCOVERED EFT over a decade ago, there have been numerous randomized controlled trials and several meta-analyses conducted to support its efficacy in areas including anxiety, PTSD, physical pain, food cravings and weight loss, depression, and enhanced peak performance. EFT has been shown in at least two studies to significantly reduce cortisol (the “stress hormone”) levels (24% EFT vs 14% controls; 43% EFT vs 20% controls). Neural changes in the brain have been seen with EFT using fMRI. A recent study showed that EFT significantly reduced measures of “stress” and “anxiety” in nurses during the COVID pandemic.

WHILE I APPRECIATE THE RESEARCH that is now available supporting the efficacy of EFT, the real reason I use EFT with my coaching clients is that IT WORKS! EFT meets people where they are in the present moment with all the messiness of their thoughts and feelings, and with that acknowledgement combined with tapping, those messy, unpleasant thoughts and feelings easily, naturally, and gently shift—no heavy lifting involved.

AS THOSE COGNITIVE AND EMOTIONAL SHIFTS begin to happen, and the negative emotions (like anger, frustration, sadness, fear, guilt, shame, unworthiness, etc.) are organically released along with the thoughts associated with those feelings, there now is space for new, more empowering, more compassionate, more loving thoughts, feelings, and beliefs to fill the void. And, from that place of greater self-compassion, greater empowerment, and greater self-acceptance, my clients make decisions and take actions that actually support the life they truly want and deserve, both professionally and personally.