5 Ways to Use Tapping In Trauma Spaces
Did you know that tapping (also called the emotional freedom technique, or EFT) has commonly been studied and applied in trauma spaces?
I actually first learned about tapping from a psychiatrist and a psychologist who were using it to help their PTSD patients at the VA (Veterans Hospital) process their trauma.
In this post, I’ll be discussing 5 different ways that tapping can be applied in trauma spaces.
Healing trauma. One of the main ways tapping can be used in trauma spaces is to actually heal trauma: by helping someone process a recent or historical traumatic event. Tapping through a traumatic memory using specialized techniques changes the way a person’s nervous system processes and remembers that event, making it less likely to re-activate that trauma in the future and decreasing its emotional impact on the person moving forward.
Important note: this isn't something that I recommend that anyone do on their own or with pre-recorded tapping videos, because deep trauma work can be re-traumatizing if not done carefully and safely. There are very specific and specialized techniques that process traumatic memories in a safe way, so this type of in-depth healing work really requires one-on-one work with a skilled trained tapping practitioner.
2. Self-regulation and co-regulation. Tapping can also be used for self-regulation when a person is activated/ triggered/ in a trauma response (i.e. to calm their own nervous system). That's part of how it works: it changes the way the stress center of our brain processes stress! What’s even cooler is that if two people tap together, each person’s nervous system can have a calming effect on the other person’s nervous system, also called co-regulation.
3. Processing other intense emotions. Trauma can bring up lots of intense emotions beyond feeling activated/triggered, and tapping can also be used to process those strong emotions. For example, a person might be angry towards someone who harmed them, or they might feel shame around something that has happened to them, and tapping can decrease the intensity of those emotions.
4. Self-care for trauma practitioners. While it is very rewarding, doing trauma work with clients can be very difficult for trauma practitioners. Tapping can be used to help trauma practitioners regulate their own emotions and process the emotional impact of holding space for other people’s trauma.
5. The mind-body connection. Finally, tapping can help people stay in their body when they're too activated to tap on their emotions. Sometimes tapping on a really intense emotion or a traumatic memory can feel too overwhelming; going back into all of the feelings around a traumatic experience can actually make the stress and the overwhelm worse. If this happens, instead of tapping on the emotions or on the memory, you can actually tap on how your body is physically experiencing that emotion. Maybe there's a constricting in the chest, or there's a tightening in the shoulders, or a knot in the stomach, or their heart is pounding. Whatever they’re feeling, they can actually tap just on the physical sensations, keeping themselves in the body. Because the mind and the body are intimately connected, tapping on the physical sensations can actually have the effect of regulating the emotions.
Tapping is a valuable tool that can help both trauma survivors and trauma practitioners, and it’s something you may consider for yourself or someone you care about. If you're interested in learning more about trauma and tapping and how they work together, and how you could use tapping yourself or in other trauma spaces that you are in, please check out more information about my upcoming Level 1 EFT/Tapping ‘Train the Trainer’: www.jillwener.com/tappingtraining.