Emotional Freedom Technique- EFT Tapping with Amy Vincze

Welcome to the Real Life Momz podcast, where we put ourselves at the top of our to-do list. I'm Lisa Foster host, and today I am here with fellow mom, Amy Vincze, and we are going to discuss emotional freedom technique, also known as EFT Tapping, right?

And you are a tapping coach, so I'm so excited that this is your wheelhouse and you're here to help us through this. I love teaching people how to tap. This is my favorite thing to do, so I'm so here for it. Oh, and I love learning about tapping. So we are on the same page. So maybe you could just start with telling us what is EFT tapping?

Yeah, happy to tapping is I just shorten it to tapping, but it's really a really powerful combination of three different modalities. The first of which is energy therapy, really similar to acupuncture in that it utilizes the 14 [00:01:00] energy meridians. But obviously instead of using needles, we are using the percussion of tapping on our energy or acupressure points, which are points on the energy meridians.

So in energy therapy in general, the idea is that. Whenever our energy is flowing freely, we are in a state of healing or good health. And when we have a fear or a limiting belief or a pain in our body, then there is a blockage somewhere. And so in acupuncture, they use the needles to help break up that blockage and allow energy to flow again.

But with tapping, we use the percussion to break up that blockage and get it going. So there's that aspect of things. Then there is the cognitive therapy aspect, because we are actively talking about what it is we want to release while we are doing the tapping. So while I like to picture [00:02:00] acupuncture, like a diffused light, trying to get rid of a, say a tattoo, and it's just like a really general light over the area.

Adding in the cognitive therapy aspect is like putting a laser light and going over individual lines of the tattoo. So it makes it really fast and really effective because it drills down straight to the thing that you wanna fix. Okay. And then there's also the. Somatic therapy element because when you are physically tapping on your body, you can't help but gather your energy back from the past, gather it back from catastrophizing about the future, and really get yourself grounded in your body in the present moment, which is when we are the most effective, most efficient version of ourselves.

So it's doing all three of those things at once, but what's [00:03:00] happening on a scientific level is whenever we are in pain or stressed, overwhelmed, no matter what it is, we are generally in fight or flight mode. We don't recognize it, but our amygdala, the stress center of our brain has been triggered somehow, and we are dysregulated and we can't get back to a place of feeling good again.

So what the tapping does is it's consistently telling that amygdala to deescalate, deescalate is okay to feel safe and calm in this moment, and you're telling your body where you're present time, so it's gathering your energy back. It's okay to feel safe and calm there in general is no immediate threat in this moment.

It's okay to deescalate and so it is removing cortisol from our bodies 43% faster than if you had done nothing else, which is really huge. It is lowering our heart rate, lowering our blood [00:04:00] pressure. It is increasing our immune system response and increasing happiness levels all at the same time.

It is a really powerful combination of all of these things and that's why it is so fast and so effective. Things that could take years in traditional talk therapy can be whittled down to months or even days depending on how much you are willing to devote to it. So it's really such a powerful tool that I'm so excited to introduce to your mom's.

Yes. Amazing. And I heard. Something along the lines. You explained that so beautifully, but they, I heard also, yes, your amygdala see, has something as a threat and it's programming your memory bank, like your hippocampus, which I holds a, your memory, right? That this is a problem, this is a trigger, this is a threat.

And the tapping breaks that up and then starts to retrain the amygdala to say. No, this is safe and then [00:05:00] goes into that memory brand bank, and so that's why it's not just, yeah. It can change because you're actually changing your brain. Yes. And that's so cool. Yeah. Which is some tapping, right? It just seems so simple.

I know. The big, like the best things are so simple, like sticky notes. That's simple and so helpful. Oh my gosh. Best invention Ever sticky notes ever. Yeah. Yeah. And I love tapping for that exact reason. It is so simple and it's application that it's really sometimes hard to believe the.

The immense results that you can get from it. And I think that's why, there's a lot of skepticism out there about this amazing tool. And all I have to do is just help encourage people to just try it. Just try it because there isn't no harm will be done. No, none. You can't hurt yourself with tapping.

You can only help. And yeah, so it's such a great tool. Great. And so you mentioned kind of pain maybe some limiting beliefs. Like what are people using this for? Who should be using it? [00:06:00] What kind of I would say use it on everything, anything and everything that you can possibly think of.

If there is something that you are not satisfied with. Don't hesitate to use tapping on it. And because there, like when you have even a physical pain, if it's not healing, there is an emotional element to it that has not been neutralized. And so that's where tapping comes in as a great tool. And then when there's fears and li limiting beliefs, there is usually a lot of unresolved and unprocessed emotions from traumas.

So tapping is a beautiful tool for releasing unprocessed emotion that is keeping us in those fearful, painful places. And because the way to heal ourselves from those things is honestly to move through them. And we have, as a society, not been [00:07:00] taught how to do that. In fact, we've been conditioned to go.

The opposite direction. We've been taught to push away fears, push away bad or uncomfortable feelings. Don't engage with them, don't cry or I'll give you something to cry about. And women, not too long ago, were still getting institutionalized for being overly emotional.

Men are being accused of being weak if they show any other emotion than anger. There is no we've not, we've been conditioned to run in the other direction. So it feels counterintuitive to a lot of people to actually lean into these emotions and engage with them and, encourage them because they get so much judgment and criticism from the outside world, but that is actually the path.

It's counterintuitive and every instinct is you, and it's telling you to run in the other direct direction. But I'm telling you that leaning in, having the [00:08:00] courage to actually feel it will. Allow it to be released from our body. The studies have shown that we actually only need to feel an emotion for roughly 90 seconds.

Before it starts to go away, but we never let ourselves go that far with it. Yeah. I'm excited to get into this. Can you maybe talk us through the technique of tapping and how to use it? Absolutely. I'd love to. And I do wanna say, if you're listening to this episode on one of the platforms that's just listening.

It is on video 'cause we're gonna walk it, walk through and we'll be showing some stuff. So it'll be, you could just go on real life moms.com and you can actually see this video too. So if you wanna do that with us, and I'm pretty good at explaining it now too over the years. Great. You might not even have to have a video to be able to do this.

So the, I'm gonna go through the tapping points first and then we'll go through the process of what. Doing a tapping round looks like. [00:09:00] So we start with what's called the karate chop point, which is just down from our finger, our pinky finger on our hands, and we tap those two spots together. I will say that other tapping practitioners might use different spots.

None of them are wrong. There are a lot of different places that we can access these energy meridians on our body. I like to tap on both sides of my body and I like to. Tap on all 14 energy meridians. Just 'cause I'm here, I might as well get the most bang for my buck. I don't know that it makes a difference if you only tap on 10 in meridians versus 14, but I'm gonna do all of them just 'cause.

Great. So the first point is just tapping those two karate chop points together. So you want pinky fingers? Pinky fingers. Yeah. And then we. Here is where we would say something called an even though statement or a setup statement. It would be something like, [00:10:00] even though I feel so hurt by that betrayal, or even though I feel so overwhelmed with being a mom and everything that I have to do at this today, I love and honor all my thoughts and feelings about it Anyway.

And we say that three times or a different version of that, three different times, and then we go to what's called repeater phrases and some other different spots around our body. So the first spot is right here at the beginning of our eyebrow point. And I like to tap on the spot with two fingers to make sure I'm getting the spot exactly right, because if we're tapping somewhere up at the middle of our forehead, not gonna be nearly as effective.

This is the one circumstance where I would say it's good to be a perfectionist. You wanna be right at the beginning of your eyebrow. The next one is on the side of your eye at your temple, and then under your eye, right on top of your cheekbone. [00:11:00] Got a hair in my face, and then underneath your nose and then underneath your mouth.

And then the collarbone point, if you find the beginning of your collarbone, go down about an inch. There's a little valley in between your collarbone and your ribs on either side of your sternum. So you tap in that little valley right there, and then the next one is underneath your arms. For women, it's like basically right where your bra strap would be three or four inches down from your armpit.

I like to hug myself that, or you can do it this way. That feels a little more awkward to me. Or most people do one side or the other, but I like to hug myself. Okay. The next spot, which most people don't do, is on the ribs, which is right below the bra line, basically right below your underwire on your rib line.

So tapping in that spot, and then on your wrist, there's three different acupressure points. [00:12:00] There's one on the outside, middle, and outside. So when I'm tapping my wrist together, I'm turning them a little bit to see if I can hit all three spots. Or you can do it like this with your fingertips, tapping on the energy Marine ins that way.

And then the last one is up on top of our heads. So if we wanted to attack, overwhelm, motherhood overwhelm. The first thing we would wanna do is take a rating, an intensity rating from zero to 10, and you just going to sink down into your body and sink down into all of your feelings and say, zero to 10, how intense am I?

Is my feeling of overwhelm at the moment. And we'll say it's like an eight, nine, or 10, somewhere in that range. And so that's just a, that's just a starting point for us too because it's really hard to gauge the emotional journey. And this is how we know we're making progress, is we take that [00:13:00] emotional rating first and then we do a tapping round, and then we take another rating at the end to see if it's gone down.

If it's gone up. That will typically mean that we are really just more in touch with our. The totality of our feelings because we've started talking about it and engaging with it. It's not that it actually escalated it. It was already that high. Now we're just really feeling it. We're allowing ourselves to feel it.

If it stays the same, that could mean that there is something called a reversal, that there's a part of you that doesn't believe it's possible to let this go or doesn't think it's safe to let this feeling of overwhelm go, or there's a part of you that doesn't wanna let it go. And so we would tap a little differently for that.

And or we're missing the point. There's some topic in there that really needs addressing that we're not addressing and what we're saying during the [00:14:00] tapping. And if it goes down, then we know we're going in the right direction. Okay. So we're gonna start on our, do you wanna ideally take a rating?

Where are you zero to 10 on the overwhelm scale right now? I'm feeling Okay. So I'm gonna say six, seven. Okay. Okay, great. We'll just start there. And so you're just gonna tap where I'm tapping and repeat after me. Say, even though there's a big part of me that feels overwhelmed with my life right now, even though there's a big part of me that feels overwhelmed with my life right now, I have so many things going on.

I have so many things going on. And so little time in the day, and so little time in the day, and I'm already depleted and I'm already depleted. I haven't been able to fill myself back up. I haven't been able to fill myself back up, and it leaves me feeling stressed and overwhelmed most of [00:15:00] the time, and it leaves me feeling stressed and overwhelmed most of the time.

And I deeply honor all my thoughts and feelings about this, and I deeply honor all my thoughts and feelings about this, even though I feel so overwhelmed right now. Even though I feel so overwhelmed right now and I can feel it in my body and I can feel it in my body, I just don't, there's no way for me to relax right now.

There's no way for me to relax right now. And I deeply honor all parts of who I am anyway. And I deeply honor all parts of who I am anyway, even though I'm so overwhelmed right now, even though I'm so overwhelmed right now, for whatever reason, or for a million reasons, or for all the reasons.

And I love and honor myself completely, and I love and honor myself completely. And I [00:16:00] honor my courage in tackling this issue, and I honor my courage in tackling this issue. Okay, now we're gonna move to the eyebrow point, and with each statement, we're gonna move to the next point. Unless you find a point that feels really great when you're tapping there, hang out there for a while.

Like it, it doesn't matter. We don't have to be on the same points as we're tapping, but we're gonna start up here and just say, I'm so overwhelmed. I'm so overwhelmed. I'm so overwhelmed. I'm so overwhelmed. I've got a million things on my plate. I've got a million things on my plate and a million spinning thoughts in my head, and a million spinning thoughts in my head, and it's so hard to focus and get anything done, and it's so hard to focus and get anything done when I'm being pulled in a million different directions when I'm being pulled in a million different directions.

And I just wanna honor how hard it is, and I just wanna honor how [00:17:00] hard it is. How hard it is taking care of my family, how hard it is, taking care of my family, making sure everybody gets to where they're supposed to be. Making sure everybody gets to where they're supposed to be. Making sure everybody eats when they're supposed to.

Making sure everyone eats when they're supposed to. Then I'm supposed to take care of myself somewhere in between, and then I'm supposed to take care of myself somewhere in between. And work is there too. And work is there too. Cleaning is there too. Cleaning is there too. It's never ending. It's never ending.

I don't know how I'm gonna catch up with all of this, and I don't know how I'm gonna catch up with all this. I might even feel like I'm not doing a great job at any of it. I even feel that I'm not doing a great job at any of it, which makes me more anxious, which makes me more [00:18:00] anxious. And I deeply honor how hard this is, and I deeply honor how hard this is.

I, I never knew how hard this phase of life would be. I never knew how hard this phase of life would be. I had longed for it for a long time. I had longed for it for a long time, and it's much harder than I expected, and it's much harder than I expected. And I just wanna honor how hard it is. I just wanna honor how hard it is.

I wanna honor how depleted I feel a lot of the time. I wanna honor how depleted I feel a lot of the time and how hard it is to show up for myself and how hard it is to show up for myself. I've been conditioned to put myself on the back burner a lot. I've been conditioned to put myself on the back burner a lot, and I feel it.

And I feel it. And. [00:19:00] I want to be able to f find time for myself somewhere, and I wanna be able to find time for myself somewhere. Something's gonna have to give in order for me to do that. Something's gonna have to give in order for me to do that, and I might even receive resistance from the people around me if I do that.

And I might even see re receive resistance in the people around me if I do that. I can't go on this way, but I can't go on this way. And I'm not sure that this is the example I wanna set for my kids. And I'm not sure this is the example I wanna set for my kids. Sacrificing myself at everybody else's cost, sacrificing myself at everybody else.

I didn't say that the right way though, at my own cost. Yeah. Is that what I wanna teach my kids? Is that what I wanna teach my kids? I'm not sure that this is the best way for any of us. I'm not sure this is the best way for [00:20:00] any of us. And I deeply honor my courage in questioning that, and I deeply honor my courage and questioning of that because any solution is gonna be a.

An interesting transition 'cause any solution will be an interesting transition for all of us involved. For all of us involved. And I just wanna honor that. It's gonna be hard no matter what. I'm just gonna honor that. It's going to be hard no matter what, but I can continue doing the same hard, but I can continue doing the same hard.

Or I can do hard in a different way that fills me up. Or I can do hard in a different way. That fills me up. Okay. Take a nice deep breath. Okay. Lisa, keeping your eyes closed, I just want you to sink down into your body and zero to 10 try and give me a rating of where you currently are. I'm a four. [00:21:00] I felt the four during the tapping actually. I was like, I feel good. Oh, that's so great. I'm so glad you've been down. We're relaxed in my body.

Yes. Yeah, that's lovely. Isn't it? So wonderful. So lovely. Yeah, and it doesn't take much. How long was that? That was like 10 minutes. I don't know. I didn't even less, I didn't even time it. I wasn't thinking about it. Yeah, it was great. Yeah. And. It's interesting 'cause I've been, that was so great. I love the extra points.

'cause you're right, a lot of people, if you read books or just get it off YouTube or whatever. They do only up to, the clavicle there. Or I think some people, and then the head, but they don't do any of like ribs or any, they don't do the ribs or the wrist typically.

And I for whatever reason, I just think that those are important. Yeah. Yeah. So I love that. I'm gonna ask. A question though, because there are a lot of words, right? Yes. [00:22:00] Yes. How do you know, and I'm assuming there's no wrong words right to say, but how do you know what to say, how to focus on what to say, or does it really matter?

I do think that you can release things faster if you. Are able to identify them and verbalize them. I think it's something that you gain. Strength with over time, the more you try to do that on your own. When I first started this, I, there's no way I could have verbalized everything that I was feeling.

I just didn't have the emotional awareness to be able to do that. So as when I was working with a coach. She was able to do that for me and put those words in my mouth, which is what's so valuable about working with a coach, especially in the beginning. But that's also what the app that I have is for, because there's, right now there's at least 170 different tapping scripts for you to [00:23:00] choose from, everything from general anxiety relief and overwhelm to helping you sleep at night or.

Kind anything in between, goal support, physical issues yeah, it's all there. And what I do think is really important that I've learned over the years about tapping is that it can be really helpful and effective in a moment to use it on something like anxiety or and overwhelm and really put a bandaid over it so that you are able to.

Move throughout your day. Sometimes that's necessary. You just need 10, 15 minutes to get yourself grounded again. And that's really helpful. And if you have more time, you can use tapping and apply it to the root cause of things like anxiety or depression or procrastination and overwhelm, whatever it [00:24:00] is.

You can heal it at its source. So you really start to minimize and limit the amount of time that you spend in overwhelm and anxiety, and maybe even eliminate it altogether with enough work and focus. So it's a really powerful tool. And super helpful in a moment on a symptom that you're experiencing, but anxiety and depression and procrastination and addiction, and those are all symptoms of deeper core issues.

So they can be applied to both and with amazing results. Yeah, that's a really good point. Little story. Yes. I tried some of the basic tapping, not even as deep as we did it, just basic. I had to do a presentation interview in person. And as much as I'm on a podcast here and talking to the world right.

It's not, in front of the [00:25:00] world, yeah. In person. And so I had to be in person and that makes me nervous. Yes. Really nervous. So I tried it. I tried the tapping in the moment and I felt so much calmer during the interview going into the interview. So I'm assuming that's really more.

In the moment using it. Yes. Yes. But then what you're saying is, in order not to be nervous, maybe in other areas of my life, like where does that nervousness come from? Digging deep with even someone like you, or I guess yourself too, just digging deep of okay, where does this root cause come from?

And then when you configure that piece out, then you're actually tapping on that level. Because there is what I like to call a foundational fear at the very beginning of all of our symptoms. And it's usually something like feeling like you're not enough or there's something wrong with you. Or if you've had a big physical issue in the past, whether it's like a [00:26:00] physical or sexual assault or even like a cancer diagnosis or something that can be.

A real fear of our body, which is a foundational issue. 'cause this is the vessel that we live in all day long. And if this is the thing that causes you anxiety, then that is a foundational problem. There's also, finances can be a foundational fear. Yeah, so there's a list of foundational fears that can, everything can be traced back to, and so that is always the place where we should start if you have the extra time to devote to it.

'cause working there is the thing that's gonna give you the most bang for your buck with tapping. 'Cause then it's gonna go across multiple areas in life. Yeah. Yeah. When you get to that root cause. Yeah. Yes. So I'm assuming though you have to. Work maybe with somebody to figure it out [00:27:00] or are there ways to, I think it's probably helpful.

Yeah. To really get down deep into the why, whether, is that something even you do with your clients? Absolutely. I work with individual clients and. Those are hard questions to ask in the beginning if you're not adept at making the connection between the behavior and the source.

Because I've been doing this for so long, I know that my source, I know where my source is, I know why it manifests the way that it does in my life. And with a lot of questions in the beginning when, in my initial sessions with clients, I'm asking a million questions. Because not only do I wanna hear their particular language and how they talk about the things that happened to them when they were kids, but I wanna understand how the experience itself manifested and what they perceive their issues are. Because the same event can manifest in a lot of different ways.[00:28:00]

Yeah. So yeah. Now tell me about that amazing app you have, because I do think that's maybe. Where people will struggle is okay, I got the points down. I got that I got the numbers, zero to 10 kind of thing, where do I lie? Yeah. But I am just losing of what I can actually say.

And it sounds like this app does talk you through a few things. So yeah, tell us about that. Yeah, it talks you through everything. It would take you through exactly what you and I just did. There is an avatar that has blinking points on the points that you should be tapping on in the moment, but there's also ver verbal cues in the audio files.

And basically you're doing just what we did here. I'm saying some words and then you repeat the words and while you move through the points. So it's a really easy process. You don't have to come up with any of the words on your own. And like I said, if there's many different topics that are covered in the app in a [00:29:00] generalized way and trying to cover a lot of different circumstances.

Maybe it doesn't work as quickly as working with a coach one-on-one. But it's way more cost effective and you will still always achieve the lowering of the cortisol and you'll always achieve the lowering of your heart rate and your blood pressure and getting yourself back to a calm state.

Yeah. So when you can, and I'm always encouraging on the end of every single audio file. Always infuse your own words. If I'm not saying words that are working for you, or if you just need to tweak it in a tiny different way, absolutely do that. Say your own feelings and your own words in there when you can, and that will make it 10 times more effective.

Awesome. So where can you find this app? You can search on the Android or Apple Play stores for SOAR with tapping and for iPhone users. I haven't figured out how to [00:30:00] do it for Android users yet. You can get a 50% percent discount on the first annual subscription if you go to my website. You go to, so with tapping.com/podcast special, and there's a code there, you can input it in the app.

Once you download it, you get a 14 day free trial and you put the app the code in before the trial is over, and it will give you 50% off of your first year. Great. That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Great. What do you want the listeners to start doing after listening to this podcast? I would love for listeners to just try it.

I know, God, I struggled so much as a mom and the toddler years and infant years with my girl, and had I utilized this tool as much as I could have during the time, during that time, I would've been so much better off, [00:31:00] not only for myself, but for my girl. And I just encourage everybody to try it and.

What I wanna say is that there are no bad emotions and I would really love to get away from judging our emotions, whether it's overwhelm or anxiety or sadness or grief, or whatever it is we're feeling. There are no bad ones there, just uncomfortable because we're not used to them. And the more we move through them, the more emotional strength we gain.

To be able to move through them that much faster. The next time I. When I first started working with my coach, it would take me a long time to get my number down and I can start at a 10 on something now, and I can get down to a two in one short round and definitely down to a zero with the next one.

So you just get faster and [00:32:00] faster at it, and the more time you devote to it, the easier it'll be, which I know it's uncomfortable. I do it myself. It's not the easy road, but it is. The most effective road for long-term healing. It's funny because as I've been playing with this myself what I find is I'll get triggered.

By something and I'm like, oh my God, I gotta go tap. And, but like the trigger might be in front of me like a person. Yes. And so it's a running joke. And now in my house with my husband, 'cause I'm like, he'll say something, I'll be like, oh, gotta go tap. And he is and he'll just start going uhhuh, I'm like, wow, I wish you could do it.

You know how you could do breath work and nobody will know that you're doing it if you're in the moment. I wish we can do that with tapping. I will say like when I'm laying in bed and I don't want to disrupt my husband, I, I can tap and silently think the words and it [00:33:00] still works just as well.

Okay. And I can, if I am able to focus enough, I can tap in my mind. On the spots and say them silently, and I still get some relief. Ah, yeah. That makes sense, right? Yeah. If your mind is doing it. Yeah, they, yeah. They've been studies if they, you think you're practicing the piano over and over again there, studies do show that you can then play something, right?

Yeah. So why not? Why not this? That's, yeah. Okay. So tap in my mind when the trigger is in front of me, that's a big one. I like that. That's a good takeaway. Yes. Great. Now, if people wanna actually get in touch with you tell us a little bit more about what you offer on a personal level. I do offer personal sessions and I encourage listeners if they've got, especially any big T and even small T complex traumas.

I encourage them to work with a trained professional to work through that stuff. I [00:34:00] don't have any tapping scripts on the app that address trauma in particular, so yes. Call, email me, amy@soarwithtapping.com. All my sessions are 90 minutes and relatively cheap in comparison to like seeing a psychotherapist or, something along those lines.

So I just I encourage people to get started. Yeah. And seek help if there's big traumas that need to be worked through. Yeah. And I just love that this is something that you really are putting in the hands of people, right? Once you do learn it and know some of these techniques, you can do it on your own and have the power to like, work with that emotion on the spot.

And I think that's huge. And it's so great with kids too. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Because they are so resilient, they haven't had these limiting beliefs and fears for decades like you and I. Yeah. For the longest time I was tapping with my daughter every [00:35:00] night on whatever felt challenging during the day.

And great bonus is that it makes her sleepy. Like when you're tapping at night, she's laying in bed and you can tap on her little points for her or and they just move through things so easily and giving them the words to be able to talk about their emotions is really helpful for them moving forward Also.

Yeah. What a way to be in it with them without being like in it with them, yeah. It's a great way to support without, yeah, just jumping in and being emotional with them, with whatever they've gone through that day. I love that. Yeah. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I really appreciated you teaching us and walking us through all this information and we'll have links in the show notes to your app and all that you offer, so Great.

Thank you so much for having me. This was really fun. Thank you for listening to this episode and tapping along with us. If you wanna learn [00:36:00] more about Amy, just click on the link in the show notes, and until next week, keep carving out time for yourself and keep putting yourself on top of your to-do list.

I.