EFT Audio Tip: Tap While You Gripe

Listen (05:53) or Download MP3

Key points:

• Griping is a way to retell a story with emotional intensity
• Retelling sometimes helps… and sometimes it makes it worse
• Tap while you gripe on the phone!
• Notice whether it makes a difference

Have you ever called a friend just to gripe about everything that’s gone wrong in your day? The truth is that when things go wrong, we need to feel that we’re not alone. So we turn to trusted friends and family to let off steam and be comforted. It’s a natural part of being human; most of us have been expressing our pain this way since we were very young children.

What I am calling “griping” is just a way to retell a story with emotional intensity. And there is scientific proof that this can help us. Recent brain studies show that there’s an opportunity when we relive an experience to have the stored emotions of that experience heal… or become even more intense. As we recall the story and feel the emotions in our body, our brain is making a decision—one that can go either way! Here’s how it works…

Let’s say the story that we’re telling is one in which we feel alone and unsupported. If we tell that story to a friend who is loving, present, kind, and comforting, chances are that our primitive emotional brain will no longer feel alone and unsupported, right? In the process of telling the story, we heal the emotional intensity. That is the ideal outcome.

Yet, how often has it happened to you that in the process of telling and retelling an intense story, explaining about how you were “done wrong” by someone else, you find that after the second or third or fourth retelling that the pain is now more intense than it was right after it happened? And that’s the risk of sharing our painful experiences with others, whether they are talk professionals or not, unless you are using a technique that consistently allows you to eliminate and then harmonize the emotional intensity. And EFT is just such a technique.

That is why I suggest that you always tap while you gripe. Tap while you complain. Tap every time you tell a story that has negative emotional intensity. And pretty soon, you’ll probably notice you have a lot less in your life to gripe about!

Here’s how you can get started:

You’ve had a bad day. You want to feel that there’s someone out there that understands you, that cares about you, that takes your side. So you pick up the phone, and you call your best friend. Start tapping… and tap continuously while you talk to her!

(Karate chop) Ring…. Ring… Hello?
(Top of the head) Oh I’m so glad I reached you.
(Eyebrow point) I have had such a terrible day!
(Side of eye) I really need someone to talk to.
(Under the eye) Do you have a few minutes?
(Under the nose) First off this (*&^%$ boss of mine…
(then… Chin, Collarbone, Under Arm, back to Karate Chop, Top of Head, etc.)

The order of the points don’t matter. The number of taps at each point doesn’t matter. You can tap one point that feels good the whole call if you want. You can use the finger points shown in Gary Craig’s free EFT manual. Just tap continuously while you talk. Don’t stop!

Why would we do this? We talk to others to feel better, don’t we? But there are two different approaches to griping and complaining that we can take. The first is, alas, the most common. It is to gather people to our side of the upcoming war. We tell a story to make us “right” and the other party “wrong.” With this plan, we must build intensity in ourselves and in others while we plan revenge (…or lawsuits or divorce or other dramatic action designed so that we WIN and the other LOSES).

The other approach is to want to heal from an emotional pain, and we’re mature enough to know that intensifying the fear by making us the “Victims” and others into the “Powerful Forces of True Evil” just creates war inside us, not peace.

We can make our healing far more likely if we just tap the acupoints while we express our hurt and our anger and our sadness and our feelings of being out of control… We use what has been human nature since cave folks sat around the fire—the need to tell our story to tribe members to gain their supportive energy—and we use that supportive energy in a new way that is far more likely to result in a sense of peace for all of us.

What I find is that tapping while I gripe and complain shifts my entire perspective. As the noise of the emotional disruption settles down, I am far more likely to hear my intuition guide me to steps that resolve the situation in the best possible way.

Try it for yourself. Tap the acupoints while you are on the phone; no one needs to know that you are tapping. And just notice whether you see a change that helps you feel both more peaceful and more empowered. I am confident you will.

In fact, you may find this so effective that you pick up your phone and tap while you gripe without even calling your friend. Once you get it all out of your system, then you dial… and perhaps have a very different kind of conversation.