Midlife Self Care Made Simple with EFT Tapping (Ep. 45)

0:00 You may or may not have heard of tapping or EFT. This is one of the easiest things to do that can help us with dealing with emotions, dealing with stress, and it doesn't cost anything to do it on your own and it doesn't take very long and it doesn't take very long. So the more I can share with you how to tap to help you get through stress in midlife, to help you feel better about yourself, to help you make decisions, the better. And today we're going to talk about tapping and we're also going to go through an actual tapping practice to make sure you feel like you're worthy of self-care.

0:49 So stick with me. Welcome to Mind your Midlife, your go-to resource for confidence and success, one thought at a time. Unlike most advice out there, we believe that simply telling you to believe in yourself or change your habits isn't enough to wake up excited about life or feel truly confident in your body. Each week you'll gain actionable strategies and oh my goodness, powerful insights to stop feeling stuck and start loving your midlife. This is the Mind your Midlife podcast. Start loving your midlife.

1:29 This is the Mind your Midlife podcast. If we're going to talk about tapping, we need to talk about emotions and the power and importance of emotions, and my journey with emotions has not been a super quick and easy one, I must say. When I was in grad school, I was binge eating and binge eating is not really the topic of today's episode, so I'm not going to go into it too much but this is not just overeating. This is much more than that. It's different, and I knew that I needed help and I knew that it was probably stress related. So I, through my grad school, went to see a counselor, and she was very, very helpful over time, and one of the things that she asked me fairly early on was well, how do you feel about that?

2:20 Whatever the situation was we were talking about, and I had no answer. I did not know how I felt, and it was such an extreme thing to the point of I couldn't even say mad or sad or happy. I had zero emotion about it. Now, of course, I really did have emotion we all do but I had shoved it down so deep that I couldn't even process what it was, and so, of course, that's what we needed to work on. It's not healthy if your body is in a situation where you are not allowing yourself to feel emotions and, ideally, we're able to experience the emotion and then we're able to move through it and move forward and take action or make a change or feel good about ourselves or whatever it is.

3:21 We have to experience that emotion. Tapping, which is a tool for being able to experience your emotions, move through them and move forward. I didn't find out about tapping until I was having a business. I was making some big goals and I was trying to learn ways to get myself to believe I could really achieve those big goals. Right, we all go through this. If you're an entrepreneur or you've got some big goal for your health or your life, it's hard to say an affirmation that your brain goes. That's not true. That's not true, come on.

4:02 So I learned tapping at that point so that I could tap when I said my affirmations and create a way to have positive emotion about those affirmations, and that was a game changer for me as well. So what is tapping? Tapping is a method of gentle tapping, quite literally what it says on acupressure points in the body to allow energy to flow and not get stuck. It's a really interesting combination of Eastern and Western psychology and science, of Eastern and Western psychology and science, and I want to give you some research-backed information about this as well.

4:51 Research has found that tapping actually lowers stress in the body, and I'm going to tell you about two studies that found this to be true. In 2012, and this was a study published in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease participants did a single one-hour session of tapping, with guidance of course, and it lowered their cortisol and you know cortisol, that's the body's main stress hormone by about 24% hormone by about 24%, and that was one group in the study. And then there was a group who got supportive talk therapy and there was a group who didn't get any treatment at all, and those other two groups averaged about a 14% drop in cortisol levels.

5:41 So that's 10% more of a drop in cortisol, which is amazing. There was also a study done in 2020, where participants that were engaging in tapping exhibited a 43% decrease in cortisol, and that was larger compared to the psychoeducation group and the no treatment group, which were about 20% and 2% respectively. So that's a huge shift in the body stress response, and that was after just one session of tapping, and you can do tapping over and should really do tapping over and over and over again.

6:26 So it's about feeling calmer, yes, and moving the emotion through your body, yes, and it's actually changing what happens in your body and in your brain. And, interestingly, brain scans suggest that tapping helps calm the amygdala and that's the part of the brain that triggers your fight or flight, freeze or fawn response. So that's why people often feel a really noticeable shift in physical and mental emotional state after tapping. It works on the emotional and the physical side of stress.

7:08 Now you might hear of tapping as EFT. As I mentioned at the beginning, eft means emotional freedom technique, so that was a name given when this was first kind of gaining in popularity. You might hear it with both names, but it's such a simple practice and so incredibly powerful it's worth at least a try. So a couple years ago, on season one of the podcast, I interviewed Rachel McGuire, who is a tapping practitioner, and she was talking with me about tapping as a way to help us deal with emotions, when we kind of need to calm down, and she said nobody wants to be told to calm down.

8:00 Right, nobody wants to be told to calm down. In fact, there's a comedian, laura Ramoso, who I just love, who does an Italian airport worker character and is always saying calm down, calm down. It's funny, anyway, you'll trust me on that but it doesn't work to tell someone to calm down, right, that doesn't work. So how cool that we have a way to help our bodies actually calm down. Another powerful aspect of tapping is that when we've had events and experiences in our lives that were very impactful and maybe there was a lot of emotion involved it could be from when you were very, very young Our subconscious brains hold on to these things and create beliefs about what will happen every time there's this situation, and that means we create safeguards.

9:01 Either we're never going to let ourselves get into that situation without even realizing why, or we're immediately going to be defensive in that situation again, probably not realizing why, or we're going to shut down. We're going to have a reaction when we get in this situation because we've saved information in our subconscious brain that there's danger or there's risk, or I don't like this, and so tapping in that case can help us clear. Some of those safeguards, help us calm the amygdala, so we're reducing that fight or flight response. We're moving into the parasympathetic nervous system, where our body is calm, also called rest and digest.

9:50 We're not riled up. We're allowing our body, our emotion, our nervous system, our brain to work in its most efficient way and we can then clear out some of the stress that we were feeling. Now, a lot of times, other emotions will come up. So when I have done tapping with coaching clients, we typically start tapping on some practical change that the person wants to make or some motivation or some affirmation that they want to start to believe in. If it's a scenario that's a difficult scenario. Sometimes, when we start improving how we feel about that scenario we've gone through a few tapping practices other emotions start coming up.

10:38 Sometimes when we move through a situation, there's hidden stuff in there. Maybe we thought we were mad about something and we kind of clear through that and really what it is is we're really sad about some aspect of that situation and that other emotion might surface. And if you're anything like me, you're thinking, well, do I want to surface the sadness? Really I get that. And when we can recognize these emotions and feel them and use tapping to allow the feeling of them to be a bit safer according to our brain and our body and our hormones, then we can move through them.

11:21 It's when we run from our emotions or tamp them down and not recognize them, that they stay with us. And if you go back to one of the early Mind your Midlife episodes from January, I'll remember to put it in the show notes with Catherine Giovanni, when we were talking about forgiveness. We were talking about forgiveness because it's powerful for you, for your health, for your body, for your mental state, for your emotional state, to forgive someone else. It wasn't about them, it was about doing it for you, so that you're not holding on to all that.

12:02 And I'm talking to myself here too, because we all have to make sure that we are working through some of this. We all hold on to things like this. It's a normal human experience. So if we can experience emotion in a safe way, we can signal to our subconscious brain that it's okay to feel these emotions. Let's go ahead through it. Then we're going to be moving forward. As I mentioned, when I initially started using tapping, it was, it was for affirmations, so that my brain wasn't just constantly thinking don't be such an idiot.

12:42 That's not true. So if I give an example, I'm affirming that I have the top podcast in the how-to. I'm affirming that I have the top podcast in the how-to category. If I'm saying I have the top podcast in the how-to category. Well, right at this moment that's not true, and my brain knows that. And so continuing to say something over and over that I don't have a positive feeling about because my brain's like not true, that's not doing me any good. So I asked Rachel about this as well, and she gave such great information. We go back to that safeguard on our brain that we have, and it's good that we have it, because it means that our brain is not easily manipulated. It means that someone can't come in and just take over our brain Good point.

13:24 But with that, that can make visualizations and affirmations frustrating sometimes because we're sitting there and we're telling ourselves, like, whatever it is, like, I can do this, I'm going to be successful in this, this is the life that is meant for me, whatever we may be affirming and visualizing. But it's hitting this roadblock because our brain is smart and it says, no, you don't believe that. No, you don't feel that. And because of that it rejects it. Our brain is very quick to reject it. So when we're tapping once again, we're lowering that kind of safeguard by telling our brain and telling our body no, this is safe for me to believe, this is safe for me to accept, this is safe for me to feel, even when that's positive emotions. And people think why would my body not want to feel positive emotion?

14:04 Why would my body be rejecting that? But if it's a new feeling about a new circumstance, then it's new and our body and brain like patterns. They love. They love patterns. So anything that's new. We need to remind our mind and our body that it's safe. It's safe to move forward. Okay, so we've talked through the benefits. Let's go into the detail. I'm sure you're thinking as you're listening to this. Well, tell me exactly what the heck you're talking about. Okay, so it's a little bit more challenging on audio. I will make sure that I have a video version for you available within the next few days after this episode comes out, and I very much have multiple video versions of tapping practices available in Patreon.

14:49 So come over to patreoncom, slash mindyourmidlife, make sure you join the collective. You will get access to all of those tapping practices. You can do them along with me on the video as often as you like. Okay, so the way that I help clients to do tapping is going to use certain points on the body that we're tapping on. There are more than this, there are other ones. These are my favorites that I use. So we will always start with the karate chop point on the side of your hand. So if you think of doing a karate chop, the outside of your hand is what's going out first, and so you're tapping with a couple of fingers from your other hand on that outside edge of your hand, just gentle, tapping, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.

15:44 That's the first point, the karate chop point. The next point we're going to use is the inside of the eyebrow, and this can be either or both sides of your body, so it's very, very, very, very flexible in that way. So right now I have two fingers and I'm tapping on the inside edge of one of my eyebrows. And then the next point is the outside of your eye. So if you feel the bone on the outside of one of your eyes, don't poke yourself in the eye, but on the bone there you can tap. That's the next point. Then we're going to go under the eye.

16:25 So be gentle, of course, but this is tapping kind of right in the middle of lined up in the middle, vertically, with the middle of your eye you can feel the edge of the bone under your eye as well and kind of tapping with two fingers right on the edge of that bone. Then we're going in between the nose and mouth, then we're going in between the nose and mouth, so right in the middle of your upper lip, basically on the skin, in between your upper lip and your nose. That's the next point. And then we're going in between your lower lip and your chin, again right in the middle, tapping with two fingers. I use two fingers because then I'm making sure I'm really getting the exact acupressure point.

17:10 I've got lots of space, lots of surface area that I'm tapping. The next point is collarbone. So if you feel your collarbone, it makes a U in the middle, right underneath your throat, and you're tapping on one side of that U basically, and you can use two or three fingers. That way you're making sure you're getting the point you need to get. And then under the arm is next. And so this is about if you put your hand under your arm, it's about the width of your hand down your side and, ladies, this is kind of where the side of your bra would sit. So you're tapping on your side, underneath your arm, about a hand's width down from your armpit.

17:52 That's under the arm. And then we're going to tap on the crown of the head, so right on top of your head. I tend to do this with four fingers, again, just making sure I'm hitting the point, so I give it plenty of surface area. And then we're going to wrap up again with the karate chop point on your hand. So you can do that just to calm yourself down without saying anything. Even I told this to Patreon recently. Even you can simply tap kind of kind of secretly and calmly on the karate chop point of your hand if you're getting worked up about something and you need to calm down, it will help.

18:33 Even if you're just doing that and you're, you know, under the table or you don't want people to notice, that will help. But today we're going to go through a practice for helping you to clear any limiting beliefs that tell you that you don't deserve self-care. And goodness, when we get to midlife, aren't there a lot of things pulling on us? Maybe you've gotten through the period of time where it felt like you were just caring for everybody all the time when your kids were young. And now maybe they're in college or they're out of the house or they don't need quite as much day-to-day, minute-to-minute care. Of course they're in your heart, they're in your mind all the time, but the day-to-day obligations maybe have changed and at the same time you have body changes, you have work changes, you have retirement, you might have money concerns, you have aging parents, there's all these other things going on.

19:28 So sometimes imagine that we don't think we're worth taking time for self-care, we don't think it's appropriate to prioritize that, or we don't think we've earned it, any of those limiting beliefs it can be hidden in there. So if you are in a safe place to do it, if you're driving, you can listen along, but you I don't want you to close your eyes, obviously, or focus on it too much, but if you're in a safe place to do it, we're going to go through this tapping practice together, okay, so the first thing I want you to think about is how true does the belief I have to earn self-care feel?

20:11 Let's give it a number on a scale 0 to 10. 0 means that doesn't feel true at all. Of course I don't have to earn self-care. 10 means yeah, obviously. So how strong are your emotions around this potential belief that you have to earn self-care? You have to earn it. You don't just get it, you don't just deserve it. You don't deserve to take care of yourself unless you've earned it. So give yourself a number and then we're going to see whether that changes at all. Now we want to kind of get into a calm state, so I want you to take a deep breath in through your nose, out through your mouth, and then you're going to start tapping on the side of your hand the karate chop point and we're going to repeat our statement as we're tapping on the karate chop point three times.

21:08 Even though, from somewhere, I got the belief that I need to earn self-care, I recognize this belief and I'm open to thinking differently, even though, from somewhere, I got the belief that I have to earn self-care. Even though, from somewhere, I got the belief that I have to earn self-care, I recognize the belief and I'm open to thinking differently, Even though somewhere, I got the belief that I need to earn self-care, I recognize the belief and I'm open to thinking differently.

21:48 Now we're going to go through the other points and I'll say them as I go. So, inside of the eyebrow, I have so much to do Tapping on the side of the eye. So many people depend on me Under the eye. There's so many things I want to do Under the eye. There's so many things I want to do Under the nose. I really I feel like I should be further along by now. Under the mouth and if I stop and take time for myself, that's not, that's not the right thing, collarbone, I'm feeling so much guilt around taking care of myself or taking time for myself Under the arm.

22:34 I know, I know it's really important that I need to do more. I need to do more. Top of the head If I relax, I must be dropping the ball and we'll go through the points again. Inside of the eyebrow, maybe somewhere when I was younger side of the eye I started to believe that I have to earn self-care under the eye. That is selfish to take time for myself under the nose, but I I see what that causes in my life.

23:18 Under the mouth when I don't take time for myself. Collarbone, it's hard to move. It's hard to trust my gut. Under the arm when I'm always so busy and I never stop. Top of the head, it's hard to hear what my heart and my brain are really telling me. Eyebrow when I don't make time for relaxing. Side of the eye, it's hard to move forward. Under the eye when I'm not connected to myself under the nose and what I truly want under the mouth.

24:04 But maybe I can start to be open to the idea, collarbone, that I don't have to earn self-care under the arm. It's really. It's a powerful piece of living my best life. Top of the head when I take time for myself. Inside of the eyebrow, I get clarity that I need. Side of the eye. I feel calm and settled Under the eye.

24:47 I can read and feel my intuition, my gut instinct Under the nose. I don't need to earn self-care under the mouth. It's something that everyone needs. It's a necessity, collarbone. The more I take time for myself under the arm, the better I can show up for others arm, the better I can show up for others Top of the head. The more I take time for myself inside of the eye, the more I really love my life outside of the eye, the more I know I'm moving in the right direction under the eye, the happier I feel with the decisions I'm making under the nose, the more I make room for what I really want and what really matters under the mouth.

25:36 It becomes easier every time, collarbone, it's safe to relax and take care of myself under the arm. The more I take time for myself top of the head, the more empowered I feel. Back to the karate chop point, even though somewhere I got this belief that I need to earn self-care. I recognize it and I'm open to thinking differently Now. Take a deep breath. See how your body feels. I feel tingly. And how true does this statement I have to earn self-care feel now on that scale of 0 to 10?

26:22 Give yourself a number. Then look back at your previous number. Your number is probably dropping. If it didn't, you can try this again. If it did, you can still try it again. You can continue reducing that number so that this belief that you don't want to have because it was limiting for you, doesn't have an intense emotion attached to it, which means you have an easier time of letting it go, and that feels so incredibly empowering. So make sure that in your podcast app in. Apple, hit the three dots and say save.

27:03 In Spotify, hit the plus In your other apps. There's a way to save this episode so that you can come back to it. You could start, maybe, in the middle of the episode and go through that tapping again as often as you need to. Now the wording, if you heard me, there was a pattern starting with the concern, the problem that we were facing, and gradually moving towards looking at this differently. You might need to stay in the concern and just tap on the concern until your emotional response to it starts to minimize. You don't have to rush it, and this is why working with a coach will really help, because all of this, of course, can be personalized and powerful.

27:51 So go to CherylPFishercom, slash coaching and set upa free call with me. We can talk about that. And, of course, you can grab lots of tapping practices in the Patreon community, as I mentioned. So I hope that you're feeling a bit lighter, a bit happier, a bit more positive because of this practice today. Thank you for doing that with me and I'll see you again for more tapping. Now make sure that you have hit the follow button, because coming up next week is such a fun episode.

28:33 I have a comedian and comedy teacher joining me to help us add a little humor to our lives. Can't wait for you to hear that and in the meantime, slow down, notice what's going on around you, what's going on in your head, and let's create something amazing.