I Tried Tapping in Our Car (as a passenger). It Was Awkward. It Changed Everything.
I want to tell you about the moment EFT tapping for anxiety stopped being something I’d read about and became something I actually used.
Let me set the scene.
It’s December 2025. I’m in my husband’s van driving to Scotland after a 5 hour stop in Northampton hospital following our son’s first fit that morning. This is the third day of our holiday trip back to the UK for Christmas. We drove from the South of France to Calais on the first day. Second day arriving in London around midday. Touristy walking around and a show to finish the night. The next day, after 2 hours in the car on the M1, the “episode” happens, panic onboard, impossible to stop in the middle of all the lorries and no layby for what felt like an eternity.
I was exhausted, tense, fragile and totally on edge. I started being very anxious as a passenger after my first pregnancy but after my third it reached a whole new level of anxiety. After this, it was uncontrollable.
I was in the middle of reading Nick Ortner’s The Tapping Solution on that trip. Desperate times meant I had nothing to lose.
And here we are. I use EFT tapping for anxiety every day now. I’m still not entirely sure how it works but it does bring any state of anxiety down pretty quickly.
What Is EFT Tapping?
EFT stands for Emotional Freedom Techniques. The short version: you tap on specific acupuncture points on your face and body with your fingertips, while speaking out loud about whatever is bothering you. A fear. A physical pain. A limiting belief you can’t seem to shake. An emotion you don’t know what to do with.
Nick Ortner didn’t invent EFT — it was developed by Gary Craig in the 1990s, building on work by psychologist Roger Callahan — but Ortner made it accessible. He created The Tapping World Summit, reached millions of people online, and then wrote this book to bring the whole thing into one clear, practical guide.
It looks, I will be honest with you, completely ridiculous.
You sit there tapping on your eyebrow and your collarbone and saying things like “even though I am terrified of this conversation, I deeply and completely love and accept myself.” Out loud. To yourself!
And yet.
How This Changed My Life
I want to be careful here, because I am not an EFT practitioner. I am a reader who found a tool and uses it. That is all I am claiming to be.
But I will tell you what EFT tapping for anxiety did for me.
The first time I did a full tapping round — following the sequence in the book, setup statement and all — I was tapping on a fear about being a passenger in a car. The kind of fear that feels catastrophic and immovable. I sat in the passenger seat, tapped on my face and chest and collarbone, said all the ugly anxious things in my head (it was embarrassing enough to be next to my husband who definitely thinks I’m mental when I panic in the car!), and rated my distress level at about… a ten out of ten!
After one full round, it was a seven.
After three rounds — maybe ten minutes total — it was a two.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. Because I thought it too. Did it actually work, or did I just calm down from sheer absurdity? Was it the tapping, or was it just the act of sitting still and breathing?
I have asked myself that question many times. And honestly? I’m not sure it matters. What matters is that the spiral stopped. The cortisol wave broke. I could think again. And more importantly stop being dangerously distracting as a passenger with my debilitating anxiety!
I have since used tapping on financial anxiety, on a looping thought about a conversation with my teenage daughter that had not gone the way I intended, and on a deep, old belief that I am not capable enough to build something of my own.
Some sessions move me deep inside. Some feel neutral. Some feel, I’ll be honest, like nothing at all. That is also true.
The Science Bit (I Promise It’s Worth It)
Here is what won me over about EFT tapping for anxiety. Not just the practice — the explanation.
The amygdala is the brain’s alarm system. When we are stressed, anxious, or overwhelmed, the amygdala fires and floods the body with cortisol. We go into fight, flight, or freeze. And in that state, rational thought — the prefrontal cortex stuff — goes largely offline. You cannot think your way out of an amygdala spiral. You can’t logic yourself calm.
But tapping on the acupuncture meridian points sends a direct calming signal to the amygdala. The physical input — fingertips on specific points — interrupts the stress response at the body level. The cortisol drops. The nervous system settles. And the thing you were saying out loud — the fear, the belief, the pain — gets processed while the alarm is no longer screaming.
This is why EFT combines elements of cognitive therapy (identifying and naming the thought), exposure therapy (staying with it rather than pushing it away), and acupressure (the physical body component). It is addressing the same problem from three directions at once.
Well then. It turns out EFT tapping for anxiety has actual science behind it.
Studies have shown measurable reductions in cortisol after tapping sessions. Ortner cites the research throughout the book, and he does so without being smug about it. He knows it sounds strange. He leads with that, full stop.
How to Use EFT Tapping for Anxiety
Here is the basic EFT tapping for anxiety sequence, as Ortner teaches it. You can learn the whole thing in about ten minutes.
Before you start: Identify what you want to work on — a specific emotion, fear, pain, or belief. Rate your level of distress on a scale of 0-10. Ortner calls this the SUDS scale — Subjective Units of Distress. Be honest. Nine is nine. Two is two.
Step 1 — The Setup Statement. Tap continuously on the karate chop point (the fleshy outer edge of your hand) and repeat three times: “Even though I have [this specific problem], I deeply and completely love and accept myself.” The problem should be as precise as possible. “Even though I feel this tight dread in my chest when I think about [this situation]” works better than “even though I feel anxious sometimes.”
Step 2 — The Tapping Round. Tap 5-7 times on each point in sequence, while repeating a short reminder phrase (just a few words about the problem). The points, in order:
- Top of the head
- Eyebrow (inner edge, above the nose)
- Side of the eye (temple area)
- Under the eye (on the bone)
- Under the nose
- Chin (between lower lip and chin)
- Collarbone (just below the collarbone junction)
- Under the arm (about 10 cm below the armpit)
Step 3 — Check in. After one round, take a breath. Rate your distress again. Repeat as many rounds as needed, adjusting the language as the feeling shifts.
That is it. No equipment. No subscription. No special room. Just you, your fingertips, and the willingness to feel slightly silly for ten minutes.
What I Tap On
In case it helps to see what this looks like in real life — here is what I actually use EFT tapping for anxiety for.
Anxiety spirals — especially the kind that start in your mind and feel massive and permanent. Tapping doesn’t make the problem disappear. It brings me back to a place where I can actually think.
Overwhelm — there are days when the list is too long and I freeze entirely. One round of tapping, very specific (“even though I cannot see where to start and I feel paralysed by it all”), and something shifts. Not fixed, but unstuck.
Limiting beliefs — this is the deep work. The “I am not good enough to do this” and “who am I to think I can build something” variety. I have been tapping on those for just a couple of months. Slowly but surely, the charge behind them is less.
Physical tension — the shoulders, the jaw, the chest tightness that is clearly emotional even when it feels purely physical. Tapping on the body part and naming what it might be carrying has, more than once, released something I didn’t know I was holding.
Five Things to Take Away
- You don’t need to believe in it for it to work. I didn’t. Try it with scepticism intact.
- Be specific. The more precise your setup statement, the more effective the session. “I feel anxious” is less useful than “I feel this twisting feeling in my stomach when I think about that email I haven’t replied to.”
- Rate before and after. The SUDS scale sounds clinical but it’s genuinely useful. Watching a nine become a four in ten minutes is convincing.
- One round is enough to start. You don’t need an hour. Five minutes at your kitchen table counts.
- It works alongside other tools. I use tapping alongside journaling, gratitudes, NVC, and whatever life brings to me on my self-development journey. They don’t compete. They layer.
Why This Belongs in Soul
The Tree of Life is the framework I use to organise this blog — and my whole life, really. Soul is the section for inner peace, spiritual practice, and the work of becoming more yourself. Not the physical health work (that’s Body). Not the learning and reading (that’s Mind). Soul is where you tend to your emotional and spiritual interior.
EFT tapping for anxiety lives here because it is, at its core, an emotional clearing practice. It is not about learning a concept — it is about releasing what is stuck. It is about sitting with something uncomfortable and letting your own body help you process it.
For me, it has become as much a part of my spiritual practice as journaling, or moon rituals, or sitting quietly with a crystal in my hand and actually breathing for a moment. These practices are not separate things. They are all part of the same intention: showing up for yourself in a gentle, consistent way.
No one gets that right every day. Certainly not me.
You don’t need to be in crisis to try EFT tapping for anxiety. You don’t need to have the right setup, or the right notebook, or the right amount of time. You just need ten minutes and the willingness to feel briefly ridiculous.
If you are someone who carries a lot in your body — the tight chest, the jaw you clench at night, the shoulders that live somewhere near your ears — I would recommend trying it just once. Properly, with a setup statement, with the sequence, with a before-and-after score.
Et toi? Do you already tap, or are you somewhere back where I was — politely sceptical? I would love to know. We are all still figuring it out. That is the whole point.
Notes from Soph | Learning, not perfection.
Have you ever tried EFT Tapping, or does it sound as strange to you as it did to me at first? I’d love to hear — leave a comment below or reach out directly. And if you know someone who carries stress in their body and has tried everything else, maybe share this with them.
Book details:
The Tapping Solution: A Revolutionary System for Stress-Free Living
Nick Ortner | Hay House, 2013
📚 Amazon.co.ukhttps://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1401939414/?tag=websitenote0f-21
🎧 Audible.frhttps://www.audible.co.uk/pd/The-Tapping-Solution-Audiobook/B00C108J0K?source_code=ASSGB149080119000H&share_location=pdp
Disclosure: affiliate link — if you buy through this, I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you!
