Frequently Asked Questions

Tapping, also known as EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques), is a powerful holistic healing technique that has been proven to effectively resolve a range of issues, including stress, anxiety, phobias, emotional disorders, chronic pain, addiction, weight control, and limiting beliefs, to name just a few.

Tapping therapy is based on the combined principles of ancient Chinese acupressure and modern psychology. Tapping with the fingertips on specific meridian endpoints of the body, while focusing on negative emotions or physical sensations, helps to calm the nervous system, rewire the brain to respond in healthier ways, and restore the body's balance of energy.

Tapping makes use of the mind-body connection, acknowledging and integrating the concepts that physical pain, disease, and mental wellbeing are intricately connected to our emotional states.

The body has an energy system that travels along pathways known as meridians. Tapping on these meridian endpoints helps to stimulate this system, and when verbally or mentally addressing the root causes of distress, the areas of blocked energy are able to release and flow naturally.

The basic Tapping technique requires you to focus on the negative emotion or situation at hand — a fear, a worry, a bad memory, an unresolved problem, or anything else that's bothering you. While maintaining your mental focus on this issue, you use your fingertips to tap 5-7 times on each of the 9 specific meridian endpoints of the body.

Tapping on these meridian points in sequence while concentrating on the negative emotions engages both the brain's limbic system and the body's energy system, encouraging a sense of safety and resolution. And as the scientific field of Epigenetics is proving, when you change your internal environment — your emotions and beliefs — external changes in your mental & physical health will follow.

In some ways, Tapping is similar to acupuncture in that they both promote healing by stimulating the body's meridians and energy flow. However, unlike acupuncture, Tapping does not involve the use of needles!

Tapping is simple and painless. It can be learned by anyone, and you can apply it to yourself whenever you want, wherever you are. It can be used with a specific emotional intent towards your own unique life challenges and experiences. Most importantly, Tapping gives you the power to bring healing to yourself, putting control over your life back into your own hands.

Like many healing arts that draw upon ancient wisdom, Tapping has been met with a fair share of skepticism. Some doctors and psychologists have been quick to dismiss it as “woo woo”, despite the vast amounts of anecdotal evidence from the results of clinical trials, practitioner reports, individual case studies, and those who have used EFT Tapping on their own.

In recent years, however, there's been a growing pool of undeniable research proving that Tapping produces real, lasting breakthroughs. It significantly improves, and can even eliminate, conditions that hospital treatments, medications, and years of psychotherapy often fail to adequately resolve. Studies performed around the world, including the prestigious Harvard Medical School, continue to verify these assertions.

The scientific basis for Tapping therapy revolves around the functions of a specific almond-shaped part of your brain called the amygdala. It is part of the body's limbic system, the source of emotions and long-term memory. The amygdala is known as the brain's fear center, from which the “flight or fight” response originates, alerting other parts of the brain that it senses danger.

Tapping has been shown to significantly calm and even “turn off” the amygdala, disrupting the stress response and allowing the brain synapses to be rewired for a more appropriate emotional response to a given situation.

It began in 1980, with a psychologist named Roger Callahan, and a patient with an extreme phobia towards water. Mary's fear of water controlled her life and kept her from performing many otherwise normal daily activities.

Dr. Callahan had recently been studying traditional Chinese medicine, which included learning about the meridians and how they worked. Remembering that there was an acupuncture point for the stomach meridian on the cheekbone, he asked Mary to tap there, thinking it might help with her stomach pains. Mary tapped her cheekbone as directed, and this little action changed medicinal history! Her stomach pains disappeared. But even more amazingly, her fear of water disappeared too!

Based on this discovery, Dr. Callahan developed “Thought Field Therapy.” Gary Craig, an engineer in California, trained under Dr. Callahan in the 1990's and created a simpler tapping sequence that could be easily learned and repeated — even by the patient themselves. The result was EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques). Perhaps even more importantly, he created a community around EFT, allowing the technique to be learned, applied, and shared freely. Because of this, hundreds of thousands of people all over the world have used Tapping to resolve emotional problems and physical conditions.

A quick start guide and a video showing you the basic sequence and Tapping Points are coming soon.

SOMATIC EXPERIENCING® (SE™) is a potent psycho-biological method for relieving chronic stress and resolving trauma symptoms. It was developed by Dr. Peter A. Levine.

The method resulted from a multidisciplinary study of stress physiology, psychology, ethology, biology, neuroscience, indigenous healing practices, and medical biophysics, honed over 45 years of successful clinical application. The SE approach releases traumatic shock, which is key to transforming PTSD and the wounds of emotional and early developmental attachment trauma.

SE helps assess where a person is “stuck” in the fight, flight, freeze/collapse, submit or attach responses and provides clinical tools to resolve these fixated physiological states.

Trauma may begin as acute stress from a perceived life-threat or as the end product of cumulative stress. Both types of stress can seriously impair a person's ability to function with resilience and ease.

In his studies, Dr. Levine found that prey animals in the wild are rarely traumatized despite routine threats to their lives. Yet human beings are readily traumatized. Under threat, the nervous system of all mammals is designed to mobilize massive amounts of energy in readiness for self-defense via the fight, flight, and freeze responses. Once safe, animals spontaneously “discharge” this excess energy through involuntary movements including shaking, trembling, and deep spontaneous breaths.

Although humans are similarly designed to rebound from high-intensity survival states, we also have the problematic ability to override the natural discharge of excess survival energy. Through rationalizations, judgments, shame, enculturation, and fear of our bodily sensations, we may disrupt our innate capacity to self-regulate.

When the nervous system does not reset after an overwhelming experience, sleep, cardiac, digestion, respiration, and immune system function can be seriously disturbed.

SE facilitates the completion of self-protective motor responses and the release of thwarted survival energy bound in the body — addressing the root cause of trauma symptoms. This is approached by gently guiding clients to develop increasing tolerance for difficult bodily sensations and suppressed emotions.

SE does not require the traumatized person to talk repeatedly about the traumatic event. Instead, it offers the opportunity to engage, complete, and resolve — in a slow and supported way — the body's instinctual fight, flight, freeze, and collapse responses.

Individuals locked in anxiety or rage then relax into a growing sense of peace and safety. Those stuck in depression gradually find their feelings of hopelessness and numbness transformed into empowerment, triumph, and mastery.

Text in this section reproduced and adapted with permission by the SE Trauma Institute.

I specialize in working with adults who have experienced Sexual Abuse and Trauma. You may be struggling with symptoms resulting from a specific overwhelming or traumatic experience such as a rape, or from repetitive childhood (or adult) abuse and the impact that this is still having on your life today.

Challenges you experience may include: PTSD and C-PTSD symptoms, anxiety/panic attacks, feeling helpless or overwhelmed, chronic stress, phobias, depression, physical tension/pain, anger/irritability, sleep/digestion/immune-system issues, a feeling of numbness or disconnection, hyper-vigilance, low self-confidence, challenges connecting with others in general and spousal intimacy issues.

Our bodies are designed for wellness. They give us signals every moment telling us exactly what they need to feel better. But with Trauma, so many of us have learnt to mistrust and override our body's communications. The good news is, when we learn how to listen, correctly interpret and attend to our body's needs, everything gets a LOT easier.

My own trauma and dissociation has been severe. For years I blocked out painful memories as a way to protect myself. I have struggled with self-harm, anxiety and depressive episodes. If anyone understands the struggles of intense traumatic response, I do. Severe symptoms do not deter me. I encourage you to seek professional help and at the same time I believe that as a survivor myself, I can offer you a unique perspective and path towards healing.

If you feel like there is something you don't remember, there is likely something you don't remember. Why? To dissociate and ‘forget’ or block memories out was one of the ways you survived. Your defenses against remembering will try to tell you there is nothing to remember. Your family may tell you there is nothing to remember. Society may tell you there is nothing to remember. Even therapists may sometimes tell you it doesn't help to remember.

If you still feel like something is missing or has been blocked out, your intuition is strong enough to be heard over those defenses. Please listen to it. With Tapping and SE we will work with the implicit (or procedural) memories for long enough until gradually and naturally the explicit will emerge. This is a process that we can navigate together.

While some psychotherapeutic modalities may encourage you to tell your traumatic story over and over again (Exposure Models), EFT Tapping and SE do not rely on you telling your story as this has potential for re-traumatization. Although we may identify past or present triggers for distress, Tapping and SE are more concerned with establishing new, healthy regulatory patterns in the nervous system right now.

Sometimes it may feel hugely important for a client to tell their story in a safe environment. Especially if it is the first time speaking up and being believed. In this instance I welcome this and invite my clients to share in as much or as little detail as feels helpful, healing and safe.

We all do our very best to deal with the circumstances of our lives. There are many things we can work through and heal on our own, and sometimes it's time to seek outside support. If you are reading this, it's likely that you may have reached the limits of your ability to go it alone. Especially when working with Trauma, there can be great resistance to doing the most needed work. Maybe it feels too overwhelming or too dangerous to process the emotions alone. Sometimes it helps to have a supportive practitioner to guide you along the path to healing.

While EFT Tapping and SE can be therapeutic, they are NOT therapy. Tapping and SE are distinct from therapy in that they address the physiology underlying the psychological or emotional issues rather than working exclusively with a person's psychology/cognition. In CBT or traditional analysis, a client may be able to get clear on an issue, but they still have the issue. With Tapping and SE however, the primary focus is to address the physiological manifestations of these issues and help the body restore and return to its natural states of resilience and wellbeing.

In my work, I do not diagnose or treat mental or medical health conditions. Our work together can compliment and enhance the efficacy of other mental or medical treatments you may be seeking.

I do not work with perpetrators. If someone’s needs fall outside my scope of practice, I can typically make a suggestion or a referral.

I’m not taking new private clients right now. Private sessions will be open only to members of my Thrivers Community, my inner circle, once it launches. Join the waitlist to be the first to know.

We will usually begin with a brief check-in to see how you're doing since our last session. If you are a first-time client, we will do a short review of your intake questionnaire and go over any questions or specific goals you might have for our work together.

We will focus on noticing and tracking emotions and sensations in the body and use this as the basis for our Tapping. Rather than diving right into the hardest parts of your Trauma, my focus will be on helping you feel comfortable and safe. By working in this titrated, gentle way, we will gradually build your tolerance with the aim of working with the more challenging sensations, emotions, and memories that present.

Based on what comes up, I will Tap on myself to guide you and you will Tap on yourself, repeating specific phrases after me. We will usually do several rounds of Tapping in a single session, interspersed with time to reflect on and integrate the Nervous System shifts as they happen.

Most sessions end with some grounding and integration of the work done. Sometimes I will give Tapping phrases to be used between sessions or I may suggest other ‘homework’.

There is no one answer to this. For clients who wish to work through one specific incident or traumatic experience, 4-6 sessions may suffice. Other clients choose to stay for several years, working through many issues and beliefs creating a whole different life for themselves.

I suggest a package of sessions to begin with and then regularly take time to assess progress and goals as we move along. Some clients come for 2-4 months then take a break and return as needed. Really, it is whatever works best for each individual, their needs, their schedule and their budget.

Sometimes, people find it hard to notice the changes that are happening in their lives as a result of Tapping or SE because they can be subtle. A common thing I often hear is ‘well I'm just not afraid of that anymore’. It suddenly seems like no big deal. But 2 weeks ago, it was a debilitating phobia.

This is why I frequently ask my clients to calibrate where they are on the 0-10 scale. If someone was terrified at level 10 last session, but now it's a level 6, that is huge momentum.

Overall and over time, most clients will notice that their symptoms (a) get triggered less often (b) get triggered less intensely and (c) they recover a state of equilibrium faster.

After a session, similar to a good workout where muscles are sore afterwards, you may also experience being more sensitive for a couple days before your Nervous System rearranges into an overall state of greater balance. While the shifts may not always be immediately pleasant, the fact that your Nervous System is reorganizing itself is a great sign of integration and progress.

Generally speaking, the information provided by you and to you as the client during your sessions is legally confidential. There are exceptions to the general rule of legal confidentiality. These exceptions are listed in the Connecticut Statutes (CGS § 52-146s(c)(5)), wherein a practitioner believes “in good faith that there is risk of imminent personal injury to the person or to other individuals or risk of imminent injury to the property of other individuals.”

Confidentiality may also be waived in the event of physical abuse and/or neglect of a child, including any past or present sexual contact with a minor.

Additionally, in the event of imminent danger to yourself or another person, I am required by law to protect you, which may result in hospitalization, and I have a duty to warn anyone who may be in imminent danger.