Releasing Anxiety with EFT Tapping
We all inherited some hard-to-shake programming from our ancient ancestors, including our response to stress.
Their stress involved coping with life-or-death situations from sabertooth tigers and other such threats, which thankfully they survived (or we wouldn’t be here!).
Our stress mostly does not.
But there’s a reason we still perceive the daily stressors in our lives as being just as threatening, and why so many of us have such high levels of anxiety…
Maybe you’ve felt it – the sense that things are about to fall apart, or that your mind is too crowded with distressing thoughts that prevent you from breathing, relaxing, and sleeping…
According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the U.S., affecting 40 million adults in the United States age 18 and older, or 18% of the population.
Luckily, we’ve come a long way in our understanding of how our ancestors’ fight-or-flight mechanism remained with us, and even more importantly, what we can do to fix it.
Did you know that Tapping has been scientifically proven to rewire the brain and body to bring it back into balance? Read on to see what this means to you and your anxiety…
Your Programming
You may have heard of the amygdala in your brain. That’s where your survival instincts live.
When you’re truly in a dangerous situation, the amygdala perceives the threat and releases biochemicals that flood your body with the mental and physical energy you need to fight or flee it.
But what about when you’re not truly in danger?
Unfortunately for many people, that ancient survival instinct kicks in anyway. Everyday stressors are all it takes and their anxiety is off and running.
Sometimes it doesn’t take much – like a traffic jam, a rude barista at the coffee shop, or just being too busy. But there are also big ones, which may not be life-threatening, but can seriously trigger our anxiety. These include things like:
Health
Money
Job pressures
Painful memories
Relationship concerns
The world!
When your body constantly goes into fight-or-flight mode, you lose your sense of control. You lack the peace of mind to deal with a situation as effectively as you might. You become exhausted, distracted, and at some point, unhealthy.
In fact, according to Harvard Medical School, “Evidence suggests that people with anxiety disorders are at greater risk for developing a number of chronic medical conditions.” They state that these include gastrointestinal disorders, chronic respiratory disorders, and heart disease.
This is no secret. That’s why the market is booming with individuals and organizations doing their best to help you alleviate your anxiety. They know how important it is in the scheme of your overall health.
Maybe you’ve already tried some of their (and your own) techniques such as:
Practicing meditation, deep breathing, yoga, etc.
Exercising regularly
Cutting down on caffeine or alcohol
Diffusing essential oils
Recording your honest feelings in a journal
Getting massages and other types of bodywork
Taking hot baths
Talking to someone you trust
Those are all wonderful ways to temporarily relieve your anxiety. If you do practice any of them, I want to congratulate you for taking an active role in your own health and wellbeing!
But what if you practice one (or all) of them faithfully, and you still suffer from anxiety more often than you think you should?
This is where Tapping does what other techniques can’t do.
Tapping rewires your brain, which means it short-circuits the amygdala’s response so you don’t have to continue feeling like a victim to your programming anymore.
In other words, Tapping helps you get to the root of the problem, which is the only place where you can truly eliminate it.
How It Works
Anxiety is brought to life at particularly stressful moments. Without our prehistoric programming, we’d be able to more easily recognize each event’s actual level of threat, deal with it in the moment, and file it away in the knowledge and wisdom part of our being.
But when your nervous system has become overly sensitized due to past events and emotions, your programming kicks in and new anxiety gets added to your already overloaded system. You feel ambushed, again and again.
[Just for fun, do you know what a group of (sabertooth) tigers is called? An ambush!] 
