Increasing your effectiveness with EFT, part 193.
These days, there is no shortage of evidence that life can feel unfair, cruel, or unjust. News, social media, and personal conversations constantly remind us of suffering, harm, inequality, and loss. Many people I work with find themselves feeling upset, angry, or helpless about what’s going on in the world. They want to do something meaningful about it, but they don’t know exactly what that would look like, and that uncertainty can feel frustrating or even paralyzing.
Feeling upset about cruelty and injustice is a very human response. It says something about your capacity for empathy and care. At the same time, being flooded with these feelings without a clear direction for action can leave you emotionally depleted, overwhelmed, or stuck in a loop of guilt and frustration.
I don’t have all the answers on what actions each of us should take in the face of injustice. I don’t know what the right response is for everyone or for every situation. What I do know is that EFT can help you process the emotional experience you are having right now so that you can show up more clearly and more effectively in your life, whatever choices you make about how to engage with the world.
Feeling the Feelings Without Being Consumed by Them
One approach in EFT is to tap on your actual thoughts and feelings about what is happening in the world. This includes big feelings like anger, sadness, frustration, and helplessness. It also includes fear, guilt, and the sense that you should be doing something but don’t know what.
While a significant portion of these feelings is a response to real events and real suffering, another portion often comes from past unresolved experiences when you felt powerless, unheard, or unable to defend yourself. The nervous system does not always separate “then” from “now.” Old memories can resurface when you are confronted with a situation that feels like another version of something painful you once lived through.
In EFT, acknowledging these emotional reactions and tapping through them gives you a chance to release the emotional charge attached to both the present situation and the earlier, related wounds. Over time, the same thoughts and feelings may still arise, but they will tend to feel less overwhelming and less stuck in your body.
Meeting Yourself Where You Are
For example, tapping phrases may look like:
“When I think about what I saw on the news this morning, I feel so overwhelmed. And this is where I’m at right now”.
“When I notice how helpless I feel because I don’t know what I should be doing, I feel this heaviness in my chest. And this is where I’m at right now”.
“When I feel frustrated that I want to help but I don’t know how, I notice a tightness in my shoulders. And this is where I’m at right now”.
These phrases are not meant to suppress or deny your feelings. They are meant to acknowledge them for what they are so that the emotional energy holding them can begin to soften.
Tapping and the Past
Sometimes tapping on the present emotion leads to memories that feel related to the same emotional theme. A memory of feeling powerless or unheard as a child, or an earlier time when you wanted to stand up for yourself but felt unable to, might come up. These memories may not be about the world at large, but the emotional charge they carry can influence how you react in the moment.
When you tap on these old feelings with kindness and attention, you are not reliving the event as if it were happening again. Instead, you are helping release the emotional intensity, so that your nervous system no longer experiences the present moment as an immediate threat.
What Tends to Shift With EFT
As the emotional charge softens, a few things often happen:
- You may feel more emotionally regulated and less flooded by intense feelings.
- You may find it easier to think more clearly about how you want to respond or engage.
- You may still feel compassion and concern, but without the sense of being overwhelmed or immobilized by those feelings.
- You may find yourself more present with the people in your life who matter to you.
From Inner Regulation to Outer Action
Releasing emotional charge does not mean you stop caring. On the contrary, it often opens up the space for sustainable engagement rather than reactive overwhelm. Once you are less flooded by raw emotion, you have more energy and clarity to consider meaningful ways to contribute, whether that is building community, strengthening relationships, volunteering, organizing, advocating, or simply being present with others in your world.
Anything that strengthens community bonds, increases compassion, or helps people feel seen and valued is meaningful. In the long run, collective resilience and connection may be among the most powerful responses to unfair systems, not only for others but for your own well-being.
When It Feels Like Too Much
Sometimes these emotions are too intense or tangled to work on alone. In those situations, an experienced practitioner can help provide containment, support, and pacing so that you are not retraumatized in the process. EFT can be tailored to your capacity, and you always have a choice about how deeply you want to engage at any given moment.
A Kind Invitation
There is no single right way to respond to suffering and injustice in the world, and there is no shame in feeling overwhelmed by it. What EFT offers is a way to sit with your true experience without judgment, owning what you feel now so that you can show up in your life with more clarity, steadiness, and compassion.
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I’m Bruno Sade, a clinical psychologist and Certified Advanced EFT Practitioner. I help you release emotional triggers and build sustainable confidence in a safe space tailored to you.
If you’d like to experience a free EFT Tapping session in exchange for a brief market research interview, click here.