Increasing your effectiveness with EFT, part 226.
A new theoretical paper by psychologists Robert Schwarz and Peta Stapleton takes on a question that I’ve heard many times over the years: why might EFT tapping actually help?
I recently came across the paper while browsing the Research section of EFT International’s website. The paper itself, titled Theoretical and Clinical Insights Into the Psychological Mechanisms and Active Ingredients of Emotional Freedom Techniques, was published in Frontiers in Psychology in April 2026, and you can read the full article here.
It’s an interesting question because EFT can look deceptively simple from the outside. We think about something that bothers us, tap on a series of points on the face and body, say a few words, and sometimes notice that we feel different afterwards. But anyone who has spent much time learning or practicing EFT knows that there is usually a lot more going on during a session.
Schwarz and Stapleton’s paper proposes a framework for understanding some of those different pieces and how they may work together. Importantly, this is a theoretical paper. The authors are bringing together existing research and clinical ideas to propose possible mechanisms that could explain EFT’s effects, rather than claiming that all of these mechanisms have already been conclusively demonstrated.
The original paper is understandably written for an academic audience, so I thought it would be interesting to translate some of its main ideas into more everyday language. It also helps explain several things that experienced EFT practitioners pay attention to during a session.
There May Be More Going On Than the Tapping Itself
One of the main points Schwarz and Stapleton make is that focusing exclusively on the tapping points gives us an incomplete picture of EFT. They identify several “active ingredients” that may work together, including the tapping itself, acceptance and self-compassion, carefully approaching difficult experiences without becoming overwhelmed, shifting our attention between different aspects of an experience, working with whatever emerges during the session, and having some expectation that change is possible.
This makes intuitive sense if you’ve ever compared simply tapping through the points with doing a more focused EFT session. Imagine that you’re working on a painful breakup. During the session, you might begin with the sadness you feel when you think about your former partner. Then you remember the expression on their face during your last conversation, and that brings up anger. A few rounds later, you notice that underneath the anger is the thought, “I wasn’t important enough to him”.
The tapping continues throughout much of this, but your attention is moving through different parts of the experience. Schwarz and Stapleton argue that this process of identifying and following these different “aspects” is itself an important part of EFT.
We Can Approach Difficult Feelings Without Diving Into the Deep End
Another important piece of their model is something I’ve written about quite a few times: the window of tolerance.
For emotional processing to be useful, we generally need enough connection with an experience that there is something to work with, while also being careful about becoming overwhelmed. Schwarz and Stapleton describe this in terms of exposure being too “cold” or too “hot”. On the one hand, if we’re barely connected to the experience, there may be very little emotional material available. In other words, there needs to be enough emotional activation for the processing to take place. But, on the other hand, if we’re flooded by an overly high emotional intensity, we may have difficulty staying present and processing what is happening.
This is very similar to my “cup of tea” analogy. We want the tea warm enough that we can taste it, while being careful that it doesn’t become boiling hot.
EFT has several ways of adjusting that temperature. We might focus on only one small moment of a difficult memory rather than recounting the entire event. We might zoom out and describe it more generally when the details feel overwhelming. We can use approaches such as Tell the Story or the Tearless Trauma Technique, or simply pause the verbal processing and tap silently for a while.
The important point is that more emotional intensity doesn’t necessarily mean better emotional processing. The authors emphasize gradually adjusting how closely we approach difficult material so that we can remain within a manageable range.
Acceptance May Be Doing More Than We Realize
The paper also gives considerable importance to acceptance and self-compassion.
The traditional EFT setup statement ends with “I deeply and completely accept myself”. Schwarz and Stapleton suggest that this simple structure may be doing several things at once. We’re noticing an experience, creating some distance between ourselves and the problem, and practicing a more accepting relationship with what we’re experiencing.
Personally, I don’t always use the traditional acceptance phrase. Sometimes I’ll use something like, “And this is where I’m at right now”. But I think the underlying principle is similar.
Imagine someone who feels anxious before social situations and is also constantly thinking, “This is ridiculous. Why am I still anxious about this?”
Now there are at least two things happening: the anxiety itself and the person’s judgment about having anxiety. As I’ve written before, we can think of that second layer as the “feelings about the feelings”.
If we tap while allowing both experiences to have the microphone, perhaps something begins to change in our relationship with the anxiety. We may still feel nervous, but we aren’t fighting so hard against the fact that we’re nervous. Schwarz and Stapleton propose that this kind of mindful, compassionate stance may help reduce shame and fear-based reactivity and make it easier to stay engaged with difficult emotional material.
What Comes Up During Tapping Can Become Part of the Work
One of my favorite parts of the paper is the discussion of something called utilization.
The term comes from the work of psychiatrist and hypnotherapist Milton Erickson. In simple terms, utilization means working with whatever the person actually brings into the room rather than trying to force their experience to follow a predetermined plan.
In EFT, that might mean beginning with sadness and then noticing that anger suddenly appears, so now we work with the anger. Perhaps the client says, “This is stupid, I don’t even want to talk about this anymore”. That reaction can also become something we tap on. Maybe their chest suddenly tightens, an unexpected memory appears, or they use a metaphor such as “It feels like I’m carrying a huge rock around”. All of those responses can give us information about where to go next.
Schwarz and Stapleton specifically describe using the client’s own words, prioritizing new aspects as they emerge, and treating unexpected emotional or physical reactions as useful information that can guide the next round of tapping.
This is very close to what I often describe as giving the microphone to whatever shows up and is asking for our attention the most. We don’t necessarily need to convince a resistant part to stop resisting or tell an angry part that it should be more compassionate. We can listen to what it has to say while we tap and see where the process goes from there.
The Body May Be Part of the Story Too
Of course, the actual tapping is also one of the ingredients in the authors’ model.
Schwarz and Stapleton discuss research suggesting that acupoint stimulation may influence physiological arousal and autonomic regulation. At the same time, they acknowledge that questions remain about exactly how the bodily component works and how important the particular form of somatic stimulation may ultimately prove to be. They point out that other approaches, such as EMDR, Brainspotting, and Havening, engage the body in different ways.
For someone doing EFT, however, the subjective experience may be much simpler.
You think about something that normally makes your stomach tighten. You tap for a while, return to the same thought, and realize that your stomach isn’t reacting as strongly anymore. Or you remember something that used to make your heart race and notice that you can now think about it while your body feels relatively calm.
The memory is still there, but your body’s response to remembering it may be changing.
And according to the model proposed in the paper, that combination may be particularly important.
Sometimes Our Understanding Changes Without Forcing It
The authors call another proposed mechanism cognitive and emotional restructuring. In everyday language, we might simply say that the way we understand an experience can begin to change.
Imagine tapping on a childhood memory of being humiliated by a teacher. At the beginning, you might remember the event through the eyes of the child you were at the time: “Everyone was laughing at me. I was so stupid, and I felt like there was something wrong with me”.
After working through different parts of the memory, another perspective might emerge: “I was only eight years old. I was confused and scared, and that teacher shouldn’t have spoken to me that way.”
Nobody necessarily had to tell you to think differently. The new perspective may become available as some of the emotional charge around the memory decreases.
Schwarz and Stapleton describe this as developing new meanings and emotional responses around experiences that previously caused distress. They also note that these shifts can include less self-blame and greater self-compassion.
This is one reason I generally prefer following what emerges during tapping rather than introducing positive reframes too quickly. Sometimes a more compassionate or flexible perspective arises on its own once there is enough room for it.
And Then There Is Memory Reconsolidation
Perhaps the most ambitious part of Schwarz and Stapleton’s model involves memory reconsolidation.
A simple way of thinking about reconsolidation is that when we bring an emotionally important memory back to mind, under certain conditions the emotional learning connected to that memory may become open to being updated. The authors propose that EFT may help create those conditions by allowing someone to activate a difficult memory while simultaneously having a very different experience in the present, perhaps feeling safer, calmer, more accepting, or more in control than they did when the original event occurred.
Imagine someone who was frequently criticized by a parent. Years later, a minor criticism from their boss immediately triggers the old feeling: “I’ve done something wrong. I’m in trouble!”.
During EFT, they might revisit one of those childhood experiences while tapping. This time, however, they’re an adult sitting in a safe room, perhaps with a practitioner they trust. After some tapping, their body isn’t responding with the same degree of alarm, and they may be able to recognize things that the child couldn’t: “My dad was overwhelmed and angry. I was just a kid. His reaction doesn’t mean that there was something wrong with me”.
The authors’ proposal is that experiences like this may allow the emotional learning associated with the original memory to be updated. They extend this idea to broader beliefs as well. Several emotionally charged memories can act like the “table legs” supporting a belief such as “I’m unlovable”. As those individual memories change, the broader belief may gradually lose some of the experiences that made it feel so true in the first place.
I would add some caution here. Memory reconsolidation is an active area of research, and this paper presents it as a proposed mechanism for EFT. The paper itself acknowledges that much of the research into EFT’s mechanisms is still correlational, which means we can’t yet say with certainty exactly which processes are responsible for the changes people experience.
Putting All of This Together
Schwarz and Stapleton ultimately organize their model around four broad changes that they believe may happen during effective EFT: we become less emotionally and physically overwhelmed, we become more able to approach experiences we previously avoided, our understanding and emotional response to those experiences can change, and under the right circumstances, the emotional learning connected to old memories may be updated.
I think what makes their paper particularly interesting is that these processes aren’t presented as completely separate from one another.
Imagine that thinking about a painful memory initially takes you to a nine out of ten in intensity. Tapping helps you stay with a small piece of it without becoming overwhelmed. Because you’re less overwhelmed, you can notice details you previously avoided. As you continue working with those details, your perspective begins to shift. Perhaps the shame decreases and compassion for your younger self appears. Eventually, you can remember what happened without your body responding as though the danger is happening all over again.
Seen this way, EFT involves much more than moving our fingers through a sequence of tapping points. The tapping happens alongside attention, acceptance, emotional processing, working with the body, revisiting certain memories, and the moment-to-moment decisions about what to focus on next. Schwarz and Stapleton’s model is still a theoretical proposal that needs further testing, but I think it offers an interesting framework for understanding why all of those pieces may matter.
That said, as this paper helps illustrate, there can be quite a bit more to EFT than simply going through the tapping points. When we’re tapping by ourselves, it isn’t always easy to know what to focus on, how closely to approach something difficult, or what to do with whatever emerges along the way. If you’d like some support exploring what’s coming up for you, you can learn more about my approach at brunosade.com.
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I’m Bruno Sade, a clinical psychologist and Accredited Certified Advanced EFT Practitioner. I work online with people around the world, helping them reduce the emotional charge behind difficult thoughts, memories, and triggers.
If you’re curious about experiencing EFT in a guided session, I occasionally offer a free EFT tapping session in exchange for a brief market research interview. You can sign up here.
