EFT- Tapping and The Apex Effect

In her book, The Science Behind Tapping, Peta Stapleton, PhD, says she has never seen anything like The Apex Effect in all her years of psychotherapy.

She says (and I paraphrase here) that when clients tap on an issue and achieve a complete resolution, they often promptly forget that the tapping made the difference. She had a clinical trial on the effectiveness of EFT and weight loss.  She followed up with participants 12 months after the trial and asked them how the food cravings they tapped on were going. Some told her they had never eaten that food and couldn’t recall when they last did. She reminded them they tapped on that food in the clinical trial and ate it several times daily. They brushed this off nonchalantly and dismissed that tapping could not have possibly been the reason. They might cite other things such as their willpower, distraction, time, and other random things. It is curious why they couldn’t stop eating with their willpower for years before EFT.

When Tapping on Your Own

When tapping on your own, record your SUDS level (significant unit of distress) between 1 and 10 of your issue before you tap. It is valuable to see how the intensity was reduced and/or eliminated. This way, you can see the difference the tapping made or didn’t; it is recorded on paper.

The Apex Effect comes up on an ongoing basis when working with clients. I attribute the Apex Effect to the fact that EFT tapping neutralizes the traumatic aspect of our memories and the beliefs that cause the negative issue in the first place. The root of the problem is no longer running us in the subconscious.

We have to ask ourselves why we get triggered emotionally and react to issues, why we are anxious, angry, or addicted. Why do we have control issues, depression, shame, and so on? All these issues come from beliefs we gained about life, usually when we were young. If these younger parts of us are not healed, they will run your life from the subconscious in their attempts to keep you safe from disappointment, being attacked either verbally or physically, being found out you are not good enough, deserving enough, successful enough, and so on.

Tapping calms the stress response, the fear, fight, and freeze biological response in our body. Our body naturally responds to a fearful event this way because it is intrinsically connected to our thoughts and beliefs. Most people are not conscious as to why they are having the negative issues they have because these young parts of us split off to dissociate from the situation and bury it deep in the subconscious. The feelings from the event or events are often too overwhelming for a young child; our system does this for our overall survival. This is why, in some child sexual abuse cases, victims have entirely forgotten about the trauma until something triggers it in their present lives. As children, we don’t have the resources to deal with these things. Unless one has a very understanding and compassionate person to help them work through it, these events/traumas get frozen in time.

EFT works on our energy system, and when we tap, it unfreezes the energy around the particular event or events that caused the issue in the first place. Let’s say it opens up the channel where it was clogged or stuck before and is not flowing.

As we tap on each aspect of the event or memory, our energy starts to flow again. This is why emotions about a situation come up when we tap.

Case Study

I was so excited to participate in the Ballet Medal Test. I was given the number 1, perhaps because I was the smallest, and I was thrilled to dance with older, more advanced dancers.

Though we were being judged, I wasn’t nervous, probably because I was only ten years old and was so happy to participate. I wasn’t expecting to win anything.

We were all lined up at the end of the event when the judges announced the winners. The first and second-place winners were called, and two dancers received commendations. I was one of the girls who received a commendation. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Not only did I get to do what I loved, but I was also commended for it.

I couldn’t wait to show my mother and father my certificate; I was in awe that something so good could happen to me. I ran down the steps from the stage to the auditorium to my parents and joyfully thrust out my certificate for my mother to see. She took the certificate and said, “Your hair was all over your face, and your tunic was up at the back.” That’s all she said. I was devastated, and I wanted the earth to open up and swallow me whole. That memory was one of the many heartbreaks in my relationship with my mother, where I could do nothing right.

This memory had many aspects that had to be tapped on for me not to feel devastated and overwhelmingly sad. The beliefs imprinted at the time were that I was not good enough and that it was not okay to be happy and celebrated.

Other aspects of that memory needed to be tapped on, such as:

1. My father said nothing to stand up for me.  This compounded the belief that there was something inherently wrong with me.
2. My ballet teacher and her mother came up to us to say congratulations and tell me what a good job I had done. She asked my mother if she was proud of me, and my mother just smiled. No one ever knew what my mother was like behind the mask. Although I adored my teacher, her words couldn’t soothe my mother's reaction. It was especially poignant because I loved ballet so much.

Now, those beliefs I had about myself were not true. I was good enough, indeed good enough, to be commended and chosen by the judges amongst 26 other participants. However, that is what I believed, and any affirmations or rationalizations in my head later on in life could not change the underlying belief I learned at the time. This is probably because it happened time and time again with my mother.

That memory is no longer an issue for me now. I can look back at it and not be devastatingly sad. However, it is a sad fact that my Mom could never be pleased with me and never found joy in me, but I no longer believe the lie that I am not good enough. I am free of the emotional pain of the event.

Tapping on all the aspects of a memory neutralizes the trauma and allows us to see the truth. As I have worked to get free of my traumas from childhood, many memories that had once caused me intense sadness do not come up in my consciousness anymore. I am well aware it was the tapping that helped me get free.

If you need help getting free of any beliefs or feelings you are struggling with, please contact me by clicking the Book a Call button below for a complimentary 20-minute consultation.

If you want to learn more about The Apex Effect, here is an article from EFT Universe on the Apex Effect and how EFT neutralized veterans’ wartime trauma.

This is from EFT Universe https://eftuniverse.com/refinements-to-eft/the-apex-effect/.