Brad SchipkeFounder of Broken To Unbreakable

This looks stupid but it stopped my panic

22 Aug 2026 · 1 min

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In this brief personal testimony, Brad Schipke introduces the "butterfly hug," a three‑step bilateral stimulation technique aimed at stabilizing trauma‑related symptoms such as panic, anxiety, and PTSD. He explains the steps—crossing the arms, tapping alternately on the shoulders (or other body parts), and continuing the tapping—while describing the underlying rationale: the rhythmic left‑right stimulation mimics the brain’s REM‑sleep processing, helping to integrate emotions in the moment. Schipke emphasizes the method’s simplicity, flexibility (eye movement, thigh tapping, etc.), and free accessibility, urging viewers to try it despite initial skepticism, and reports that his own symptoms calmed when he applied it.

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It sounds silly, it sounds stupid, I know. I didn't believe it in the beginning, but I tried it out of desperation. If you have trauma or PTSD, one of the best tools to stabilize your symptoms is something called the butterfly hug. It's super easy. You do it in 3 steps. You cross your arms, you start tapping, and then you keep tapping. That's it. Your panic will reduce, your anxiety will reduce simply from the tapping, because what the tapping does is it actually stimulates the left and right hemispheres of your brain, which simulates REM sleep cycle. In the REM sleep cycle, what your brain is doing is processing memories and things from the day and anything in the past, which is where all of our dreams happen. I was like, this looks silly and this looks stupid, but I'm gonna do it anyways because my life— I just, I need something. So if you just try this out, what you'll find is that your symptoms start to calm down. So when you're doing that tapping left and right, and it doesn't have to be under your shoulder blades here, you can move your eyes left and right, you can tap the top of your thighs, whatever works for you. But by doing that, you are hacking into that part of your brain and helping you process the emotions in the moment. So give it a try. It's free. Nothing to lose.