Transcript excerpt of a YouTube interview (HEAL series) with Amy Piper discussing Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) as a complement to talk therapy. Amy explains that tapping targets the limbic (emotional) brain and fight/flight/freeze responses to help neutralize subconscious patterns behind panic attacks, trauma, addictions, phobias, and emotional weight. The conversation includes clinical examples (weight as protective 'padding'), brief client intake questions, and contrasts EFT’s nonverbal access with verbal therapy.
Chapters
When my clients come to me, they've often already done talk therapy, I'd say 95% of the time. And they're coming to me saying, you know, I tried this, I did learn a lot. But I'm still having the panic attacks, or I'm still having the trouble in my relationship, or this trauma pattern keeps happening. So where the eft comes in, and it's a beautiful compliment to talk therapy too, if people want to do both, is that we're getting after where it's held in the brain. So we're really going after fight or flight. And we're going after the limbic brain. That's why we're tapping. So when I say limbic brain, just think emotional brain. Right. Where fight or flight is held, where the freeze response is held. So if you're a child and you can't run or fight, you go into freeze. And I'm sure your listeners know this. All of that is stored in the body. Like every time you go into the.
Freeze response, the body keeps the score.
Yeah, exactly. So to sum that up, when you tap while talking, you're accessing that non verbal part of the brain. So let's say someone can say to me, hey, I know why I have the panic attack, or I know why I keep having this problem. I can't stop it though. Let's say it's an addiction, say it's a phobia, they very well can tell me when it started. This is why. Keeps happening. So it's like, let's go after that part of the brain that doesn't register spoken language. Let's tap and see if we can go after that and neutralize it. Let's go back and figure out where did this start or excuse me, when.
Yeah.
And what was going on in your life. There's a list of like five, six questions I ask. And you just get a wealth of information of where to begin. Right. And really seeing what part of this is emotional weight. Right. Obviously. Diet, exercise, all that. But I'm saying taking all that out, let's just look at the emotional component and really start there. And it's like you said, there's just a lot of subconscious thoughts which could be, I need this weight to protect me. This way insulates me from the world or the pain or whatnot. I mean, there's several different reasons. I'm just naming a few.
A breakup or being hurt again or, you know, never again will I let someone do that to me. So I'll put this padding on so they won't get in.
Totally. I mean it seems like so simple. You think? Really? But it's, it kind of is that very real.
And then they spend relationship. I've seen this so much. I was a trainer for 10 years in, in gyms and so many clients would come in and they'd be crushing it with their workouts.
Yeah.
And they'd be eating great but they wouldn't get any results. And I'm like what. I was scratching my head like what is going on here? And then when I, when I really started to lean my own heart into wellness, I found out about the subconscious and about all these deep seated things that are constantly growing, constantly festering. You can be the smartest person in the world and I want to know if you see this play out in your clients. You can be a doctor, you could even be a yoga instructor. You could be someone even in the health realm struggling yourself with some health aspect but you just haven't uncovered the really the well inside of your own subconscious.
