EFT Tapping to Ease DID Symptoms
Can the emotional freedom technique (EFT) help those living with dissociative identity disorder (DID)? For many people with DID, every day can feel like living with your head in the clouds. Dissociation, in its simplest form, is the process of disconnecting from your thoughts and emotions. It wasn’t until I entered therapy that I learned the importance of grounding myself, getting back into my head, and ultimately regaining control of my life.
Today, I have several tools and techniques that I use to get grounded when I feel myself dissociating and disconnecting, and one of the most important that I’ve learned is the emotional freedom technique. Sometimes referred to as tapping, EFT is a self-help technique that involves using the fingers to tap on various points of the body.
The ultimate goal behind utilizing EFT is to move “stuck” energy and emotions. For example, if you are feeling discomfort due to feelings such as fear or shame, EFT is thought to be able to move these emotions out of the body.
Starting EFT Tapping for DID
Whether tapping truly moves energy and emotions through the body is scientifically up for debate, but through my own personal experience, I’ve found that it helps my alternate personalities calm down and get grounded. On my worst days, this can be extremely relieving.
Before you begin tapping, think of an affirmation or a mantra that you want to focus on throughout the process. One easy phrase to begin with is, “Even though I am feeling [insert emotion here], I deeply and completely accept myself.”
Once you have a phrase in mind, you can begin.
Start by tapping on the side of your left or right hand, repeating the phrase you have created for yourself out loud. Next, tap on the center of your forehead (where your third eye might be), repeating the same phrase out loud. Continue with this method, tapping on the following areas while saying your mantra out loud:
- Cheekbones
- Under your nose
- On your chin
- On your collarbone
- Under your arm
- On the crown of your head
Once you finish one round, you can repeat the process again until you feel more mindful and grounded. I often do two or three rounds of tapping to fully calm my system before I get back to my day.
Does EFT Tapping Really Work?
It isn’t unusual to feel a certain amount of skepticism about tapping. After all, how can simply tapping on certain parts of the body provide instant relief from overwhelming emotions, such as grief or guilt?
In my own experience, it was worth trying, if only to add another tool to my toolbox full of anxiety-relieving techniques. You can never have too many solutions when you’re up against a condition such as DID, and I’ll take all the help I can get.
APA Reference
Vermes, K.
(2020, March 10). EFT Tapping to Ease DID Symptoms, HealthyPlace. Retrieved
on 2024, November 5 from https://www.healthyplace.com/blogs/dissociativeliving/2020/3/eft-tapping-to-ease-did-symptoms
Author: Krystle Vermes
Hi,
So glad that EFT helps you with DID.
Just a heads up on the scoence behind it. There are many YouTube videos, even from 10 years ago, about the science behind EFT. Of course, newer videos will give you the more recent findings. It's mostly to do with the amygdala in the brain. I have to read up on it myself again, but it basically calms down parts of the brain that are involved in emotional reactions to memories and beliefs that don't serve us. It can also get rid of associations that our brain uses to keep us safe from that event happening again. For example, a little girl was hit by a nun in catholic school. Later, as a woman, she is triggered by women in black and white clothing. EFT can help dissolve that trigger. There's also the EFT manual by Dawson Church. I downloaded it for free from the internet, I hope that's still possible. There's a whole chapter on the history and science of EFT.
By the way, it's also very useful for PTSD, which I have read is often or always part of DID. There's a documentary called Operation Emotional Freedom, it shows how some veterans heal significantly during a few days of intensive EFT and how they use it themselves afterwards to help themselves further. The documentary was on YouTube, but it's been taken off. Maybe someone will put it back.
One more comment. A good EFT practitioner will be able to deal with memories that are too painful to recall, as well as with beliefs or other problems resulting from events where there is no memory. Check out Dawson Church's YouTube video about the 9 gamut point, if that's of interest to you.
Best wishes for you.
That is a great article, I would like to learn more about the insights and details on how it helped you to ease the symptoms of DID