EFT: Tapping into Emotional Freedom w/ Melanie Yates
Transcript
Ericka Thomas 0:00
Today I'd like to introduce you to Melanie Yates. Melanie is a certified EFT therapist with a multi modal approach and years of practice in health care. Melanie takes her knowledge, experience love and light and successfully mentors others. She has coached hundreds into a world of self fulfillment and freedom. She helps clients who feel stuck, find ways out of darkness and bondage by incorporating simple but effective practices that create neural pathways to positivity and happiness. She specializes in difficult challenges, including PTSD, addiction, depression and anxiety. Melanie is a best selling author of the book happy, joyous and free, as well as a sought after inspirational speaker.
In our Work IN today, Melanie and I go deep into EFT, or emotional freedom technique, tapping and how it literally taps into the neuro plasticity of the brain by engaging and acknowledging the negative thought patterns that keep people stuck.
She explains what a worth grab is and how to use EFT, to heal from the physiological effects of stress injury like eating disorders, anxiety, depression, panic attacks, sleep disorders, PTSD, and trauma. We talk about becoming a conduit for the energy of the nervous system. Learning to love crying and getting to the root of thoughts that trigger our emotional stress responses. If you're exploring natural ways to help you reconnect to safety within your own body, I think you'll find this conversation eye opening. I know I did.
So let's start our Work IN with Melanie Yates and EFT.
Welcome Melanie to the work and I'm so happy to have you on the podcast today, how are you?
Melanie Yates
I'm doing fantastic. It's so nice to be here to meet you. I'm, I'm thrilled I'm thrilled to have you on.
Ericka Thomas
Let's start by just taking a moment, I'll just give you the floor to introduce yourself to my listeners and just tell us what brought you here and what is your story?
Melanie Yates 2:37
Absolutely. My name is Coach Melanie, and I went through some hard times just like anyone. I don't believe that anyone gets out of this life without pain and suffering. It's just we get to react and learn from those things. So what happened to me is, I found myself in a marriage, where I was unhappy and I didn't quite know how to get out of that. I kind of felt like I was stuck, and I only had the tool of blaming, I didn't really know how to take responsibility for my own happiness.
And I've always had trouble accepting my body image for exactly the way it was. I was a ballerina, so I had that kind of a start of an eating disorder, not a start, an eating disorder because of people telling me at a young age, it wasn't good enough. And so, I'd always been kind of reaching for what I call a worth grab, where I'm trying to grab outside of myself to fill up my cup, you know, and so I looked for marriage I looked for money, I looked for health goals to kind of fill up, how I could feel about myself, you know, and I was looking outside myself and so the reason why I'm here.
The reason why I wanted to start studying how our brain can be changed, is through my own pain of not really knowing where to look to feel good, you know, not really knowing where to build my own self esteem and so pain is definitely an inspiration for me because it gets me to do something, you know when things are going well, I think I tend to just enjoy what's going on in the moment and it's soon as it kind of starts going a way that I didn't anticipate or takes me by surprise. I, I have to kind of go back to the basics of love. And for me, God,right, because this spiritual solution that I've found. And don't worry, you don't have to be spiritual or believing in God to, to get the benefit of these tools that I've found to kind of help us move through pain instead of getting stuck in it.
Ericka Thomas 5:12
I love some of the word imagery you're using there that worth grab. We've really been socialized to do that right to look outside of ourselves. We've been socialized out of our body in many many ways, and yeah that's that's really that's something that I hear a lot, especially from women. How connected that, that is to their body, their, their self, their self image or their false perception of what they look like, is there's a real disconnect there. What brought you to what got you into coaching, how did that, how did that study turn into a desire to coach other people.
Melanie Yates 5:59
Well I got a coach, and I had done therapy I had done individual therapy I had done marriage therapy, very regularly for years, and I don't want to knock psychologists or psychiatrists and the medical field in any way, it's just that this coach gave me results that I never got through therapy.
And so what happened as I mean I kind of thought like she was this naturally gifted coach that, you know I was opening up all these ideas in my mind and I was finding all these answers that were inside of me, she really wasn't giving me advice she was helping ask the right questions so I could find the answer and I was just fascinated by that. And I just thought she had this natural gift but it turns out, All of us have the answers inside of us.
And so I had this awakening, and I just want to spread it to as many people who want to listen, because I really was at my wit's end as far as trying to find an answer to feel more peace in my life and I just felt like I was stuck and I had kind of run out of ideas or avenues to get a solution. And so, so she kind of just opened this awareness, and I, I ended up taking classes from her and she was my mentor for a long time and so I just, I just wanted to help people.
I just love that these tools worked for me and I thought, if these tools worked for me pretty much saved my life from depression and anxiety, and I do want to just say just because I have these tools doesn't mean that I still, I still experience anxiety and depression, and not good enough. It's just that there's these moments where I'm, I'm relieved. I have this relief and I think that that gets me through and, and even when hard things come up, and things are going my way. I have these tools I have this foundation that I know it is going to be okay and it's kind of what I really do is, is help people change the way they think about things, so that they're prepared for the next thing that comes because it's always gonna come, there's always these moments in life that take us by surprise. I mean, it doesn't,
I mean look at the pandemic right it's this took everybody by surprise and and if you don't have the coping mechanisms, or these skills, or this thinking, to me it's really about training your brain to think differently, and accept that all things in the world are for our good and that might be just bouncing up people's brains like I don't get it with that things happen, you know, we, our brain, logically just goes to, this is bad, I hate it.
And it is possible to build these neural pathways in our brain that no matter what happens, we can learn how to accept and even love it, because I think everyone has probably has had an experience where they went through something really really hard, but as time goes on, they can look back and go, You know what that made me stronger. And now I can see that everything happened for a reason, and usually you can look back on a situation and find some good from the experience.
Ericka Thomas 9:47
Yeah, yeah, that what you're talking about that, I mean, I think for a lot of people they get hung up on this idea that, you know, when we're trying to build resilience or if we're looking for stress relief that is somehow going to that somehow means we don't ever get to experience stress like the goal is to never experience stress but that's not actually possible. I mean, the way the world works is, things happen, we you know we're going to be exposed to all kinds of stressful situations, and actually in the human body stress is good if we didn't have a little bit of it, you and I couldn't have this conversation right now we, you know I would be stuck on the couch or even not even having got up today, you know like we need a little bit of activation, we need a little bit of challenge. And every time we feel success there that replaces the negative thought patterns, Right, so, so let's talk about some of those tools that you work with, with your clients and some things that you were that worked best for you in your process.
Melanie Yates 11:00
Absolutely. So my favorite thing is called EFT tapping and so basically that emotional freedom technique is what E F T stands for. And there are so many free opportunities out there to understand what that is and know what that is and teach yourself. What I've found is with clients when we're actually working on a specific thought pattern, the one that comes up the most is, I'm not good enough or I don't feel good enough. And so it's, it's a worth issue, and we get into these worse traps. We think we have worth. If we make this much money, we think we're okay, if we're married. And, you know, we have children and in my title, gives me this worth, you know, and yet it's, it's a false sense of security, because as soon as that's taken as soon as you make less money as soon as something happens to your child and they're, you're not a mother anymore, or you aren't married anymore. We, we don't know who we are, you know, we get lost and so we use these things to kind of prove to ourselves, I'm good enough, see I'm a mother see I make this money, see I do you know I can run a marathon or I can lift weights or you know we find these things that we attach to that this is my worth. This is my proof. this is my evidence that I'm worth something. And yet, people, places and things can be taken, the pandemic is another perfect experience of stuff was just taken away from people and it's like, well now what?
So EFT operates on the premise that no matter what part of your life needs improvement, there are unresolved emotional issues in the way. So even for physical issues, chronic pain, diagnosed conditions and addiction, and I'm talking mental illness. And we could get into that I have my own things that people could diagnose me as far as the way my brain works. And I have found that tapping has given me relief, and I have been prescribed drugs and I think that drugs alone don't always help with mental illness.
And I think that maybe these tools alone don't always, but together, you can get some pretty amazing results so I'm not against, you know, using Western medicine to help and tapping is kind of based on Eastern medicine Chinese medicine. It's based on acupuncture points and meridians. So, any kind of emotional stress can impede the natural healing potential of the human body. So when I think of tapping you know it can, it can improve how you feel about yourself, they can get rid of limiting beliefs that can help you work through past traumas, we've all had something in our childhood that kind of keeps sadness from feeling great about ourselves or, or keeps us from making choices and decisions because of what's happened in the past. And so this is just, this is a way to kind of shift energy to help us move on from the things that hold us back.
Ericka Thomas 14:33
Can you, can you describe what tapping is, for people who are unfamiliar with the process just the physical process of it, so they can just kind of understand what you're talking about here. Okay, so
Melanie Yates 14:52
we're focusing on the stress, we're focusing on the problem, the challenge. And then, so we, we have to target the challenge, so we'll just use, you know “I'm not good enough” because I feel like all problems kind of come down to that. Is this fear of meeting people's approval or just wanting more. You know I, I always want more.
So my, so I'll just kind of share my experience with this target that even today, I use tapping to help me kind of shift the energy so that if I feel like I don't want to get out of bed today because what's the point, I can use happy to punish shift the energy so I can at least do the next indicated step like, okay, all I'm going to do is I'm going to get out of bed, but some of us can be so paralyzed, that we can't even do that. So, that is what we do is we focus on this target, I'm, I feel worthless. And then we tap, which is just lightly touching these points these meridians of the body. To peel away these layers of stress. And so, meridians, again, is about Chinese medicine, and they are, their paths through which energy known is like CI flows. Just like having a physical body, we have an energy body. So these meridians are just like blood flow, you know, the blood goes out of your heart and the veins, bring it back so there's constantly. This flow of blood
Melanie Yates 16:40
circulating in our bodies at all times, to keep us alive, to keep all our organs from dying. So we need that blood to nourish our body right and so this is an energy pattern, flow in the body which has to do with these emotions and so it's believed that you know you can get an emotion stuck in your shoulder and later have like a rotator cuff tear because illness kind of comes from stress, you know.
So, these, these places in our bodies. Emotions can get stuck, where the flow stops. So we always do a setup statement with tapping so you would tap on the karate chop point which is on this side of your pinky finger on your hand. And what we do is we just lightly tap on the side of our hand and we give a steady setup statement so it could be just as easy as. Even though I feel worthless. I want to release this feeling, and accept me just the way I am. And then we would say that again, while tapping on this point by the pinky finger. So even though I feel worthless. I accept my feelings, and willing to release it.
And then we would say it one more time so you always want to do this setup statement three times, even though I feel worthless. I want to completely love and accept myself. And then there's points on the body so we would go to on the eyebrow. Then the side of the eye. Under the eye, and we're just lightly touching and we could actually do a little script scripts, if you wanted to do a script and do a little five minute tapping situation so you always want to rate how you feel. At the beginning of the tapping and then rate how you feel after the tapping so that you can tangibly see. Okay, there's a little bit of a shift and usually, even just with three to five minutes, you can get a lower number. Every once in a while, it doesn't matter if you get a higher number usually if you get a higher number means you really started feeling that emotion and you really, you know, connected with it, which I get excited about because that means we have the target we know exactly what the problem is and so once we know the target.
As we keep tapping, you can bring it down, I think the reason why people might not get results, is because we stop, you know we we either don't do what's going to help us feel better, or we lose hope of like well, I tried it but it didn't really work, we don't stay with it enough. And the whole point of neuroplasticity, which is to change the way we think, build new neural pathways so that we can feel better. The whole point of that is consistency and repetition, that is the only way you can get your brain to think differently so you just, it's, it's like anything, it's training, you know that's what Olympic athletes do they just, they do it over and over and over until they get the results they're looking for it's repetition.
Ericka Thomas 20:18
Yeah, and that, that is, that is really huge, to be able to change any kind of pattern you have to replace it with a new pattern and that means the practice has to come in, it has to be repetitive. What I find really interesting about tapping is the actual points that you are touching on the body to do the process, they are. I understand they come from, like this, Eastern medicine, you mentioned meridians kind of Chinese medicine, acupuncture points, we see those points again and again in, in a lot of different modalities, especially around the face.
But what's fascinating to me is that they also correlate with areas on the body where the Vagus nerve actually comes really really close to the surface of the body. So, around the eyebrows around the, the cheekbones, the face under the nose and the chin, the chest and the the collarbones right here with that, the if you look at the picture, a picture of the Vagus nerve the wandering nerve that 10th cranial nerve that's responsible for that communication between the body and the mind that gut brain access and really is highly linked to our stress response, all of those areas, they're right there the nerves come right into that space and it's almost like with tapping you're kind of knocking on the door to interrupt interrupt or wake up a pattern of a stress response with that tapping would Is that does that sound right. Do I, am I guessing correctly?
Melanie Yates 22:09
Absolutely Ericka you're, you're right there because that is tapping naturally starts releasing endorphins and calms us naturally takes the edge off so even if you don't know what you're doing, you can't do it wrong because just by touching these points, energy is flowing and changing and shifting. So you don't even have to do it right, you really, you can't do it wrong, I have a lot of clients that are like well I don't think I'm doing it right. You can't do it wrong, you're just touching. You're just touching these places on your face and on your body, and, you know, I have attention deficit disorder so I want to. It's hard for me to focus and a lot of times I, you know just by touching something gives a synapse to my brain, pay attention, you know, it helps me concentrate and focus on that little piece and our brain has all these different senses so, You know, smelling, seeing, hearing, touching the more of these senses we can turn on the more parts of our brain are engaged.
And so if you want to get somewhere quicker. You know you want to use your body language, you want to use your vocal cords, you want to use your ears, you want to use visualization. The more you can acquire these different parts of your brain to turn on the quicker you can get a results, and CoachMelaniefreegift.com, actually goes through this process of how do I turn on visualization, how do I actually do that, how do I use verbal affirmations to get where I want to go and build neural pathways to get me the results I'm looking for. Body language is another huge one because our body language, just naturally by smiling sends a signal to our brain, I'm happy, whether you're happy or not.
So, this tapping I believe is kind of part of that body language, And it focuses our attention on this, this meridian, this energy flow in our body, and an energy is, you know, I mean you notice when people are kind of down you can see it in our body language So sometimes we think we're fooling people, You know, they ask us how you do, how you doing today and we can say, you know I'm good. You know you can say different things and yet your body language says way more than your words. And amazingly, we actually read people's body language, and it's unconscious, but everybody reads it, and so they say that our brain comes up with thoughts like tons of thoughts I think it's like, I think it's like 800 words per second. And so when I see somebody and they asked me a question, my brain is like, words, words, words, words, words, and then right in that moment I choose the words I'm going to use. Where do you think all those words go in my body?
Melanie Yates 25:42
So if I don't train my brain to think the way I want it to those extra words, you know, just like, let's say you, you know, your best friend gets her haircut and you don't like it, but we're not going to say that because we love her so much, we're just gonna be like, yeah, it looks great. There is something that goes on inside of us, in our body language that doesn't really convey that we like it. And I know this is probably horrible news for most of us. So, I even got fired from a job for rolling my eyes. This was when I was much younger, and I realized that eye rolling is an unconscious facial expression, you don't have power over eye rolling.
But you know what I did figure out, it's my attitude that controls the unconscious body language and facial expressions, that's what actually controls it so in that moment when I have an attitude. I'm better than you. I don't like what you're saying, my eyes roll. So I had to learn that it's, it's, it's my attitude that screws up my body language and my facial expressions, and it keeps me from having open, honest, loving relationships with people because my thinking can be tormented or distorted or delusional, or just not serve me, you know, me thinking I'm better than someone else just I have found does not serve me.
Ericka Thomas 27:25
And that's where the the affirmation part of tapping and affirmations in general can really make a huge difference for people because so many of our that I mean human beings are wired to the negative side anyway for survival, anything that is new or different is automatically first, right out of the gate, read as dangerous and wrong. So we're always wired to the negative. To begin with, but when we, when we make mindful intentional choices about the repetitive thought patterns that we have, I mean those we have, we can choose to change the first thing you have to do though is actually notice what it is that is running through your mind over and over again, like we, like you said before when we're talking about these are repetitive patterns that we're trying to change.
Those patterns create these, I call them ruts in the brain, really deep ruts, and just like ruts in the road they're really hard to drive out of sometimes, and they can keep you locked in, into those negative thought patterns. One of the great things about tapping is, is that you're combining physical action, physical, the sensation of touch that focuses that mind body awareness and changing that thought pattern with replacing it with something positive, right, once we notice that negative thing and then flipping the script over to the positive.
Melanie Yates 0:00
Yes, so first acknowledging the pain, and you.I kind of have a positive and a negative in the setup statement that you say three times at the beginning, and then as you're tapping through the first round you're focusing on the negative, and I've had clients say well I want to focus on the negative because there, there's been such a hype about positive affirmations and focusing, you know, the more you focus on the good that's the, you're going to get more of that and so people have kind of had this mindset, like, I'm going to ignore these feelings that I have that are not positive so I can just skip over to the positive, it's just, I found that doesn't really work. So we're just admitting where we are, we're meeting ourselves where we are like this is what I feel. And that's why I kind of said, I still do this I do this every day I still admit I meet myself, it's the most loving thing you can do for yourself is meet yourself where you are. And I like doing that for other people too, it's like let's let me meet you where you are, so that we can go from there. You know, I think taking shortcuts by trying to jump over to like I just want to feel this way, let me get over here first. It's been more sustainable by doing step by step so we, we go through an acknowledge and validate, like, this is real I'm having this feeling, And then we go to consider if I could let this go, how would I feel if I didn't have this thought. And it's kind of it's helping kind of bridge, you know, the negative to the positive so that we can have this, you know we have somewhere to walk over to, to embrace, embrace that, if I know this is the problem, and letting it go can make me feel so much better, it almost inspires us it almost feels natural to be like, you know, I could release, the need to do things perfectly. I focus on the next healthy choice. This is more than just making money or losing weight or having a better marriage, I, you know, this is about seeing my value. And so we go into these, these statements as we're tapping and shifting the energy and it gives us something else like you know using one thought and replacing it with another which you had already said,
Ericka Thomas 2:37
yeah, so let's, can we talk a little bit about who tapping would benefit. Who is this kind of technique really for, what does it look like to be somebody who could really benefit from tapping. And then what are some of the things that start to change? What does that process look like when you're practicing tapping? How does it feel when you're starting to make those shifts and changes in the process?
Melanie Yates 3:12
I've been thinking about this because I wanted to kind of make this for your audience who's listening to this podcast and so I really feel like stress is something that, you know everybody has a certain amount of stress and and we deal with it in different ways and maybe the way you're doing it is working for you. I know I can speak on behalf of my experience like the way I feel about my body, especially from having an eating disorder. It doesn't matter how skinny or how much weight I've gained, I still, it's never enough. It's never good enough and I'm always like, well if I just had five more pounds even when I'm at my goal. Even when I'm eating, you know, impeccable, even when I'm working out, there's this thing in my brain that says it's not good enough.
And so, what, what I've just been, and I think part of being premenopausal is kind of like triggered some of this eating disorder stuff that I thought I was done working on, you know, I, it kind of started. I started being triggered again and then with the pandemic and not being able to go to the gym. I had these worth grabs you know like going to the gym makes me. I know I'm healthy, if I get to go to the gym every day and then you take that away from me. It might still healthy. You know I don't you know I put all my identity in this kind of trap, you know, It feels like it's real.
If I go to the gym everyday then I'm healthy, you know, and then you take that away from me and I don't, I don't know. It's like I've lost my identity, people with sleep problems, sleep, I've been using this for sleeping lately so being able to relax our nervous system, which I believe everybody needs. You know we, our pharmaceutical companies wouldn't be in such great business and making all this money because most of us have problems with anxiety, depression, going to sleep. It comes out in different ways and I feel like tapping would be, is good for anyone and it's even good for children, and it's easy enough, my 14 year old has used it in the past, you know, because I'm his mom he, you know, he's kind of like, Oh mom, you know, I don't want to chat so it just depends on, you know, I think, probably coming from somebody else.
Ericka Thomas 5:51
Teenagers are hard, all the way around.
Melanie Yates 5:55
So I hope you know maybe, maybe he uses some of the things that I say and he hears me teaching he, you know, maybe one day if he gets in enough pain, he'll remember and you know have that tool, and you what I liked about tapping is you can do it in the bathroom and what I usually do is teach my clients, because we want to implement, you know, we want to find a time and a place that we're going to do this repetition and because it's easy to forget. And in it, it could take time to recover from an event like a traumatic event, they've proven that PTSD. And our war veterans can be, can have a significant tangible result within six sessions so that's like a six hours of tapping can and have a tangible and lasting results. And so I find that fascinating.
Ericka Thomas 6:56
The studies on EFT are really, the results are phenomenal, even to the point of epigenetic changes in gene expression for inflammation and immune system function. I mean, that's physiological in the body, it's not something just in your head, you're just feeling like you feel better. It's actually, actually measurable in the physiology and. And so, you know, it's, it's crazy to think that something so simple that you have complete control over that you can just do.
I do this all I do this all the time. I tap on my collarbone, all the time, especially like in traffic any like specific places where I, you know where you can feel your anxiety rising up and you're in a place where you're kind of stuck there, like, you can't, there's no place to go right now except stay in the body instead of trying to dissociate out of the body and the tapping can help that help come back to that so yeah it's a fantastic tool. Absolutely fantastic tool. What are some of the benefits that some of your clients have seen?
Melanie Yates 8:12
Well, my favorite is like getting rid of phobias, so I had a client who was working for the Coast Guard, and she was, You know, had witnessed lots of death and drowning, and she had this huge fear of water after her service. And definitely, we would consider that PTSD right and I, by six sessions there was no PTSD about water. She could watch, she couldn't even watch a movie that had water in it like Pirates of the Caribbean, it would give her a panic attack, you know. So it went from, I can't even look at someone being in the water to, I can even go in the water, so that's how tangible result in pretty quick result. People lose weight, people make more money.
I, I had a period of time where I was working with a lot of entrepreneurs and their sales and their business would double, And it's because you know, even entrepreneurs, they're, they're constantly, you know one upping their results like you know you get, you meet this goal and then you make another higher goal a higher goal and a higher goal, and there's so many false beliefs in our mind, or if we fall prey to negative feedback or someone tells us no, we can, we can start feeling bad about ourselves and so by using tapping it kind of shifts energy enough that I'm willing to still make another call. Even though I feel defeated.
You know, recently I've been having trouble sleeping, so I've been doing some tapping before I go to bed and I'm sleeping better, you know, imagine that, so I'm still even finding results of how tapping works, I think, I love that you mentioned, just even if you didn't know any of the tapping points just the collarbone. And you can kind of get away with, like, you know, doing that and no one thinks you're crazy right. It's like what are you doing? When I'm tapping in the car I'm doing my eyebrows and my face and my mouth and stuff. I'm not sure if people are watching me but it probably looks a little silly, and you know when I'm on a Zoom meeting, I don't want to just start tapping on my face, you know, people might think I'm weird. So this one is a way that you, you can kind of just put your hand on your chest and even just barely move your fingers and people can't really tell what you're doing, and yet it calms you.
And even just having affirmations. I am enough. I do enough, I have enough. Sometimes I just need that, it's whatever moment I'm in, I'll just think that to myself. Also visualization is so powerful. You don't even have to touch the point, you can visualize touching the point and say in your head the setup statements, and just walk yourself through, you know, a script.
You can find scripts on the internet, I've found lots of scripts on the internet. And yet, even just focusing on two words, the word or the feeling that is hard, like stress and the feeling that you want peace. And so doing a setup statement, even though I feel stressed, I'm willing to release and accept peace, and you would say that three times and then you would go through the points and just say stress, stress, stress, as you're tapping, you know on the eyebrow and you would just say the word stress. I feel stress, And you would go through the points, and then your next round. It's okay to let it go. It's okay to receive peace, and so you can just tap on the points.
Going through again with just the word peace, so that you don't always have to have a script it's just, you're kind of shifting the energy from negative to positive, so even if you only took okay I just need a negative word and a positive word, and you do these tapping, you know, even on your collarbone. Even though I feel stressed, it's okay to let it go, and just that alone can shift.
And so I like to be able to measure the intensity from one to 10. In the beginning, before I start so I can see, either with my clients and, and they can see, oh, this is working. So it's important to kind of check in with yourself before and after, so that, because we all need little, you know motivation or inspiration to keep doing it. If it's not doing anything, then you know you need to go back to the drawing board. Maybe you need to collect more information about how you can get into it. Usually I find that if you just do it, you will get results, and it's just, sometimes we. It is so easy, but we just won't do it.
Ericka Thomas 13:28
Right, right. It seems it's almost like it's not hard enough, if it's not hard enough to do, and this is just another thought trap right if it's not really hard and really complicated, then it must not be worth doing, which, you know, a lot of people fall into that with exercise in health and wellness right if it's not hard enough, it's not, it's not worth doing, but it should be the opposite of that. Anybody can do it doesn't matter how old you are, it doesn't matter where you are. It can easily integrate in your day which should make it kind of a no brainer right. Is there, is, is tapping something that could, in real time, interrupt something like an anxiety or a panic attack? I personally have experienced some pretty extreme anxiety and panic attacks and I have clients that struggle with that too. And we're always looking for okay what, what can I do to either prevent them entirely. We can't always prevent them entirely because triggers are everywhere right and we don't always know where those are. Do you have any experience with that with, with using tapping to kind of interrupt and and calm the nervous system in the moment.
Melanie Yates 14:48
Absolutely. So, my experience is clients usually know right before they're going to have an anxiety attack, they have a couple minutes, right. So you can kind of feel it coming on, once it's come on, it's almost like you might need someone else to help walk you through it because your brain kind of stops right. So, you know I've had experiences where someone's in a panic attack and we've been able to just do some breathing and, but they've needed help. They've needed to mirror me and watch me.
Also with energy, you can tap for somebody else. So that's another cool thing that if someone's in it, I can tap as like a conduit for them, and that I have seen shifts, just me doing for them. So that's pretty cool. If that sounds too woowoo, believe me. Energy is we're all connected in some way. And so, even just having the intention or a visualization of the tapping, if you've been tapping you'll have the experience get relief from this.
And so, in that moment of that panic attack. You can even if you can't move your hand, you could visualize tapping on your eyebrow, and then the side of your eye, and it, it will calm the nervous system. And that's one of the reasons why we do it repeatedly so our brain has a neural pathway of remembering this helps, you know.
I haven't had a panic attack in a really long time because I implement these tools on a daily basis so I don't I don't usually get that far out. Now, that being said I still can get worked up like with tears for whatever reason, I think it's even a way of processing. And I've learned to love crying because I learned that the chemicals that are released in our brain actually feel good when you cry, and so it doesn't matter what you're crying about these endorphins and serotonin and oxytocin are released from our brain and that's why, after a good cry. It's like you're tired, it's like, oh, I want to take it back or you know you're you, you're relaxed, you know you, you've let it go.
And I also feel like tears are a way to just like wash, you know, just kind of wash you free of it, you know, just kind of running out and letting it go, and so sometimes crying can feel upsetting enough that I just by tapping can kind of just calm it down, and then I can kind of focus on instead of crying, I want more peace, more acceptance about the situation, and, and the other part is there's always a reason behind these feelings that come up so when we're anxious, there is a thought, that's been triggered before the feeling and before the behavior right like I would think of the behavior is the actual attack.
Melanie Yates 18:12
Like It happened because of this triggered emotion, but before that there's a thought, there's a, there's a way of thinking that produces, you know these, unwanted physiological things that happen in our body. And so when I, when I think about finding the root of the causes, that's how we can actually have a sustainable. I don't have panic attacks anymore, because you pull that trigger that target that negative thought or event and you pull it out, if we're going to use like a tree analogy, you pull it out by the roots. You know, it's, you take it out.
And then I think there's our brains are like computers so there's so much in there but that's, that's probably where I've seen the results with clients where once you pull out this trigger or target that makes panic attacks. It kind of helps all the other trees around it to kind of shrivel up and die too. So usually, in coaching we're really looking for what's, You know we distract ourselves with a panic attack or crying and it's like what is the root of this problem, let's go back to my thinking let's go back to where I came up with this thought, or who gave it to me or what happened to start feeling like I'm not safe.
Ericka Thomas 19:49
Yeah, that's, that is, that is brilliant. I think what you do is amazing Melanie, I am so happy that you were able to come on the show today and share everything about Emotional Freedom Technique because I've heard about it for years, I've only known, a little bit about it in the past and so this has been really, really great to take a little bit more of a deep dive and bring it to people, maybe you've never heard of it before, and it's a, it's a really it's a fantastic tool. It's another tool in your toolbox that can make a huge difference in how people feel in their own skin which I, which I love, absolutely love, if people wanted to reach out and get to know you a little better work with you, Melanie, how could they find you, where can we send them today.
Melanie Yates 20:42
Thank you so much, um, my website is happyjoyousandfree.org, and I do consulting and I do inspirational talks for high schools and churches and things like that I, I enjoy just sharing the message of feeling better and I feel like if all of us really knew how to love ourselves, we, you know, this world would be an amazing place because all we would have left was to love one another and so that's kind of my, that's my theme statement is Love thy self so thou can love one another, because that's what our world needs is a lot of love and I think if we could get everybody's thinking and and the tools on board to really be able and capable of loving in that way, we wouldn't have so much pain, you know.
Ericka Thomas 21:37
Yeah, that that is beautiful Melanie thank you for sharing that and I will put those links, links to your website and also to your book and I think you mentioned a free gift earlier too that was at. CoachMelaniefreegift.com, right some videos and some other resources for people to check out. And all of those will be in our show notes for you to check out. and I think this has been wonderful, thank you, again, Melanie for joining me.
Thanks Ericka.
Thank you so much for joining me today on The Work IN and be sure to check Melanie's book out. It's called Happy, Joyous, and Free, and who doesn't need a little bit more of that.
And if you like what you heard today, and you'd like to learn a little bit more, you can head over to elementalkinetics.com And there you'll find all kinds of free resources that help support the nervous system, as well as all of our show notes and the transcripts from The Work IN. So you can go back and check out previous episodes, and previous guests and kind of deepen your understanding about your connection with the nervous system and yourself. If you're looking for other ways to connect, you can always like and follow me on social media, on Facebook, that's at elementalkineticsmovewell, and on Instagram at elementalkinetics. Thanks again, and I'll see you next time on The Work IN.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
I’m Ericka
I’m a certified Trauma Release Exercise Provider, Yoga teacher and Health coach and The Work IN is my way to share the importance of including trauma informed care in fitness and wellness for true health that goes beyond what the eyes can see.
I use a bottom up approach to healing stress injury, working with and through the body to reestablish safety in the body.
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