Going Further with EFT · Seven-part course
Download Let It Go · Course contents
Start gently, at your own pace
You can begin by learning the tapping points and trying them with a small, everyday frustration. There is no need to start with your hardest experience or search for an earlier memory.
Choose something you feel comfortable giving a little attention to while still noticing the room around you. Stay curious about what you notice, without needing a particular result.
You are in charge of the pace. You can pause, change your wording or finish at any time. Even a brief tapping practice can be worthwhile. Any easing in intensity, however small, is worth recognising. You do not have to reach zero or resolve everything in one sitting.
If you know an experience is traumatic or feels overwhelming to approach, leave that one for supported work with a qualified professional experienced in trauma. You can still use this guide to learn the basics.
If strong feelings or memories arise
Pause the exercise if you feel overwhelmed, disconnected from your surroundings, or as though a memory is happening again. Look around, notice a few objects near you, and bring your attention back to where you are now. You do not need to push through or work out what it means.
If you need help settling, reach out to someone you trust or find free support through the link below. You do not have to work through this alone.
You can stop at any point and come back another time. There is no need to push through or complete a full round.
PART THREE
When the number won't move
Part of a free seven-part course on tapping. This part leans on two earlier ones, getting specific (Part One) and finding the real issue (Part Two), but if you’ve tried tapping and the intensity just won’t come down no matter how many rounds you do, this should still make sense on its own.
Sometimes you do everything right. You find something specific, the way we covered in Part One. You're fairly sure it's the real issue, not just where it happens to be showing up, the way we covered in Part Two. You tap a full round, honestly, with real attention.
After two rounds, you might find that the number is still 7.
If you reach this point, it can feel as though tapping hasn’t helped. Before deciding what that means, pause and notice what has changed, what still feels the same, and whether a different aspect has come into focus. This can help you choose what to give attention to next.
Three reasons the number won't shift
The first two you already have tools for. It might not be specific enough yet, worth a quick check back against Part One. Or it might be the wrong issue, the presenting problem rather than what's underneath it, which is what Part Two was about.
But there's a third reason, and it's the one almost nobody talks about outside a session. Sometimes part of you doesn't want this to shift. Changing a familiar response may bring worries of its own, even when you want things to be different.
What that actually means
This idea has a name in the field, secondary gain, but the name matters less than what it points to. A pattern that seems to be causing you pain can also be protecting you from something else. Staying anxious about a decision can be a way of never having to risk making the wrong one. Staying angry at someone can be a way of never having to feel how much their absence hurts. The armour and the wound are often the same piece of material.
You might notice a quiet belief sitting underneath the resistance, something like I don't deserve to feel better, or if I let this go, I'm saying what happened was okay. These aren't things people usually say out loud, even to themselves. They tend to surface sideways, as a number that won't move no matter how honestly you tap.
I want to be clear about something. This isn't a character flaw, and it isn't you sabotaging yourself on purpose. It's your system doing what it has always done, protecting you the only way it knew how at the time. The pattern made sense once. It may not make sense now, and it can still shift, but it deserves to be understood before it's pushed against.
Try this
If a number has been stuck for a few rounds, stop tapping on the original issue for a moment. Instead, tap on the resistance itself.
Bring to mind the stuck feeling, and ask yourself, is there any part of me that doesn't want this to shift? You're not looking for a definite yes or no. You're noticing whether the question lands anywhere.
If something in you says yes, or even just hesitates, that's useful. Tap a round on that instead. "Even though part of me doesn't want to let this go, I deeply and completely accept myself," moving through the points the way you already know. Give that concern a little attention and notice how it feels to acknowledge it.
Sometimes the original number moves easily after that. Sometimes it takes longer, and sometimes what's underneath the resistance is more than feels right to sit with alone. If that happens, pause and consider what support would help you approach it.
Why this rarely gets taught
Most free tapping material assumes the number will move if you just find the right words and tap for long enough. In my experience, that's true for a lot of what people carry, but not for all of it. The patterns with a job to do are usually the ones that hold on the longest, and they're also the ones most worth understanding rather than muscling through.
The next part looks at what it means when a feeling you thought you'd already cleared comes back looking slightly different, and why that isn't the process failing either.