Anecdotes like this are easy to find on social media. Over the last 15 years or so, tapping has also popped up on wellness podcasts, TV shows and even bestseller lists.
As a result, the practice, also known as the Emotional Freedom Technique, or EFT, has attracted a devoted following and become a big business. But many experts remain sceptical.
Where did tapping come from?
Tapping, which falls under the umbrella of energy psychology, originated from a technique called Thought Field Therapy developed by psychologist Roger Callahan in the 1980s.
He conceived of it while working with a patient who had a severe phobia of water, which Callahan tried treating in various ways, including exposure therapy by the pool.
One day, when the patient complained that just looking at the water gave her a stomach ache, Callahan told her to tap firmly under her eye, an area he knew to be associated with the “stomach meridian” in traditional Chinese medicine.
According to Callahan, after two minutes of tapping, the patient declared her stomach ache had disappeared, along with her fear of the water.
Callahan developed Thought Field Therapy from there, contending that some patients required a series of acupressure points to be touched in a specific order.
Thought Field Therapy was discredited by psychology experts, in part because there isn’t a way to measure energy meridians or any evidence that proves they exist. But in the 1990s, Gary Craig, a Stanford graduate who later became an ordained minister, rebranded the technique, creating a simplified version called EFT.
Proponents suggest that tapping not only relieves stress and anxiety but can also improve symptoms of depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction and chronic pain, among other maladies.
Practitioners now pay hundreds of dollars to take EFT courses or pursue official certification.
Does it work?
Even though more than 200 studies have examined meridian tapping, this body of work is not as robust as it might sound. Research that claims to highlight the effectiveness of EFT has been riddled by conflicts of interest, small sample sizes, statistical errors and a lack of rigour.
For these reasons, prominent members of the American Psychological Association have said that the push to popularise EFT is based on pseudoscience.
“When you really look at the evidence, it falls apart,” said Cassandra Boness, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of New Mexico and the lead author of a peer-reviewed commentary published in 2024 that raised concerns about the quality of EFT research and questioned the effectiveness of the technique.
But that isn’t to say that EFT is useless, experts said. Those who try the technique are instructed to think about or do activities they may find scary or uncomfortable — a form of exposure therapy, which is a powerful way of regulating emotions. Tapping also involves taking a moment to explore one’s thoughts, which therapists say can help people understand their behaviour.
In essence, tapping is “a hodgepodge of interventions, some of which are, I’m sure, quite effective”, said David Tolin, director of the Anxiety Disorders Center at the Institute of Living in Hartford, Connecticut. But there isn’t high-quality research to show that tapping itself is the active ingredient, he added.
What’s the harm?
Despite the lacklustre evidence, some patients and therapists insist that tapping truly helps.
“It doesn’t replace existing best practices for treating PTSD, depression, addictions or other serious conditions,” said David Feinstein, who with his wife offers classes and certifications in energy medicine. But, in his opinion, it can make those treatments more effective.
Melissa Lester, a psychotherapist in Sandy Springs, Georgia, said she found that tapping could provide quick benefits, including a calmer, clearer mind. She decided to become certified in the technique because she wanted to give her clients an alternative when methods offered by other therapists, like cognitive behavioural therapy, didn’t produce the desired results.
Providing an alternative treatment can indeed be useful to patients, Boness said, but she questioned whether it is ethical to do so in the absence of rigorous scientific evidence.
Her “biggest fear”, she added, is that vulnerable people will turn to tapping and then find that it doesn’t work.
“It’s not actually a psychological treatment,” she said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Christina Caron
Photographs by: Vanessa Saba
©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES
