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Ep. 58: Why a "woo-woo" approach might help with your teen's anxiety
168 Plays2 years ago
Today's guest suffered huge anxiety as a teenager. After trying all the traditional medical remedies for stress, Devorah Goldblatt discovered something she never thought would work - EFT.
EFT stands for Emotional Freedom Techniques and involves tapping on acupressure points to reduce emotional distress. It's an evidence-based treatment for anxiety, depression, PTSD and phobias that's backed up with solid research.
Helen is a complete skeptic where alternative therapies are concerned, so when Devorah invited her into a live experiment of tapping, she was out of her comfort zone! Find out what happened when you listen to the podcast.
Devorah explains how she was hospitalised with severe anxiety and PTSD as a teenager, following an assault. She says she had all the support possible, but still couldn't get past her depression and trauma. It took a "woo-woo" friend, who convinced her to give EFT a try, to open her eyes to her own ticket back to recovery.
Devorah describes how "cringe" she found the class (speaking my language!) But she went along with it and to her amazement, her stress reduced noticeably - immediately.
EFT can be practiced anywhere - Devorah explains how her teenage clients tap in the toilets at school before an exam, and in the car before a driving lesson.
Listen to the podcast to hear how the process works, and what Helen's experience of tapping was.
Who is Devorah Goldblatt?
Devorah is a holistic counselor helping teens and early 20's overcome depression and anxiety with holistic modalities.
Devorah's depression and anxiety resolved permanently after 3 months of holistic treatment -- and has never recurred in nearly 20 years. That's why she does the work she does.
She believes passionately that when we tell people that the only way to heal anxiety and depression is with medication and mainstream therapy, we are doing them a huge disservice.
She also believes that with the skyrocketing rates of anxiety and depression in our teens, it is unconscionable that we are not equipping every one of these kids with holistic tools that are now evidence-based treatments for depression and anxiety.
- You can find links to Devorah's demonstration of how to tap on her website.
- Listen to Emma's story of being hospitalised with depression in her teens.
- Find out how journalling can help teenagers with anxiety
- And if your teenager is taking exams at the moment, try these tips for helping them cope with exam nerves.
More teenage parenting tips from Helen Wills:
Helen wills is a teen mental health podcaster and blogger at Actually Mummy a resource for midlife parents of teens.
Thank you for listening! Subscribe to the Teenage Kicks podcast to hear new episodes. If you have a suggestion for the podcast please email teenagekickspodcast@gmail.com.
There are already stories from fabulous guests about difficult things that happened to them as teenagers - including
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Transcript
Introduction to Tapping and Teenage Kicks Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
And I was really blessed to have one strange friend. And I just hope everyone has the blessing of one really strange out of the box friend because he's the one who said to me, well, I just learned about this really strange thing. It's called tapping and it's supposed to help relieve stress. And I remember thinking like, is that like tap dancing?
00:00:28
Speaker
Welcome to the Teenage Kicks podcast where we take the fear out of parenting or becoming a teenager. I'm Helen Wills and every week I talk to someone who had a difficult time in the teenage years but came out the other side in a good place and has insight to offer to parents and young people who might be going through the same.
Teenage Anxiety and Alternative Methods
00:01:01
Speaker
Today, I've got something a little bit different for you. We talk a lot on this podcast about teenage anxiety, and it's something that is on the rise, particularly after the pandemic. Today's guest though, Devra, is someone who not only went through it in her own teenage years, but found a slightly less traditional way of dealing with it after finding that all of the other methods failed for her.
00:01:28
Speaker
Devorah is a holistic counselor who helps teens and young adults to overcome depression and anxiety using holistic modalities. In this episode she takes me through EFT or tapping as it's otherwise known. Now I'm a skeptic where these things are concerned but listen.
00:01:49
Speaker
She took me through it for something specific that I have anxiety about and I felt quite a lot better afterwards and I'm convinced I'm going to keep going. Have a listen.
00:02:05
Speaker
Deborah, welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for joining us today. Thank you, Helen, for having me. I'm happy to be here. So we've talked a lot on the podcast, and actually the whole podcast is about mental health for teenagers. So we've talked a lot about anxiety because anxiety comes along with
00:02:25
Speaker
pretty much every aspect of mental health. And it's something that's quite, well, it's very topical because I think teenagers today are under even more pressure than they've ever been under. Is that something that you've experienced in your work?
00:02:40
Speaker
Absolutely. Yeah. And I think all mental health practitioners are just seeing a huge spike in referrals. And many people are booked out. And yeah, teens are experiencing even more anxiety than they did in the past couple of years. Pre-pandemic, we were already seeing an increase. Over the last 10 years, we've had a 50% increase in depression and anxiety. And now we're like, it's just kind of gone up even more with the pandemic as well.
00:03:09
Speaker
Yeah, and we don't really know yet what the effects of the pandemic will be that reporting will show us.
00:03:17
Speaker
some awful statistics, I think, in the future.
Devra's Journey with Tapping
00:03:21
Speaker
I've turned my video off because we've got slightly unstable internet connection for listeners that can hear that. But, Deborah, you might want to keep yours on just because later you're going to show us some tapping techniques. And I'm quite fascinated by this. A friend of mine does this, and I've never really gone there.
00:03:43
Speaker
But she swears by it and I've heard other people who've talked about it before, so we'll talk about that later. But I just wanted to ask you, do you have any of your own personal experiences of anxiety that you'd be happy to share?
00:03:58
Speaker
Absolutely. And that's one of the reasons I love this podcast. You know, it's because people are sharing their personal experiences. Yeah, absolutely. So I was a teenager 20 years ago, struggled with severe anxiety and depression and PTSD also after an assault. And it was so severe that I was hospitalized for it. So it was really intense. Yeah, I was hospitalized multiple times and I could not
00:04:26
Speaker
get on top of it. It's tricky because mainstream talk therapy and medication is a wonderful solution for so many people. So I never want to act like I'm critical of that. People need to do what works for them. Absolutely.
00:04:47
Speaker
Um, and I was blessed. I had supportive parents. I had an amazing psychiatrist. I had an amazing psychologist. I had a great social worker at school. I had resources, you know, so I realized how much, how I'm so grateful for all that, but still, you know, it, they definitely helped me come to like a certain stability. They stabilized me for sure, but I didn't feel like myself at all. And I remember feeling very numb.
00:05:15
Speaker
and very hopeless. I felt like I had checked all the boxes of the right things that you do. Do you know what I mean? When you're anxious, when you're depressed.
00:05:26
Speaker
What else is there? You know? Yeah, I do. I know that feeling completely because and I want to say this for anyone that's listening, particularly young people because I checked my stats the other day and 25% of the people that listen to the podcast are under the age of 25. And I want to say to those people especially, it can feel
00:05:50
Speaker
Certainly for me, I felt with my anxiety that it wasn't something I should talk about because previous generations, including my parents, thought of it as something that you just had to pull yourself together. It was a sign of weakness potentially. And I just want to say to anyone who's feeling this
00:06:06
Speaker
Anxiety is awful, isn't it? It feels horrific and you don't know where to go with it. And I've checked all the boxes and still I feel it sometimes. So it's really, really normal. It's not as uncommon as you think, is it?
00:06:21
Speaker
Right. Absolutely. And that's what I see in my practice as well, you know, and, and it's exactly what you're saying, Helen. And these people are kind of on the margins. It's like, you don't know, you've done all the things. So what would you, why don't you feel like yourself again? You know, like what else is there? And, and right. And sometimes it's difficult to talk about because there still are people who think just get it together.
00:06:42
Speaker
exactly what you said. Why can't you just, your life is so great. You've got so much, can't you focus on the good? Can't you just get it? Yes, and that never helps, does it? I think someone said the other day, an empathetic conversation never begins with at least
00:07:03
Speaker
At least you've got a mum still. At least you're not poor. At least you're not suffering abuse. There's no good empathetic response that begins with, at least it is your personal feeling. And if you're not feeling it, if you're not feeling right, then you're not right.
00:07:24
Speaker
Right. Oh my gosh, that's such a great line. Yes, yes, absolutely. Right. Yeah. So take us back then, you'd done everything, you were on the medication, you were doing all the right things and you still didn't feel right. What was going through your head at that point?
00:07:39
Speaker
So I just remember I was 19 and just feeling very helpless, like, and hopeless, both, you know, just what, what, what is there to do? And I was going through the motions and, and I was that kind of kid, and we all know kids like this, you know, who I did well in school, and I, I was like the overachiever type A, you know, inside, I was falling apart, but I was able to go through the motions. That's me so much. Is that you?
00:08:02
Speaker
yeah sorry i had a moment of identification there yeah i got everything right i did really really well everyone thought i was great right but inside it was like i was a mess you know but right but i got the accolades i got the awards you know that kind of thing right got the gpa yeah so um
00:08:25
Speaker
So I was getting through life, but I just wasn't feeling like myself. And I was really blessed to have one strange friend. And I just hope everyone has the blessing of one really strange out-of-the-box friend, because he's the one who said to me, well, I just learned about this really strange thing. It's called tapping. And it's supposed to help relieve stress. And I remember thinking, is that like tap dancing?
00:08:53
Speaker
Like what? Tapping? And he shows me and it's basically you're tapping at your pressure points on your body and on your face. And there's not that many of them. There's only eight. It's not super complex. And I'll talk a little bit more later about how it actually works. But he said, you know, it's supposed to really help. Let's just go to a workshop and learn how to do it. And I remember the resistance I felt, you know, because I grew up in this mainstream house.
00:09:19
Speaker
And this was like very woo woo and very weird. And, you know, he was he came from like this very out of the box family and they grew marijuana in their backyard and they owned an anarchist bookstore like that was this family, right? And my family was like, we went to mainstream doctors and took advice and took medicine. And that's like a lot of people, you know, I know you're speaking my language.
00:09:44
Speaker
Yeah, you're totally speaking my language. If I'd said that to my mum and dad when I was 19, I think they might have hauled me off to the doctor for something more serious. Right. I don't mean more serious than anxiety, because anxiety is serious. I mean,
Applications and Acceptance of EFT
00:10:00
Speaker
I think they would have had me committed if they would not have understood. Yeah, for sure. So the only reason that I go to this thing, this workshop, is because I have a crush on this guy.
00:10:11
Speaker
I'm like, okay, so it's kind of a date, you know? So literally, so we go in there, and it was actually the founder, Gary Craig, who was running this workshop. And it's us, we're like two college students and a bunch of middle-aged women in flowy scarfs and Birkenstocks. Okay. That is it. That is the room. And I just remember feeling like,
00:10:37
Speaker
My teen daughter would say cringe. That's the word, right? Like the cringe was just unmistakable. Like it was mortifying to be there. And of course, everybody was very friendly. I just, I was just like, I can't even understand. And the funny thing is I've turned into a middle-aged woman who wears scarfs and Birkenstocks. The iron is not lost on me there.
00:10:58
Speaker
But back then, there was just no way. And then Gary Craig, the founder, had said, OK, come with an issue that you want to tap on. And you'll see that the stress around it will be reduced significantly. So I came in with, I had actually just been through a really bad breakup of a relationship. And I had so many big feelings about it. I was furious with myself for putting up with this other guy's behavior for this long. I was furious with him. I had a lot of big feelings.
00:11:28
Speaker
And Gary helped me kind of part of tapping is that it's most effective if you're specific. So, so we said, you know, help me kind of chunk the breakup into capital, like different specific parts, we tapped on each piece over the over the work weekend over the workshop. And the crazy part was that it worked.
00:11:47
Speaker
Like, and it works immediately. Like I would have on the first thing. Yeah. And then, you know, you always, you kind of, you come in and you sit with that feeling, the anger, the disappointment, the fear, the full beat, whatever it is. And you wait on a scale from one to 10. So later you can check in and see how it's shifted. And I remember I came in with things that were like a nine, 10 for me. And we tapped on it and it would go down to like a two or a three.
00:12:14
Speaker
Right. And it was wild. And I remember looking around the room and thinking like, this is a placebo. Like, clearly, this is a placebo. Yeah, yeah. But everyone else was having the same results. And then I thought to myself, okay, that I'm crazy. And everyone in this room is crazy.
00:12:36
Speaker
We're all crazy. We're all crazy. We're nuts. But then it worked. So I left and I thought, OK, this is wild. And I started tapping on everything because why not? And I still wasn't comfortable telling other people about it because it was just so bizarre. But now, 15, 20 years after the fact, that's when all the research started coming out. And it is robust at this point. It is a evidence-based treatment for anxiety, depression,
00:13:04
Speaker
PTSD and phobias, there's over 100 papers and peer reviewed journals, especially anxiety, since that's what we're talking about mostly today. There's been a lot of really great, solid research. We're talking randomized controlled trials, like the gold standard. Yeah, there has. And actually, I should say, I don't think we've said it, but what you're going to talk about is EFT, is that right?
00:13:28
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, emotional freedom techniques. Okay. Yeah, but some people
Live Tapping Session with Helen
00:13:35
Speaker
just call it tapping for short. Okay, so if you hear anyone say I'm using tapping, it's not tap dancing. Although, you know, whatever works for you if tap dancing helps you sort your anxiety out then and it might great. Great. For me, it's running.
00:13:53
Speaker
Yeah, if I don't run, then my anxiety starts to sort of go, Hello, I'm here, we should go for a run. That's so funny. So if I start running my anxieties, like stop running. Exactly. Maybe it doesn't work for you. So tell me, it's difficult for anybody that's listening to see what you're going to do. But anyone that can watch this on the YouTube channel on teenage kicks will be able to see but you can describe what
00:14:20
Speaker
Well, tell me a little bit about how you use this. Sure, sure. So yeah, so just to back up for a second, you don't want me to just kind of go through the process and what it looks like. And then I'll talk about how I use it. I mean, well, I came to start with how we use it. We use it for everything. And Gary Gregg's motto was like tap on everything. And in the research, it's been proven to help with everything from sports performance, it's been studied for basketball, for golf,
00:14:47
Speaker
Olympians, if you go to YouTube and you search on athletes tapping, you can see footage. So one of the one of the major EFT therapists, Brad Yates, he put it up like a kind of a compilation of athletes, especially at the Olympics, tapping, which was pretty cool. So anything from sports performance to test anxiety, I know a lot of teams struggle with test anxiety before a test.
00:15:13
Speaker
Of course, after any kind of trauma, it's been proven to help with PTSD in the states, the VA, the veterans. They're using it for vets that are coming back from Afghanistan.
00:15:24
Speaker
in Iraq. So it has so many applications. So really, you can use it on anything. The key with tapping is to be specific. It works the best if you have a specific piece that you're working on. For example, you know, an argument that you had yesterday or a traumatic memory that you had, you know, let's say in your childhood, but as specific as possible. So tapping, for example, unlike your, your
00:15:52
Speaker
whole relationship with your mom since you were born. Yeah. Too much. But having on that thing she said to you that day in the park that when you think about it, you still have like a full body reaction. Perfect. Yeah. Yes. Okay. Or even the phone call you don't really want to have to make to her tomorrow.
00:16:13
Speaker
Perfect. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. So, so exactly. And Ellen, it's up to you. If you want, we can actually do this with you live. Sometimes people like to do that, or I'll just tell you how it works. I'm up for a little bit of guinea pig action. That's absolutely fine. Do you want me to think of something?
00:16:30
Speaker
Oh gosh. My daughter won't thank me for this, but she has type 1 diabetes. I do talk about it sometimes. It is life threatening. It's really scary.
00:16:43
Speaker
And it's a big fear for me when she's asleep at night because she doesn't feel the changes in her blood sugars when she's asleep. And she is going away this summer to Oxford University for an access course. She's got three nights at Oxford University and it'll be the first time she's been away without an adult as her safety net.
00:17:07
Speaker
Wow, that's huge! Yeah, she's been away to music festivals with friends but their friends have known her for ages and they were in a WhatsApp group with me telling me what was going on and I was able to train them on how to rescue her if she was in trouble. This is the first time I'll have no contact with anyone at all.
00:17:27
Speaker
Should I see on her sensor because I have an app on my phone that she's in trouble and asleep? So that's causing me massive anxiety. Is that specific enough? Yes, that's specific. And that's so wow, that's big. Yeah. Oh my gosh. So let's see if we can if you're cool being a guinea pig, let's see if we can get you a little relief with that on the long demo the technique.
00:17:50
Speaker
could be cool. Let's do it. Yeah, I'm ready. Okay. So a big thing with tapping is being hydrated. It works far better if you're hydrated. So Helen, the first thing I would ask is if you've had anything to drink. I'm just gonna gulp. I've got a glass of water here. I'm gonna, I'm gonna gulp. Okay, so gulp a little bit. But yes, I'll have to drink it.
00:18:14
Speaker
Perfect. And then the second thing we ask is, all right, to rate that level of distress around that on a scale from one to 10. So anyone listening, if they want to do something and they have it in mind, they can take a minute and just sit with whatever that thing is. And then you can rate it on a scale from one to 10. If 10 is, this is very distressing, this is the worst, and one is like, eh.
00:18:38
Speaker
So, where would you rate the distress here about your daughter going outside? Yeah, I'm probably on about an eight, because I know I've got some security up my sleeve from previous experiences and things we have in place. But it's still really worrying, so probably an eight. Okay, perfect. So, it's an eight. So, let's see. We'll do a few rounds of tapping and see if you can get it down.
00:19:00
Speaker
One of the beautiful things about tapping is that you don't have to talk about what you're working on. So this is why with my clients who are teens, you know, they love this because it's helpful to talk. And I do find the best results are when you are venting as you tap the points. I'll show you the points in a second, but you're tapping the points as you are kind of venting about the stress, the anxiety, but the beautiful things you also can kind of keep it inside and do that kind of internal emotional vent.
00:19:27
Speaker
So you can decide how much you feel like sharing on air, how much you want to just kind of keep it inside. Well, I'm a sharer. So I'll tell you everything. But you're right, so many teenagers find it really difficult to open up. Some of them don't even know what they're feeling. Never mind want to tell an adult that is their parent or well, an adult full stop.
00:19:48
Speaker
Right. Right. Right. So it's so empowering. And usually I find like with clients, eventually they'll get to the comfort level where they can express it out. But I remember when I first started doing this as a teen, I didn't want to say it out loud. The whole thing was mortifying all of it. Like I was just, you know.
00:20:03
Speaker
it's okay because it still works. What you're doing is, so once you've gotten your specific issue, you're hydrated and you've rated it on a scale from one to 10, those are the three steps, then you go into the tapping. What you're doing when you're tapping is really, really interesting from a kind of a neurological perspective. What you're doing is you're activating the amygdala, the part of the brain, you know, very, very, very kind of reactive with anxiety, right? It's our spider flight. It's our stress center, right?
00:20:32
Speaker
So that's that part of the brain that makes a lot. And also the hippocampus is involved a little bit. And that's where we process a lot of emotional memory. So you're bringing up. It doesn't have to be a past thing. It could be something that's going to happen in the future, like what you're doing, Helen. But either way, you're activating these parts of the brain that you're doing it at the same time.
00:20:53
Speaker
that you're tapping on points that in Chinese acupuncture, but we're doing pressure with fingers, but these are the points that help regulate the amygdala. So it's the most fascinating thing. Our brain cannot be reactive and non-reactive. Yes, I've heard that before. Yeah. So you just can't. And what happens is you do enough rounds of tapping on it and you tune back in and you just feel more ease.
00:21:22
Speaker
It's wild. And sometimes you've got to do a bunch of rounds and sometimes you won't get it down all the way to zero, you know, and that's okay. But with enough tapping and enough, you know, specificity, and I think you're specific enough, Helen.
00:21:39
Speaker
you can usually see a really significant shift. It's pretty cool. Yeah. I'm just thinking about one of the things that sends my daughter's blood sugar haywire is a driving lesson. She's just learning to drive and she'll have her test this year, hopefully. And I'm thinking it's going to go off the scale while she's having a test. So this would be ideal for the morning before she takes her driving test, wouldn't it? Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Just to bring it down to a level that's manageable.
00:22:06
Speaker
For sure, for sure, yeah. And I have so many clients who will do this in the bathroom stalls at school. You know, they'll like, before a test, they'll step into the stall. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Oh, I feel like they should do it for, they should get everyone into an exam hall 10 minutes early and do it then with everybody. Yeah, and I was like, you know, before I went into private practice, I was a school counselor and I did this.
00:22:29
Speaker
It's funny, and I always wondered if we had an edge somehow in our school before standardized tests. I would say, all right, hold on, you know? That would make sense. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, right. Okay. I'm ready. Okay, ready. So here's what we do. We start with a setup phrase, and you only have to do this at the beginning.
00:22:48
Speaker
And the set of phrases that you're tapping at your pressure points, what we call the karate chop point. So people who are listening, you know, I would recommend when you're done, you can, you know, you can search that YouTube for EFT tapping and you can find lots of people demoing the points. You know, actually, if you search for EFT tapping for teens, I think the top video is actually mine. So you'll see it.
00:23:09
Speaker
Oh, great. Well, we'll put a link to it. Actually, we'll put links to any videos that you've got. For anyone that's listening rather than watching, we'll put some links to your videos if you send them to me. I'll put them in the show notes.
00:23:20
Speaker
Oh, I love it. Okay, good. And then you can see, you know, me actually demonstrating the points, but just to hear what we're doing. So we're tapping what we call the karate checkpoint. So imagining that you're karate chopping a board, kind of moving your hand forward to karate chop a board, that area where it's a side of the hand where underneath the pinky is what we're tapping first. And we tap here while we do the setup phrase and the setup phrase sounds like this. It's a little strange, but it's
00:23:45
Speaker
even though blank and the blank is whatever distressing thing and a few words. So like, even though my daughter is going to go to Oxford and alone for the first however you want to phrase it, it's like a short sentence, you know, yeah, followed by I deeply and completely love and accept myself. And if that feels too clunky, you can also say it's going to be okay.
00:24:09
Speaker
That was a permanent phrase. But the original, Gary Craig is original, and actually the version that's been tested, and if you look at all the research, it's his original formula, which is, I deeply and completely love and accept myself. So it's kind of, you bring up, it's kind of an element of exposure therapy. You're bringing up the distressing thing, and then you're framing it in the context of self-acceptance.
00:24:33
Speaker
And you do that three times, so it works. And this is only at the beginning. Then we're going to actually tap the points and go through the whole process. So am I tapping with my fingertips or you look like you're doing it with the flat of your fingers? Yeah, it doesn't really matter. Yeah, flat of fingers. Yeah, yeah, yeah, flat of fingers. So I'm just tapping about as fast as you're going. So, you know, just comfortably fast.
00:24:59
Speaker
Yeah, and it's not like a very rhythmic tapping. Yes. And you're tapping while you repeat three times, even though and however you want to summarize the problem again in a few words. Yeah, how would you summarize it? So even though my daughter is going to be alone overnight with her diabetes. Okay. And then do you want to do a deeply, deeply and completely
00:25:25
Speaker
Or maybe it's going to be okay, whatever feels right. I deeply and completely love and accept myself. Okay, great. Two more times. It's going to be okay. I feel like I need that. It's going to be okay. Perfect. Okay, two more times. Even though my daughter is going to be alone with her diabetes overnight, I deeply and completely love and accept myself and it will all be okay. I love it. All right, one more time.
00:25:52
Speaker
Even though my daughter is going to be alone overnight with her diabetes, I deeply and completely love and accept myself and it's going to be okay.
00:26:04
Speaker
Awesome. Helen, you're great. That's like, it's like you're a quick study because that's a mouthful. I deeply and completely love it. I love myself. Okay. Perfect. So that's the, that's only at the beginning that we do that. And then we move to the points and there's only eight of them, not too bad. And you're probably, you know, watching me do them at the beginning and think, okay, I'm never going to remember this. I'm telling you after a few rounds, you pick it up. So the first point is the crown of the head.
00:26:29
Speaker
So you're tapping the top of your head. I'm going to move my headphones. Oh, yeah. So right in the middle of the top of my head, I can see what you're doing. Exactly. And then side of your eyebrows. So we're doing the side of the eyebrow closer to the nose. Oh, my glasses are coming off now. Oh, sorry. You should have warned you. That's so good. Side of the eyebrow closest to the nose and then side of the eyebrow closest to the ear. OK. And then under your eye on the bone.
00:26:58
Speaker
Yeah, under your nose. Under your mouth. So on the chin. And then right under the collarbone. So like not quite the collarbone, but just right underneath underneath.
00:27:13
Speaker
Mm hmm. And the very last point is under your armpit, just enough that you're no longer in your armpit, if you can imagine, like on a woman, it would be like where you're brought the side of your bras. Okay, right. Perfect. So just a little bit lower from the armpit. Yeah, and a little bit lower than the armpit. Lower and to the front a little bit. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And that's it. And we're cycling through the point. So now, what are we doing? Exactly. Back up top of head, side of the eyebrow. And then
00:27:43
Speaker
other side of the eyebrow. So you're not staying there for very long. It's fairly quick move. It's fairly quick. And by the way, teens sometimes love to do it super rapidly. Like I actually have some clients who if they're very agitated and they're in a huge kind of like an anxiety attack, they will just it's like boom, boom, boom, boom. But like they just have to move very, very quickly. And it also works. Yeah.
00:28:07
Speaker
So yeah, it can be very quick. You just were doing like, let's say six or seven. Don't count it. Don't stress it. That's something that's important. Don't be counting how many times you're tapping. It's more of just a intuitive thing. You're going from point to point. So now I'm on side of eyebrow, under eye, under nose, under mouth, right under the collarbone, right under the armpit, back to the top of the head, side of the eyebrow.
00:28:34
Speaker
other side of the eyebrow. See, I've stopped looking at you now and I'm just doing this as I feel it. Yeah, so good, good, good. So the first few rounds when you're just learning, it's very normal to be focused on doing it right, you know, but as soon as you can, what's really great is to start bringing up the distressing thing because that is what's going to activate the amygdala that you're doing. That makes sense.
00:28:58
Speaker
So, and that's when the ideal, but again, a lot of teams and like in practice, especially when I see them for the first time, they don't want to talk and I say, okay, bring up something and you don't have to tell me and you can tap the points and still get relief. And that was again, my experience as a teen. I didn't speak for months when I was like,
00:29:15
Speaker
about what happened. I just tapped on it and I still got relief. But I do find the best relief, and I do this as a parent in my car sometimes so that kids don't hear me, is when you just get it out. And very viscerally. And graphic is fine. Profanity is fine. You are getting out the emotions as strongly and emphatically as possible.
00:29:38
Speaker
How dare you? How could you do that if you were stupid? You know what I mean? Like that. You really get into it. You get angry or you get very sad, whatever it is. And then you tap and tap until you just often just feel done. It's very interesting. Well, there's something therapeutic about someone telling you you're allowed to say all of that stuff. Almost kind of visualizing doing, saying what you want to say to the person or doing the thing you want to do.
00:30:08
Speaker
That's therapeutic in itself. And then the tackling regulates this amygdala response while you're doing it, yeah? Yeah, 100%. That's exactly right. And I'm just going right through it.
00:30:20
Speaker
Yeah, I need to now stop. So I've done, I don't know, five or six cycles. So I need to just start really focusing in on. Yeah, exactly. So I would say, okay, my worries. Yeah. So start really focusing and you can share them verbally if you want or just internally, you know, like, Oh my gosh, what if, you know, and then just really bring up that fear and that anxiety and that worry. And then as you tap on the points. Yeah. Okay. So my fear comes from the fact that, um,
00:30:51
Speaker
I had a friend who had type 1 diabetes when we were at university and she died in her sleep. So that's where my fear comes from. So that's probably my fear. I can trust an adult, I can phone an adult to have her back if she's not waking up for a low blood sugar, but I
00:31:13
Speaker
if she's on her own and I've got to get there. I have to go there because she's going to go to university one day and she doesn't want her mother tagging along.
00:31:26
Speaker
Yeah, I should focus in on that fear, shouldn't I? Focus, yeah, exactly, exactly. So as much as we can get out of the logical brain and just focus it like, it's probably terror, right? There's probably some really deep fear there of like, yeah, what if what happens to her is what happened to my friend in university. Yeah, I can feel my stomach is churning thinking about it as it was on that night when she was diagnosed. That's all I could think about on the night she was diagnosed.
00:31:50
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So maybe I've changed my goal actually, because I can very viscerally feel that first night and how my emotions were on actually dealing with that pain, that fear. Wow. Okay. And that's very normal too, by the way, during a tapping kind of episode to all of a sudden have a switch and you realize like the priority is actually something else. And that's enlightening too.
00:32:12
Speaker
You know in its own way. Yeah, so Yeah, yeah, so if you want to focus there for a second What is that is that a level eight feeling of like oh that stomach turning like?
00:32:25
Speaker
It was when I was talking to you about it. It was probably even higher, but there's something really therapeutic. And I am a very black and white person and struggle with non-scientific. I mean, I know there's science in there because I know about the amygdala. But yeah, I typically trust Western medicine first.
00:32:52
Speaker
So, but even just the tapping, just that rhythmic kind of processing is, I think is making me calmer. So I'm probably, yeah, I would probably, oh, I don't know how to, it's not an eight, it's definitely not an eight. Okay, so you've seen a shift. Yeah, I feel calmer. Is it common to dwell on a particular spot? Because I really want to stay on my collarbone.
00:33:21
Speaker
Oh, so stand in the collarbone. Yeah. And a lot of my clients will find that they actually prefer a particular point and that can be the like shortcut point. Like if they're about to get up and give a speech and they're, you know,
00:33:32
Speaker
really in a state of anxiety and they're not going to be tapping in front of everyone, but they can kind of put pressure on that point and it helps them out. For my daughter, I bet my daughter, hers is under the eye. So it's a little bit more obvious, but for some reason, that's the point that like if she needs a shortcut point, like she was somewhere where she felt like she needed to cry, but she didn't, she couldn't cry. Like it was public, she didn't want to cry. And she found that tapping just in that particular point was enough.
00:34:00
Speaker
Yeah. It's like her favorite spot. Yeah. Well, and you talk about acupressure points, and that's proven scientifically as well, isn't it? Like acupunctur really works. Yeah, there's been so many studies now that acupuncture works. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:34:17
Speaker
I do so much karma. So it's the theory then that I might feel calmer the next time I think about it without even doing the tapping.
Reflections and Future Considerations
00:34:25
Speaker
Exactly, exactly. So yeah, so so now I'd ask you now, if you think about her going away, when is it soon, right? In the summer. Okay, so think about her like really put yourself in that mindset of okay, she's going off in the summer. Is it still an eight? So or do you feel like that
00:34:43
Speaker
No, no, I do feel better. I mean, nothing's changed because I know everything that we have to do to set her up to have the best chance of being completely well while she's away. And there's nothing else that I can do beyond that. It's not like I've found a new strategy or I can phone them and I can set this up. I just feel a bit more confident. I love it. It's great. And so how an ideal would be then, you know,
00:35:10
Speaker
to get it, not necessarily on air, but just so you know that you have this option, this potential to get it even lower, you know? If you let's say now it's a four or five, whatever it is, you said it should have. That's what I'm thinking. I don't really know, but that's what I'm thinking. I don't know what a one feels like. I've not been there for so long.
00:35:30
Speaker
Right. But the red, and then I see this in my practice often, like someone may be the first round after a bunch of rounds, they'll stop, they feel intuitively like they're ready for a break. They check in. Okay, maybe it's like a four or five, which is great. It's a great shift from it. Yes. But if you do another set of rounds, we do we start again with that setup that we did before.
00:35:51
Speaker
Oh, right. Yes, exactly with that with that karate chop of the board. And this time that set up phrase instead of you know, even though my daughter's going away for the night, you know, whatever it was, it's even though this is still a level four.
00:36:07
Speaker
or still a level five, you know, I do think completely love and accept myself. So it's a different setup. Even though I'm still at this number, like I'm still stressed about this, I deeply and completely love it. And then you would do a bunch more rounds of the same exact eight point cycling through from the top of your head, downside of the eyebrows.
00:36:27
Speaker
under eye, under nose, under mouth, chin, under collarbone, armpit back to the top of the head. Same cycle again and again. And then often you'll check in and it's down to like a zero or one or another thing happens, which almost happened a little bit here for you, Helen, which is that
00:36:45
Speaker
You get relief on that issue and almost immediately it's like an onion. The next thing pops out to be released. Almost the way you had here, you're tapping for your daughter and then you have this visual of like, hold on. I also have stress around when I first got that diagnosis. This is where it comes from. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's something that got buried very deep. And I go through this with my counselor a lot. That got buried very deep because I needed to
00:37:13
Speaker
hit the ground learning how to manage this thing. She was only nine at the time. So my own emotions really got contained and sort of locked in a box. And I'm in the process of unlocking that and dealing with it now, now that she's older and we all know what we're doing a bit better.
00:37:33
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So this is really common. I might do this again. I might actually do it again on that fear. Because that's what it all boils down to, actually. She knows what she's doing. She's very capable. It's just that, oh my God, will she die in the night? When I'm not there to stop that happening, that's why it's becoming an anxiety now because she's 17 and a half and applying to universities. Yeah, yeah.
00:38:01
Speaker
Sure, sure. And there might be, you know, if you feel a call to tap on that original trauma around having friends, you know, I think that might be the thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, that exact that you mean, yeah, there's the difficulty hearing the diagnosis. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
00:38:21
Speaker
Oh, I like it. I definitely because I've always got a residual if I think about what and this is where I think teenagers find it's really difficult to sit and think about.
00:38:34
Speaker
how the feeling feels physically in their body. And that's what I do with my counsellor. Where is that feeling? And I think teenagers are just throwing their heads, they forget how to relate it in their bodies. But actually, if we ask them that question, what's going on for you in your body right now? What are you feeling? For me, when someone draws my attention to that, I'm always aware of this low level churning in my stomach.
00:39:02
Speaker
was always there. But when when I was doing the tapping and thinking about that night of the diagnosis and my friend, it definitely was probably above an eight. That really triggers me. And it probably is around a five now. So it's just more livable with
00:39:24
Speaker
But then you say, if I go further, and also with the help of my counsellor, I may be able to get it, because there's no reason to hang on to that memory, is there? It's just there. It's in me and it needs to be dealt with. Right. Right. I mean, right. The memory in itself is okay. It's that emotional reactivity that you're still hearing, right? That burden that you're still living with.
00:39:50
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Really good point. Oh, thank you. This has turned into a therapy session for me now. I'm definitely going to do that again. I'm going to take some time later and do that again. Yeah. Thank you for being willing, Helen. It makes, it's nice to really experience that firsthand, you know, and understand that.
00:40:10
Speaker
It's a really powerful tool. And for teens, especially, I mean, it checks so many boxes. It's that kind of thing that they can do at 3am when they're falling apart and they are not going to, you know, they can't call their therapist at 3am, you know, if they have one or, you know, even if we have a great relationship with our kids, they're not always going to come to us.
00:40:30
Speaker
So it's like, what tool do they have to pull themselves out of anxiety or, you know, like just a sense of fight or flight? Yeah. And what have they got to lose actually, because it's not a pill. Exactly. It's not dangerous. It doesn't take very long. What have they got to lose? Exactly. Exactly. It looks silly, but okay. You know, right. Other than looking silly. Yeah. Do it in your room then. Wait until you're in your room and do it there. Or like you say, lock yourself in a toilet at school.
00:40:58
Speaker
and do it for two minutes there. Exactly, exactly. Yeah, and kids have all sorts of, you know, when they get into it, they have all sorts of creative ways to do it. I have clients who like to tap to music and that's really fun. And they'll pick a musical, you know, a song that kind of frames how they're feeling. And like sometimes they'll get the tears flowing or they'll get that anger going, whatever the feeling is, and they'll tap and it's fun to tap to music. Like the rhythm is fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:41:30
Speaker
Yeah, and then also there is an app, the Tapping Solution. It's free, but then there's a lot of things. There are some meditations you have to pay to unlock, but it's not really fully meditations, it's tapping meditations. They have a track for tapping, for anxiety. Definitely the intro stuff is free, and that's an app that any kid can just put on their phone. Again, that's called the Tapping Solution. It's created by Nick Ortner, who is the founder of the Tapping Foundation.
00:41:52
Speaker
Yeah, so that's great.
00:41:59
Speaker
And it shows the points and the kids can follow along and watch the points like lighting up on the person in the app, which is very helpful. Okay, I'm following that. Yeah, really good. Okay, I'm going to put links to all of this in the show notes so that anyone that's listening now, just pop down there and hit these links. And Deborah, tell me your links to your best videos to explain it. And I'll include that. Is there anywhere else that people should connect with you or can find out more about what you do?
00:42:28
Speaker
Sure. I mean, they can check out my website. It's just my name. So www.devoragoldblatt.com. I've got a YouTube channel and then which is just Devora G. You can just, yeah, YouTube, probably my Facebook page is where I have the most current stuff coming up. And that's called holistic team counseling. Great.
00:42:51
Speaker
Okay, I will put all of those links in the show notes and I think you'll get some hits. I will certainly be going to have a look. Thank you so much for your time today and I'm definitely going to go and do a little bit more work on myself. I'm so excited. So fun. Thank you so much for being brave and just trying something new because it's definitely out there but less now than ever before. It really is proven at this point.
00:43:15
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I'm there for it. I'll take anything. Yeah. Nice. Thanks, Tefaron. All right. Thank you.
00:43:31
Speaker
Thank you so much for listening. I really do appreciate it. Thank you too to everyone who's already rated and reviewed the podcast. If you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Amazon, it would mean the world to me if you could leave a review. It really helps get the word out as well as making me very happy to read what you have to say. If this episode strikes a chord for you, please share it with anyone else you know who might be in the same boat and hit subscribe so you don't miss the next episode.
00:43:59
Speaker
If you have a story or suggestion for something you'd like to see covered on the podcast, you can email me at teenagekickspodcast at gmail.com or message me on Instagram. I am Helen Wills. I love hearing from all my listeners. It really makes a difference to me on this journey. See you next week when I'll be chatting to another brilliant guest about the highs and lows of parenting teens. Bye for now.