Should You Try Tapping for Anxiety?

From phobias to trauma, this technique aims to lower distress by mixing touch with focused thought. Some find relief

Jen A. Miller

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Published April 22, 2026

A woman with her eyes closed and fingers on her forehead

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Key takeaways

Tapping is an acupressure technique to reduce distress while focusing on difficult thoughts or emotions.
Research is mixed on its effectiveness.
Many people find tapping helpful for managing anxiety, especially as a complement to therapy.

Can you really tap your way to a less stressful and anxious life? Is overcoming something as simple as frustration with traffic, or as complex and heavy as PTSD, as simple as touching specific points in your body while thinking about the thing that’s bothering you?

Celebrities like Whoopi Goldberg (she has a fear of flying) and actor Naomie Harris (her thing is performance anxiety) have touted the benefits of the technique.

But does it really work? The scientific underpinnings may be shaky, but the technique has been helping people cope with difficult feelings, emotions, thoughts and stressors since it was introduced into clinical practice in the 1990s.

What is tapping?

The concept of tapping was developed by psychologist Roger Callahan. He treated conditions like phobias, anxiety and addiction by having patients tap on meridians, which traditional Chinese medicine identifies as pathways that allow life energy to move through the body. He went on to develop Thought Field Therapy, which claims that tapping rebalances energy flow through the body via these meridians. Callahan claimed it could also resolve a range of psychological problems, including depression, anxiety and phobias.

Tapping is considered a form of acupressure because much like acupuncture, it stimulates points along those meridians. But unlike acupuncture, tapping doesn’t involve needles, and the actual tapping is done by the person in search of relief.

Lisa M. Sussman, a neuropsychologist at Hackensack Meridian Health in New Jersey, calls tapping a mind-body tool that can help people with intense feelings and emotions. The physical tapping stimulates points along the meridian “while you are thinking about, talking about or imagining what the distress is,” she says. “It can take the intensity out of the memory or the emotion and help to kind of rewire things a little bit to rebalance the brain and the nervous system.” Exactly how is unclear.

Marjorie N. Edguer, a clinical social worker and assistant professor at the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences at Case Western Reserve University, sees it as a method of “cognitive reframing,” or taking a stressful thought, memory or emotion and retraining the brain to think about it in a different way.

You may also come across the term Emotional Freedom Technique Tapping or EFT Tapping, which is one kind of tapping technique.

How is tapping done?

Tapping involves a patient tapping on one of nine meridian points while exposing themselves to a thought, feeling, memory or stressor.

For example, if you are overwhelmed with thoughts that you’re going to make a mistake, you might touch those meridian points and say to yourself that even if you mess up, “you feel like you’re valuable and that other people will see the value,” Edguer says.

Tappers rate their distress on the Subjective Units of Distress Scale (SUDS), from zero to 10 (zero being lowest and 10 being highest), when they start and when they finish.

While the techniques may be different overall, tapping has some similarities to Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy, where a person focuses on trauma while moving their eyes. Both techniques expose people to a distressing thought or memory and then help a person by “moving out of something that is very painful,” says Edguer.

Tappers can do the exercises on their own, through an app like the Tapping Solution or as part of therapy with a licensed professional. Both the Tapping Solution and EFT International have published free guides, including images and illustrations, on how to do tapping as self-help. Some instructions also exist on YouTube.

Edguer stresses that someone who wants to try to tackle tough events or emotions through tapping probably shouldn’t do so on their own; they will most likely need professional guidance to address what trauma they’d be bringing up. A therapist can “be there to support you and help you figure out how to manage all of those pieces,” Edguer says.

A therapist can also help a patient use tapping in stages. For example, if someone wants to address a trauma, a therapist might not have them describe the trauma in detail while tapping. Instead, they might have them identify the feelings associated with that trauma, like powerlessness and hopelessness, and have them tap on that. This allows the patient to “feel those emotions while tapping on those pressure points,” says Edguer, and then go back “to be able to say something like ‘I know that I care for myself. I know that I’m loved and valuable.’ So you’re putting those positive messages in.”

Does tapping work?

Some studies published about the effectiveness of tapping to deal with anxiety and stress have been funded and published by organizations that are also invested in the success of tapping. The Tapping Solution, a company whose app can cost up to $94.99 a year for premium access, claims there are more than 300 published studies that support the effectiveness of tapping.

Thought Field Therapy has been called a pseudoscience almost since its introduction, and a 2024 literature review questioned the research underpinning the use of acupressure techniques as psychotherapy.

But that doesn’t mean some people don’t find psychological benefits in tapping, and it’s been useful enough to be deemed “generally safe” by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, which lists the Emotional Freedom Technique as one of many complementary and integrated health approaches people can try.

Dr. Jeffrey Ditzel, a New York City–based psychiatrist and veteran, said that for active and retired service members, tapping is “a method they can carry with them that’s very discreet, where they have a way to manage their mind and manage their thoughts and therefore control their emotions,” he says. The approach is often coupled with breathing techniques, he adds.

While it may be hard to quantify the how or why of tapping, it has become one of many techniques that people can try on their own or through therapy to help with anxiety and stress. For some, it may be a hit; for others, a miss.

“Some people say, ‘I didn’t feel a thing at all.’ I’ve had other clients who use it on a daily basis adjunctively with psychotherapy,” says Marie Stoner, clinical psychologist at the Marcus Institute of Integrative Health at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia.

For most people, she said, there’s no harm in trying tapping, as long as it’s not seen as the only possible solution to dealing with stress and anxiety. She sees the Tapping Solution app much like the Calm app, which introduced millions of people to the concept of mindfulness — even if the practice didn’t stick with everybody who sampled it.

“I like people to feel like they can explore and really answer the question: Does it help you?” she says about tapping. “Some people just think it’s so silly … and other people have really integrated it into their continuing life challenges.”

The key takeaways were created with the assistance of generative AI. An AARP editor reviewed and refined the content for accuracy and clarity.

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Jen A. Miller is a New Jersey-based writer and author of Running: A Love Story. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post and O, The Oprah Magazine, among other publications.