Final Exams Stress: Tapping into Confidence
WHAT’S UP: Live recording of me coaching a final-year university student using Clinical EFT Tapping to help her achieve her goal of exam stress management. The snippets from this recording come from an EFT Tapping for Adult SEL Education workshop I delivered via Zoom. The final year university student who volunteered to tap with me for the demonstration was two weeks away from her two final exams. Here’s how I organized this 90 minute workshop.
As with all my repurposed recorded group tapping and private EFT Tapping sessions, this adult gave informed consent for me to re-purpose the recording for educational purposes here on my website. This 90-minute EFT for Adult SEL Workshop occurred on Zoom with cameras turned on for participants who wanted to turn their camera on, but to protect their identity we have only published the audio version. Also, I’ve made pauses between speakers and explanations shorter while editing as way of respect viewers’/listeners’ time.
HELP WITH FINAL EXAMS STRESS: DELIVERING TAPPING WORKSHOP FOR ADULT SEL EDUCATION
I started the workshop with a tapping ice-breaker to help participants get present and curious. I then explained how EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) Tapping is a research-based stress management approach I’ve found greatly accelerates Adult Social Emotional Learning (SEL).
I explained how I have found that when our body is holding onto stress-related tension, our social skills are compromised and our personal/professional relationships can suffer. Because when we are stuck in a chronic state of stress, our cortisol levels go up. When our cortisol levels go up (and stay up) our immune system is compromised, causing us to be sick more often.
We also generally feel pain more intensely when our cortisol levels – our stress levels – are chronically elevated. A headache, for example, can turn into a migraine. We can have less patience with people, can be more grumpy or short-tempered, and our responsible decision-making abilities can be compromised. Practicing EFT Tapping can transform stress-related tension, aches, or pains into increasing body awareness, emotional awareness, and social awareness.
I ended the presentation part of my workshop by briefly introducing the group to some of the clinical EFT Tapping studies that prove tapping’s effectiveness for reducing stress. I also clarified that the definition of Social Emotional Learning competencies I use is the one by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (see below).
I started the experiential part of the session by teaching the group a mindful Tap and Breath exercise. This marked the transition to the ‘how’ part of my tapping workshop.
I then taught them how you can add words when starting to tap by creating your the Set Up Statement. Next, everyone who wanted to give it a go had made a note of a stressful situation they would like to work on in the final part of the workshop.
FINAL EXAMS STRESS: HOW EFT TAPPING CAN HELP REDUCE EXAM STRESS LEVELS
Below you hear me working with a member of the group who volunteered for me to lead them through a demonstration of how EFT Tapping can be applied to a particular stressful situation. In this case, we tapped on dealing with exam stress. Before we start tapping, you hear me asking her some questions to gather the information we needed to start tapping. =
For EFT Tapping to work, we have to get really specific about a distressing aspect, and so that is what we did. In this case, the distressing physical sensations behind the stress (7/10) that came up for this university student when she thought about her final exams were in her chest (a 6/10 “red hot” kind of tension in the chest).
Next, you hear me leading the student through the first round of tapping for her physical stress response to just thinking about her final exams. You will notice that after the first round of tapping, her stress about her final exams dropped to a 4.5/10, and the distressing physical sensations shifted to a 5/10 “lighter red” tension in the chest that now feels “not so hot”.
After only a second round of tapping, you will notice that her stress response to thinking about the exams dropped further to a 3/10, and the tension in her chest to a 1.5/10! Since this was a public group EFT Tapping setting, I focused on the specific physical sensations that were associated with this student’s stress response rather than asking her to try and identify the emotion behind it. In EFT we call this the Chase the Pain technique. It’s a more discrete ‘way in’ to introduce a group to the Emotional Freedom Techniques as they are not required to talk about their emotions.
Since the intensity of her stress had now dropped to the 0-3 range when she thought about her exams, I asked her and the group if they would like me to show them how to do what in EFT we call the Choices Technique. It’s a techniques we can apply when an aspect have dropped to a 3/10 or less. Everyone was OK with that, and so we moved on to the final part of this Emotional Freedom Technique demonstration.
In this final stage of this EFT Tapping demonstration, with the student resourced and able to choose what changes she wants moving forward, you hear me leading her and the group through a Choices Technique tapping sequence. The Choices Technique was developed by a Professor who used to work in the Psychology Department of Stanford University called Dr. Patricia Carrington.
Notice how as the student’s stress response continues to calm down, the stress that started in her chest shifts to her legs and feet? And when the stress at the thought of the exams seems to drop down to a 0/10, the student experiences what’s in EFT we call a Client Cognitive Reframe. Meaning she independently thinks about the situation differently – without needing a therapist to tell her how she ‘should think’, for her.
Sometimes the intensity of someone’s stress response can continue to go down after a session, without needing more tapping for it to go down. In this case, because my willing volunteer had a bit of doubt that it could have possibly gone down to a 0/10 so quickly, I suggested she double-check if it still feels like a 0/10 in 24 hours, and if it’s higher than a 0, to do some independent tapping with a self-help guide I provided for my workshop participants.
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?
It ends up she didn’t actually need to tap on it after that. In fact when I followed up four months later, she had almost forgotten about her final exam stress, was satisfied with her exams, and moved on with her life. As world-renowned Clinical Psychologist Dr Peta Stapleton points out in her TEDTalk, the benefits of doing EFT Tapping can go beyond simply people being able to enjoy getting results quicker. They may also be more long-lasting than when students just talk about a problem like thinking about an upcoming exam that is causing them quite a bit of distress
We are living in exciting times for wellbeing education! The question now is what will it take for more school and university student wellbeing support services to catch up to the growing body of science and practice on what works?
PLACING THINGS IN PERSPECTIVE
I’d like to highlight the fact that, as you heard, there were no traumatic memories from past exam experiences this student needed to process before she could feel more confident about her final exams. If there were, that would not have been suitable to go there in an educational EFT for Adult SEL workshop like this. It would have required private therapy sessions, and would of course require much more work and time to process safely than what you witnessed here.
Also, while these demonstrations where someone’s stress can go down so quickly after just a few rounds of tapping do sometimes happen when using EFT Tapping, that’s not to say that all tapping sessions are like this. It just happens to have been one of those occasions when a few rounds of tapping happened to have been enough to safely process a student’s final exams stress.
LEARN MORE
I hope you found this blog article helpful for getting a better idea of how an educational group tapping workshop differs from 1:1 EFT therapy sessions. Neither is ‘better’ or ‘worse’ – they are simply different applications of the Emotional Freedom Technique for different professional contexts and needs. To hear an example of a 1:1 tapping for exam stress and procrastination session recording: “Tapping Away Exam Stress and Procrastination”.
To read an example of a 12-session tapping program with a 7th Grade student, check out “Panic Attacks in Tests and Exams (Grade 7)”. This is a powerful example of how body-based approaches like EFT may be a more accessible ‘way in’ to talking about emotions, particularly for students who have been shamed for expressing certain emotions in class.
MEET ELENI
Eleni Vardaki works with school and adult students. Her mission is to help bridge the gap between mainstream education and the well-being skills we need to thrive. A UK-qualified teacher and certified Advanced EFT Practitioner, she offers one-to-one EFT Tapping sessions as well as educational classes for stress, anxiety, and academic success.
