EFT for Childhood Trauma: How Tapping Can Help With the Lasting Effects of Early Experiences

Childhood is one of the most important periods of our lives. During the early years, the brain is developing rapidly and we are learning at an extraordinary rate. We are learning how to navigate the world we have been born into, what relationships mean, whether other people can be trusted, what happens when someone becomes angry, how we get our needs met and, importantly, what all these experiences appear to say about us.

Young children do not yet have the sophisticated critical and cognitive abilities of adults. They experience and interpret events with the developmental resources available to them at the time.

This is one reason experiences that an adult might regard as relatively insignificant can sometimes have a profound effect on a child.

Many decades later, someone may intellectually understand that the event is long over, yet still have a powerful emotional or physical response when something reminds them of it.

Time does not necessarily heal everything.

EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques), commonly called tapping, provides one way of working with the memories, emotional responses, physical reactions and meanings that can continue to connect childhood experiences with present-day life.

Why Are the Early Years So Important?

The first years of life are a period of exceptionally rapid development and learning.

Children are sometimes described as being like sponges during this period, absorbing enormous amounts of information from their environment. They are learning language and behaviour, but they are also learning about relationships, safety and themselves.

A child may implicitly be learning:

Am I safe?

Can I rely on people?

What happens when I make a mistake?

Is it safe to express myself?

What do I have to do to be loved?

What happens when someone becomes angry?

There is a popular idea in some therapeutic approaches that children up to around seven spend much of their time in slower brainwave states and are therefore particularly receptive to information from their environment. Brainwave patterns do change substantially throughout childhood, and early childhood is unquestionably a period of considerable neuroplasticity and rapid learning. However, it would be an oversimplification to claim that children remain in one particular brainwave state until seven or that brainwave activity alone explains childhood learning and suggestibility.

What is well established is that the brain systems involved in reasoning, perspective-taking, emotional regulation and critical evaluation continue developing throughout childhood and adolescence.

A five-year-old therefore cannot evaluate an experience in the way a forty-year-old can.

Imagine a parent repeatedly shouting at a young child.

An adult observing the situation might recognise that the parent is exhausted, under enormous stress and struggling to regulate their own emotions.

The child is unlikely to think:

My parent is overwhelmed. This behaviour is about what is happening within them rather than something being wrong with me.

They might conclude:

I’ve done something wrong.

I’m bad.

Angry people are dangerous.

I need to be quiet.

I have to keep everyone happy.

These conclusions can make complete sense within the child’s world.

What Is Childhood Trauma?

Trauma is not simply another word for a difficult event.

People can experience apparently similar situations and respond very differently. What is potentially traumatic for one person may be processed relatively easily by another.

Some childhood experiences are readily recognised as potentially traumatic: physical or sexual abuse, serious accidents, violence, neglect, bereavement, abandonment, frightening medical experiences or living in an unsafe environment.

Other experiences can be less obvious.

A child might repeatedly experience criticism or humiliation. They may live with unpredictable anger. A caregiver may be emotionally unavailable. They may experience bullying, rejection, parental separation, illness within the family or chronic instability.

The important therapeutic question is not simply:

“Was this event bad enough to count as trauma?”

We also need to understand what happened within that particular child as a consequence of what they experienced.

Big T and Small t Trauma

Within trauma-informed therapeutic literature, you may encounter the informal distinction between “Big T” and “small t” trauma.

Big T trauma generally refers to major events involving serious threat, violence, abuse, disaster or similarly overwhelming circumstances.

Small t trauma is commonly used more informally to describe experiences that may not meet diagnostic definitions of trauma but nevertheless exceeded the person’s ability to cope effectively at the time.

For a young child, an apparently small event can have considerable significance.

Imagine a six-year-old waiting outside school because their parent is very late.

From an adult perspective, nothing catastrophic happened. The parent eventually arrived.

But that may not have been the child’s experience.

The child may have experienced fear and helplessness and concluded:

I’ve been forgotten.

It is the child’s experience and the meaning attached to it that may be important.

Repeated experiences can also have a cumulative impact. One criticism may hurt. Years of criticism may contribute to an expectation of rejection or a deeply held belief of never being good enough.

Trauma Is Not Simply Something “Stored in the Body”

Trauma is sometimes described as though it were a substance physically stored somewhere in the body that needs to be expelled.

This is an oversimplification.

During a threatening event, the nervous system may initially mobilise. Fight-or-flight responses can become active. Heart rate and breathing may change, muscles prepare for action and attention becomes increasingly focused on potential danger.

If successful action or escape is not possible, the system may move towards other protective responses, including freezing, immobilisation, shutdown or disconnection.

Once the threat has passed, the system ideally moves back towards balance.

Humans have natural responses that can accompany shifts in emotional and physiological state. These can include crying, trembling, yawning, sighing, laughing, changes in breathing and sometimes digestive responses such as burping.

These should not automatically be interpreted as evidence of trauma physically “leaving the body”. They may accompany changes in physiological and emotional state as the system moves towards regulation.

The important issue is not simply what happened during the original event, but whether aspects of the person’s response continue to be activated when the original danger is no longer present.

Time Does Not Necessarily Heal

There is a familiar expression:

“Time heals.”

Sometimes time helps. Humans have a considerable natural capacity to process experiences, adapt and recover.

But the passage of time alone does not guarantee that the emotional impact of an experience will disappear.

Many people retain extraordinarily vivid memories of uncomfortable childhood events decades later.

Someone may remember exactly where they were standing, the expression on another person’s face, the words that were spoken and how they felt.

They may now be fifty, sixty or seventy years old.

Intellectually, they know the event happened decades ago.

Yet when they access the memory, something about it can still feel remarkably immediate.

This is one of the reasons childhood experiences can continue to influence adult life long after the circumstances themselves have ended.

When the Past Is Triggered in the Present

Imagine someone who grew up with an unpredictable and angry parent.

As a child, detecting tiny changes in that parent’s expression, voice or behaviour may have been extremely useful. Recognising the early signs of an angry outburst could help the child protect themselves.

That behaviour was not necessarily dysfunctional.

It may have been an intelligent adaptation to their environment.

Thirty years later, however, the same person might notice the slightest change in their partner’s voice and immediately experience anxiety.

Their partner is not their parent.

The present situation is not the childhood situation.

But something about the present has activated a response learned in the past.

This is one way childhood trauma can continue to influence adult life.

How Childhood Trauma Can Show Up in Adulthood

The effects of childhood experiences are highly individual, and experiencing adversity does not mean that someone will inevitably develop psychological difficulties.

However, unresolved childhood experiences can sometimes be associated with patterns such as anxiety, hypervigilance, sensitivity to rejection, perfectionism, people-pleasing, difficulty trusting, fear of conflict, shame, anger, emotional numbness or difficulty establishing boundaries.

Someone may constantly monitor other people’s moods.

Another person may become fiercely independent because depending upon others once felt unsafe.

Someone else may avoid emotional intimacy because closeness became associated with hurt or unpredictability.

Rather than immediately asking:

“What’s wrong with this person?”

a more useful therapeutic question can sometimes be:

“What did this response originally help them do?”

A behaviour that causes difficulties now may once have served an important protective function.

How Can EFT Be Used With Childhood Trauma?

EFT combines focused attention on aspects of an experience with tapping on a sequence of acupoints.

When working with childhood experiences, EFT may be used with present-day triggers, emotions, physical sensations, thoughts, beliefs, images, sounds and specific memories.

However, trauma work does not require someone to immediately revisit the worst thing that ever happened to them.

In many cases, that would be inappropriate.

We can begin with what is happening now.

A client might say:

“Whenever my partner looks annoyed, I panic.”

Rather than immediately searching for a childhood trauma, we can explore that present response.

What happens physically?

What emotion arises?

What are they afraid will happen?

What thought goes through their mind?

Perhaps the client notices tightness in their chest and thinks:

I’ve done something wrong.

During the EFT process an earlier association might spontaneously arise:

“My dad used to look at me exactly like that.”

Now we have a possible connection between the present response and an earlier experience without the practitioner having imposed that explanation.

Working With Specific Childhood Memories

Specific events can provide extremely useful material for EFT.

A client may initially make a broad statement such as:

“My mother never wanted me.”

Rather than tapping indefinitely on the global statement, we might become curious about what tells them that.

Perhaps a memory emerges.

“I remember showing Mum a picture I’d drawn. She didn’t even look at it. She told me to go away.”

Now there is a specific experience.

What did the child see?

What did they hear?

What did they feel?

What did that moment mean to them?

The deeper significance may not have been:

Mum didn’t look at my picture.

It may have been:

I’m not important.

This meaning can be therapeutically significant.

What Can Happen to a Childhood Memory After Tapping?

One of the most interesting things I have observed during many years of working with EFT is what can happen when a client returns to a memory after tapping.

Before tapping, a memory may be extraordinarily vivid.

The client may clearly see someone’s face, the room, where everybody was standing or some tiny detail that has remained with them for decades.

After tapping, I ask them to revisit the same memory.

Frequently, it looks different.

For some people, the image becomes faded. Others find it difficult to bring the original picture back. It may seem much further away.

Some people can suddenly see the bigger picture rather than being absorbed in one distressing part of the scene.

Others describe the memory as becoming almost cartoon-like.

Some say:

“It feels like it happened to someone else.”

They still know perfectly well that the event happened to them. The factual knowledge has not disappeared. What has changed is the way they experience the memory when they access it.

Importantly, these visual changes arise naturally.

I am not instructing the client to make the picture smaller, fade it, push it away or turn it into a cartoon.

I am observing what happens spontaneously during the EFT process.

What Happens to the Sounds in a Memory?

Memories are not only visual.

Sometimes the most emotionally powerful aspect of a childhood memory is what the person can hear.

Perhaps somebody shouted at them.

Perhaps particularly hurtful words were spoken.

Decades later, the client may still be able to hear those words internally with the original voice, volume, emphasis and tonality.

They do not simply remember:

“My father told me I was useless.”

They can hear him saying it.

After tapping, something interesting can happen.

The client may still know exactly what was said. They can consciously think the words and repeat them if asked.

But they may no longer be able to access the original soundtrack.

The voice may have faded, become distant or be surprisingly difficult to bring back with its original tonality.

This is an important distinction.

The information has not necessarily disappeared.

The client’s experience of accessing it has changed.

The Cognitive Shift

The visual and auditory changes that can occur after tapping are frequently accompanied by something else:

the client naturally begins to think differently about what happened.

This is not necessarily because I have challenged their belief or persuaded them to adopt a more positive interpretation.

The change can arise spontaneously.

The child who experienced:

Dad shouted because I was bad

may now recognise:

He shouted at everybody. He was struggling with his own anger. It wasn’t actually about me.

Someone who believed:

Mum didn’t want me

may suddenly say:

She was overwhelmed. I couldn’t have understood that when I was six.

This is very different from the therapist simply telling someone:

“It wasn’t your fault.”

A client may intellectually agree with that statement while continuing to experience the original emotional response.

After tapping, however, the different understanding can emerge naturally alongside the change in the memory.

The person doesn’t simply think differently.

Their experience of the event has changed, and a different way of thinking about it becomes possible.

A Memory Does Not Have to Be Vivid to Be Important

There is an important caution here.

A childhood memory does not need to be vivid for unresolved trauma to be associated with it.

Some people have extraordinarily clear childhood memories.

Others have fragmented, faded or indistinct memories. They may remember a sensation, a phrase, an emotion or one small fragment of an event without having a clear picture of everything that happened.

We should not assume that because a memory is difficult to access, there cannot be trauma beneath it.

At the same time, lack of memory is not evidence that trauma occurred.

These are two different things.

A practitioner should not fill gaps in the client’s memory or assume that something particular must have happened.

We can work with what is available.

If the client has fear, we can work with the fear.

If they have a physical sensation, we can work with the sensation.

If there is one image or phrase, we can work with that.

A complete historical record is not required before therapeutic change can take place.

Does a Memory Have to Be Real to Tap on It?

No.

A memory or mental representation does not have to be historically verified for someone to tap on their present response to it.

Human memory is reconstructive rather than being a perfect video recording of everything that has happened to us. Memories can contain accurate details, interpretations, incomplete information and gaps.

A client might say:

“I have this image, but I don’t know whether it really happened.”

We do not have to decide.

We can acknowledge the uncertainty and work with the client’s present response:

“Even though I have this image…”

The therapeutic work does not establish that the image represents a historical event.

It simply works with what the person is experiencing now.

EFT and Creatively Constructed Events

There are also situations in which it can be useful to invite the client to imagine what might have happened.

For example, they may remember one part of an experience but have no memory of another.

The practitioner might ask:

“You don’t remember what happened at that point. If you were to imagine what might have happened, what comes to mind?”

The distinction is important.

The practitioner can invite the imaginative process, but the content should be generated by the client.

The practitioner should not supply the missing story.

There is a considerable difference between asking:

“If you were to imagine what might have happened, what comes to mind?”

and saying:

“Perhaps your father came into the room and frightened you.”

In the first example, the client generates the material.

In the second, the practitioner has introduced information.

When working with creatively constructed events, it should also be made clear to the client that this is something being imagined. It should not subsequently be presented as a recovered historical memory.

The imagined material can nevertheless be tapped on.

Something does not have to be historically real to evoke a genuine emotional response.

We can cry during a fictional film. We can wake frightened after a dream. We can become anxious imagining something that has never happened.

Similarly, a client-generated imagined event can evoke feelings, thoughts, images and physical responses that provide material for EFT.

We are working with the person’s present experience of the material, not establishing historical fact.

Safety Comes Before Processing

Trauma work should not be a race towards the most distressing memory.

More emotional intensity does not necessarily mean better therapy.

Before approaching significant childhood trauma directly, practitioners need to consider the person’s current stability and ability to remain sufficiently present.

Can they notice difficult feelings without becoming completely overwhelmed?

Can they communicate when something is too much?

Can they stop?

Can they remain oriented to the present?

Do they have sufficient support and resources?

For some people, therapeutic work may initially need to focus on establishing safety and stability rather than processing traumatic memories.

That is not avoiding the trauma.

It is part of working with trauma safely.

What About Dissociation?

Not everyone responds to trauma by becoming visibly distressed.

Some people disconnect.

They may become numb or distant. Their mind may suddenly go blank. They may feel unreal, extremely tired or unable to find words.

A client may repeatedly say:

“I don’t know.”

A practitioner who interprets the absence of emotion as evidence that the problem has disappeared may misunderstand what is happening.

If someone is becoming increasingly disconnected while approaching traumatic material, pursuing the memory further may not be appropriate.

The immediate therapeutic priority may be helping them reconnect sufficiently with the present.

This is an area I explore separately in EFT for Dissociation.

Natural Release and Regulation Responses

During EFT, clients sometimes yawn, sigh, cry, laugh, tremble, burp or experience changes in their breathing and physical sensations.

These responses may accompany changes in physiological and emotional state.

I would not automatically interpret them as proof that trauma has physically left the body.

Instead, they can be understood as natural responses that may occur as the person’s state changes and their system moves towards greater regulation.

The client’s experience tells us more than imposing a predetermined interpretation upon it.

EFT Is Not About Blaming Parents

Working with childhood experiences does not require turning parents into villains.

Parents have their own histories, stresses, limitations and unresolved experiences. Many did the best they could with the resources available to them.

Understanding that does not require us to deny the child’s experience.

Both realities can exist.

A parent may have deeply loved their child.

The child may still have been hurt by something that happened.

Therapy does not necessarily need to establish who was right or wrong.

It needs to work respectfully with what remains relevant for the person now.

Can I Tap on Childhood Trauma Myself?

EFT can be used as a self-help tool, particularly for manageable emotional experiences and everyday triggers.

However, deliberately attempting to uncover or process severe childhood trauma alone may not be advisable.

This is particularly important where there is a history of severe abuse, dissociation, flashbacks, overwhelming emotional responses or significant mental-health difficulties.

Working with an appropriately trained, trauma-informed practitioner provides another person who can monitor what is happening and adjust the pace of the work.

There is no therapeutic prize for getting to the worst memory quickly.

The objective is not maximum emotional intensity.

It is change that can be integrated safely.

What Does the Research Say About EFT and Trauma?

Research into EFT has grown substantially, including studies investigating its use with anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress symptoms.

Research examining EFT for PTSD has reported promising results, including systematic reviews and meta-analyses. However, research specifically examining EFT for the long-term effects of childhood trauma is considerably more limited.

It is therefore important not to take findings from PTSD research and claim that they prove EFT is an established treatment for every form of childhood trauma.

EFT should also not be presented as a replacement for medical or psychological care where this is required.

The research base continues to develop, and claims about EFT should develop with it.

Childhood Experiences Do Not Have to Define Adult Life

The responses we develop during childhood can make enormous sense when understood within the environment in which they originated.

The child who constantly monitored other people’s moods may have been protecting themselves.

The child who became invisible may have discovered that being unnoticed was safer.

The child who kept everyone happy may have learned that appeasing others reduced conflict.

The child who relied only upon themselves may have learned that other people could not reliably be there.

These patterns should not automatically be viewed as defects.

They may represent intelligent adaptations.

The difficulty comes when a strategy developed for one environment continues operating long after that environment has disappeared.

EFT gives us a way of working with some of the memories, emotions, physical responses and meanings through which those earlier experiences continue to influence the present.

We do not need to erase someone’s history.

Nor do we need to convince them that what happened did not matter.

The event remains part of their life story.

But something about their relationship with that event can change.

The picture may fade.

The original soundtrack may become difficult to retrieve.

The person may suddenly see the bigger picture.

And the understanding they developed as a frightened or overwhelmed child can sometimes give way naturally to the very different perspective available to them as an adult.

The past has not changed.

But the way it is experienced in the present can.

About Tania A Prince

Tania A Prince is an EFT Founding Master and EFT International Accredited Master Trainer of Trainers. She has worked therapeutically for more than 33 years and has trained EFT practitioners for more than 26 years.

She has worked with thousands of clients and has extensive experience working with EFT and trauma, as well as training practitioners to use EFT safely and effectively.

This article is part of Tania’s EFT and Trauma series.

Continue Reading

EFT for Trauma: How Tapping Can Support Trauma Recovery

Other articles in this series explore EFT for PTSD, EFT for Complex Trauma, EFT for Trauma Triggers, EFT for Dissociation, EFT for Emotional Numbness, EFT and the Nervous System, Is EFT Safe for Trauma? and Can EFT Help Release Trauma?

This article is for educational purposes and is not a substitute for individual medical, psychological or psychiatric advice.