EFT Tapping for Fear of Heights

Once, when my daughter was young, I signed her up for four days of nature classes in Yosemite National Park, a beautiful valley surrounded by stunning mountain slopes.

On her second day it was my turn to help chaperone the eight kids in her group. We were supposed to be hiking up the steep Yosemite Falls trail, but a little 9-year-old girl named Anna was holding everyone up.

Anna kept saying “I’m scared of heights” over and over and that she wanted to go back down. The higher we got, the slower she walked, until she was really dragging her feet. Eventually our young science teacher was holding her hand and practically hauling her up the slope!

I could see the teacher was frustrated and at a loss, so when we stopped for a snack I approached the little girl and asked if she'd like me to help take away her fear of heights. She looked extremely skeptical, like I was obviously some kind of weirdo. But I told her that was my job back home and it was very easy and wouldn't hurt at all.

After some hesitation she agreed and I had her tap on her karate chop point, saying “Even though I have this fear of heights I'm still a great kid”. Then about halfway through tapping on the points, a little boy next to us shouted “does anyone want my apple?” and I lost that little girl’s attention 100%!

Feeling that I was wasting my time, I did manage to get her back and starting where we’d left off, we completed one single round of tapping, using only the most basic wording “this fear of heights” for each point.

After a total of maybe 45 seconds of tapping, I asked about her fear now, expecting her to just roll her eyes. Instead, in a very matter of fact voice, she said: “It's gone”. And it really was! No more problems for the rest of the trip!

The other chaperone was very excited by this success, and asked if this EFT thing only worked on children. That made me laugh since I rarely get to work with kids in my practice. He told me that his wife Jane had a severe height phobia and I agreed to tap with her back at our camp the next morning.

Just thinking about heights in the most general way, Jane reported her anxiety was an 8 out of 10. A few rounds of tapping brought awareness of a heavy feeling on her heart. Tapping on that sensation seemed to bring the general intensity down to zero.

Next, we looked for specific situations that had triggered her fear in the past. Climbing to the top of a ladder, to get into her attic, was a big one. Especially the sensation she might start falling over backwards. She started at about a 7 intensity, but this time it only took three rounds, which included “This falling over backwards feeling”.

And then another memory surfaced, about going on a carnival ride with her young son. Even though the ride was “only” about 15 feet high, and she trusted it enough to put her son on it, she'd been in tears the whole time and very embarrassed by her fear.

I had her tap the karate chop point and say “Even though I was so afraid of this dumb kiddie ride...” and she began to laugh. She laughed harder and harder until tears were running down her cheeks. Her husband looked at me in astonishment. Clearly, he’d never seen her laugh like that!

I'm used seeing yawning as energy is released, but this was massive and almost a bit scary!

We never got past the set-up statement. Jane said all of her anxiety was gone. I asked her to vividly imagine various scenarios—standing on a cliff edge, at the top of a wobbly ladder, etc. She said she could maybe get up to a “2” so we did one more round of general tapping and that was that.

There was a huge boulder right next to the campsite, and Jane eagerly climbed up to the top with her husband, standing on the edge as he held onto her coat. This was over a sheer drop of about 10 feet. Zero fear! I asked her to imagine hanging over the edge of a great precipice. No anxiety.

This took a bit longer than Anna’s 45 seconds of tapping, but no more than an hour. That evening Jane’s husband came to me and said he had “photographic evidence” of our success on his digital camera.

The pictures showed Jane climbing the very steep and sheer path up to Vernal Falls, standing one foot away from a vertical drop (she was still using normal caution). I was elated, but it wasn't till the next day, when I hiked up that path myself, that I really got understood how successful we'd been. I'd have to say we were three happy campers!