Tapping into Trauma; EFT is Moving from the Fringes to the Mainstream by David Feinstein, PhD

May 26, 2026 Articles, Trauma, What is EFT , acupoints, David Feinstein, Energy Psychology, psychotherapy, Trauma

I often hear from practitioners that challenge and stress they feel about trying to share or convince people about EFT. Many are intimidated by trying to explain EFT to their psychologist or therapist or medical friends and colleagues. I had this conversation just this morning with an EFT trainer colleague. I am always on the lookout for solid research based articles that clearly articulate the most current information, evidence and science supported explanations for why EFT so effectively and consistently helps so many people. As it turns out I just received an email from my friend and colleague, David Feinstein who shared a fabulous resource he had just written that was published this month in May of 2026. This will be one of the resources I will put in my sharing list.

Here is what David wrote me:

Imagine if you were asked to write an article that, in just six minutes of reading, could help to win over psychotherapists who had never been drawn to explore EFT or acupoint tapping. The audience: tens of thousands of therapists, some skeptical, some indifferent. And you know that if your words land well, they could ultimately ease suffering for countless people seeking help from those therapists.

That was the challenge Psychotherapy Networker recently presented to David Feinstein. Their e-mail newsletter reaches some 200,000 therapists, and a recent newsletter highlighted David’s just-published article in the Networker.

Click here to read the article (and audio version) — feel free to leave a comment telling us what landed and what you would have done differently.

For decades, mainstream psychotherapy has relied on a top-down paradigm: if you want to heal the mind, you must talk to it. Traditional modalities use logic and cognitive restructuring to tame anxiety. Yet clinicians frequently hit a wall with patients who intellectually understand they are safe, but whose bodies remain trapped in a state of chronic terror.

In a comprehensive review published in Frontiers in Psychology, David Feinstein, Ph.D., outlines a major shift toward Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), or “tapping.” Once dismissed as a fringe curiosity, EFT is gaining clinical legitimacy because it bypasses intellectualized talk therapy to intervene precisely where trauma lives: the autonomic nervous system.

In this article David discusses:

• The Neurobiology of Somatic Updating – exploring ways to better understand EFT’s efficacy and how it compares to more standard cognitive therapy.
• The Clinical Evidence that has been published in over 200 clinical trials demonstrating unusually large effect sizes for PTSD, anxiety, and depression that rank among the highest reported in psychological literature as well as growing measures validated by objectie biological markers.
• Information on Scalability and Integration describing the wide variety of applications and means of delivery from professionals, paraprofessionals and self application.