Tapping Into Anger: Can Suppressed Emotions Make us Sick and Depressed?

Today I sat down with Amy Vincze of Soar With Tapping and had an enlightening and somewhat controversial conversation. Amy, a certified Emotional Freedom Release (EFT) practitioner or "tapping coach," holds a strong belief that depression doesn't just appear out of nowhere—it's often the result of our earliest experiences and the vital emotions we've pushed away to survive.

She believes that if we connect to deep feelings, such as anger, through tapping we can let go of those thoughts and emotions in away that brings us better mental and physical health. Amy shares a personal story of being abandoned by her father and falling into performative and perfectionistic behaviors. By adulthood Amy had completely lost touch with her authentic self and suffered from bulimia and was diagnosed with breast cancer.

And Amy's idea about how breast cancer emerged in her life is a little controversial for those who adhere strictly to Western Medicine. Amy believes that negative stored up emotions since childhood manifested as breast cancer. And she believes that tapping work will prevent illness, both mental and physical.

Throughout our conversation, Amy demonstrates how tapping works through a powerful combination of meridian stimulation, cognitive processing, and somatic experience. She explains how tapping counterintuitively leans into difficult emotions like anger, creating a safe container for their expression and release. Our real-time tapping session on embracing anger shows how acknowledging these shadow emotions frees us from their grip rather than making them worse. And please visit Amy's app, Soar with Tapping, or her website here for a generous discount on a year subscription of this fantastic resource: Soar With Tapping Podcast Discount.

Follow us at bipolarshepod.com or @bipolarshepod on Instagram to continue the conversation.

Transcript

Introduction and Content Warning

Speaker 1 0:00

Welcome to Bipolar she. I'm your host, janine Noel. Before we get started, the content of this show does include suicide and suicidal ideation. If you are ever in need of immediate support, please dial 988-SUICIDE-AND-CRISIS-LIFELINE. I believe in the healing power of writing and speaking our mental health stories and all their raw details. So let's go. Today I sit down with Amy Vinca, a certified EFT or emotional freedom technique or tapping practitioner. She's a former guest of the show and today we're going to talk about beating depression through tapping. There are so many struggling with depression and so many guests of the show feel stuck in a rut with low moods. Today, amy is going to encourage those feeling the weight of depression to transform those feelings and reach better mental and physical health. I do want to mention up front that Amy is my EFT coach for almost a year and I'm so grateful to work with her. She is also founder and creator of Soar with Tapping, an app that can not only introduce you to tapping but also is able to help you integrate it into your life. Welcome, amy.

Speaker 2 1:35

Thank you so much, Janine. I'm happy to be here again. Yeah, it's great to have you back.

Speaker 1 1:39

Yeah, thank you. You've been doing a lot of work with clients that are depressed, so I really want to hear about that and what those methods are. But, as we always do on the show, we do start with a personal story, and perhaps you could share a mental health moment of your own that might connect to this theme of depression.

Speaker 2 2:03

I'll give you a little bit of background. So there's some context to how I got to the place where I was feeling depressed. My dad left when I was little. He was alcoholic and I think I was maybe four years old when he left and went to another state and it was just my mom and my sister and I and my mom kind of checked out emotionally too at the time. I mean, she was a single mom trying to support two kids, and so there was a lot of stress and strain that went along with that, but, as you can imagine, there was just a lack of affection and attention at that time. Being a little kid all little kids are inherently narcissistic.

Speaker 1 2:52

It's just the way they are. That's a nice way to put it. Yes.

Speaker 2 2:58

When something happens in your environment with a kid, you automatically assume that it's your fault, and so when my dad left, of course I assumed that it was my fault, that I had done something wrong, that I had somehow caused him to want to be away from us, and then my mom kind of checking out. I didn't really internalize that, but my sister got very angry at the situation, as you can imagine, and as a young girl not getting any affection or attention from parents and having dad move away, her response to that was to get angry, and I personally thought that she was directing it towards me. And how old was she? She's two and a half years older, so maybe seven-ish at the time, six or seven. But that continued the anger. And I use the word hatred, but she would classify it differently. She feels like she didn't hate me at the time, but that's how I internalized it, and so how I responded to that situation was to try and be anything and everything my sister needed me to be in order to maintain a connection with her and not have her get upset with me about it. I started to perform basically Be who she needed. Form, basically Be who she needed, act out in ways that I thought would get her to laugh, or I would do things that she asked me to do, even though I didn't want to, because I didn't want her to get upset at me. And it really escalated in our teenage years and then adulthood. I got to the point where I had absolutely no idea who I was, because I was always trying to please her, be who I thought she wanted me to be, do the things that she wanted me to do in order to get that love. Get that love.

Speaker 2 5:11

So when I was finally out on my own as a young adult, in my early 30s, after college and after living with boyfriends, and I was finally by myself, it was like the walls came crashing in on me when I didn't have somebody to focus my attention on, I didn't have somebody to try and please outside of myself, and I had no idea how to do that for me.

Turning to Exercise and Breast Cancer

Speaker 2 5:31

I didn't have needs as far as I was concerned. I was only able to meet everybody else's needs, and so I really kind of crashed and burned. I really kind of crashed and burned and at that time that's when I started developing bulimia and huge addiction to food and binging, because anytime I would start to feel the emptiness of not trying to be somebody's friend or somebody's sister or somebody's girlfriend when I wasn't trying to fill that role. It just felt so empty and lonely and when I started to feel that and experience that I would turn immediately to food because it was so painful, it was so just. The feeling of despair was so huge that I couldn't let myself go there all the time because I could sink really deep into depression. So I just developed addictions to try and stay above it. But that didn't last very long either, because the depression eventually came in and I didn't have a way to cope with it and it was really, really challenging.

Speaker 1 6:49

And instead of getting help traditionally, you ended up taking on big sports, shifting your life drastically, training for marathons and triathlons, and obviously that could be seen as overexercising too as a way to manage the bulimia, but for you it actually did stop the behavior.

Speaker 2 7:19

Yeah. So I reached a moment where I just felt like I had to do something. And of course, I just happened to open a magazine and saw an article about somebody that ran a marathon. That was never a runner before and there was a part of me that just knew that I had to do that for some reason I was not a runner either and had never taken anything like that on and had never taken anything like that on.

Speaker 2 7:43

Traditionally, I could easily call myself a feeler and a thinker, and I would just spiral in between those two things and never actually be a doer. And so when I pushed myself out of that thinking and feeling spiral and actually went to go do something, it helped to stop that depressed thinking that made me feel like I was in despair, made me feel like there was no hope for change. It helped me to move away from that spiral and actually pull myself out of it. I wasn't really in danger of overexercising it's an extreme kind of sport but I wasn't exercising for hours and hours a day, but I was getting myself out of a certain habit and it helped propel me to a better place.

Speaker 1 8:40

So I'm assuming that you still have this weight of depression going on, even though you've changed your life a bit, and then do you finally address it when tapping comes into your life?

Speaker 2 9:17

And so I was doing a season with them at a time. So I would go do a season, I would feel really great, and then the season would be over, the event would be over, and then I would kind of slowly sink back into depression, and that was the thing that started me on the path of healing. At the time I started asking myself why me? And I don't mean that in the way of like shaking your fist at God, thinking why me? Why did I, you know, why not somebody else? I was really curious. I was really asking no, really why me?

Speaker 2 9:47

What is it about my life, my body, my circumstances, my thinking that got me to this place of having breast cancer? And so I really started seeking out the answers to that, and I feel like I found them with tapping. I recognized something clicked with me with tapping that there was an emotional aspect to all of the negative thought patterns that I had been consistent with over years. Because even if you think well, it's just a thought. When you have a happy thought, happy hormones are released in your body. When you have a scary or a negative thought, then stress hormones are released in your body.

Speaker 2 10:38

There is a physical element to our thought patterns and so when I had that negative thinking of depression and hopelessness and feeling like it's all my fault and all of those horrible thoughts, my personal belief is that they built up in my system because they never got released, they built up in my system and, over time, created breast cancer. So, with tapping, I started to talk about and release the negative thinking and started undoing all of that negativity that I had created with my thought patterns based on the trauma that I experienced, and I started realizing so many great ways that I was healing from it. Just feeling the emotions. Feeling the emotions and talking about them was actually releasing them from my body and it was amazing how something I had avoided because it felt so scary for so long was actually the ticket to my healing process.

Speaker 1 11:49

And so you're several years out now from cancer, right?

Speaker 2 11:53

Yeah, it's been almost 20 years 20 years.

Speaker 1 11:55

Yes, oh, wow, I didn't realize that.

Speaker 2 11:58

Yeah.

Speaker 1 11:59

Oh, that's amazing.

Speaker 2 12:01

Yeah, I'm very grateful.

Speaker 1 12:02

Yes, so that's interesting. That that's what you were working on in your own tapping journey and you mentioned you're getting a lot of depressed clients, so I'd love to hear how you would approach supporting them.

Speaker 2 12:19

Depression is really a symptom of a lot of the behavior and experiences that people have in childhood. That's where most of the time, we experience trauma, and I think there are two different types of traumas. You know there's a big T trauma where something big happens, like an accident or a big health crisis, or even the loss of a parent, an assault Anything along those lines would be considered like a big T trauma. There's a lot of little T traumas that happen that people are often unaware of. It could be like an angry parent or sibling that consistently causes you to be in a state of fear. It could be a parent that is overcritical and has really high expectations for perfection in your family. It could be any one of a number of things. But people don't often recognize that as trauma because it doesn't look like a big T trauma and so they dismiss it as unimportant when these little T traumas happen. But more often than not, the little T traumas are the biggest cause of depression because people don't make that connection and they don't think to get the help to undo the negative aspects of what they experienced as a kid. So when a client comes to work with me and they say, well, I'm experiencing depression.

Speaker 2 13:51

Going back to childhood and the different roles that mom played in their life, that dad played in their life, that siblings played in their life, is the key to understanding why this person is feeling depression or feeling depressed. So, for example, somebody that had an angry parent that felt like they had to walk on eggshells all of the time might feel like they need to be perfect in their life, so there's no room for mistakes, there's no room for failure. But they also might decide that, or maybe even have made a vow that they're unaware of, that they are never going to be angry like their parent was, because it was so scary, because it was so destructive and because it caused them so much pain and fear in their life. And so they just take anger out of their life as something that they don't want to experience. And they might tell themselves, like I did when I was little, that I don't. You know, I just don't get angry, I'm just an easygoing type of person.

Tapping Session on Embracing Anger

Speaker 2 15:08

I justified my not being angry because it felt safer and it felt like I had somehow escaped, you know, the anger that my sister had experienced. But I was taking away a really vital part of who I am, by not allowing myself to get angry. That would make me feel passionate about life. The very thing that would give me hope is the emotion of anger, and I didn't realize how vital it was until I started doing this work and my life shifted dramatically when I started allowing myself to feel angry. Angry on behalf of my little girl that struggled so much as a younger girl. Anger on behalf of myself in my workplace or in my romantic relationships, when I suddenly allowed that, that's when I was able to enforce boundaries. That was why I was able to feel passionate about, why I was able to feel passionate about gosh, you name it, about life, about my body, about my family. Those are the things that were triggered by allowing anger back into my life.

Speaker 2 16:29

The same thing with vulnerability. Like somebody might decide, if they experienced any kind of emotional abuse, that they are much better off by just guarding their heart and never, ever being vulnerable. Never being vulnerable, because that is when you get hurt. But vulnerability is the same as anger. It is such a vital part of who we are that to eliminate that possibility from our lives, to make it so that we never have a vulnerable moment or we never open our hearts and reveal who we really are, the tender parts of who we really are, then we've cut off a huge portion of who we are. And those are the things like taking away anger, taking away vulnerability that will leave us feeling empty and depressed in the end. And it's only when we go back and do the work on those traumas and we start to allow those parts of ourselves back into our life that we feel whole and we are able to keep depression at bay.

Speaker 1 17:43

So I just think of the initial work that you did with me, and I think this is what you do with all clients. You just get us talking about life and you make furious notes. I feel like you wrote down everything in my life, but maybe someone doesn't know exactly that they're depressed. You're going to help them get there, but it's this intake that is so important in your work, and you do that at the beginning of every session and then from there, develop a tapping script what's going to be said for that day? I like this idea of the little girl within and learning about that. That has helped me. I didn't have language for that Like it's not your inner child, it's the little girl that deserves things in life. Perhaps we could do a model and take it from there. Does that make sense?

Speaker 2 18:39

So we had previously talked about potentially doing a tapping on allowing anger back into our lives. We could also do one on feeling unworthy or undeserving or something along those lines. What would you prefer we focus on?

Speaker 1 18:55

Well, I'm drawn to anger, because women are not supposed to be angry. Yes yes, I totally understand. So I want women to get angry, uh-huh.

Speaker 2 19:06

I'm happy to do that. Okay, I'm going to go through the tapping points really quick. We did it last time, but I just want to make sure your listeners understand where to tap, because that is the most important thing. But the first spot is on the fleshy part of your hand, right down from your pinky on each of your hands, and you can tap those two spots together. It's called the karate chop point. So right where you can imagine you would do a karate chop on a piece of wood, that is the exact spot.

Speaker 2 19:35

As we're tapping right here, we're going to say three even though statements and you're just going to repeat after me while you're tapping on that spot, and then, when we're done with that, we're going to go to what's called repeater phrases.

Speaker 2 19:47

And there are some other spots associated with that.

Speaker 2 19:50

So I'll just tell you the first one is the beginning of the eyebrow point, and then next is on the side of your eye, right at your temple, and then under your eye, right at your cheekbone, and then we move to under the nose, under the mouth, and then the collarbone point. If you find the beginning of your collarbone and you go down about an inch, there's a little valley in between your ribs and your collarbone, on either side of your sternum, and then under your arm, right, where it's about three to four inches down from your armpit, where your bra strap would be for women, and then on your ribs, maybe two to three inches down from your breasts Well, I should say your nipple, because it's right underneath where your breast is and then your wrists. You can tap your wrists together and then the last one is up on top of your head. So, as we're tapping, and each time Janine repeats what I'm saying, that's when you move to the next spot on the repeater phrases. But for now we're just going to tap on our karate chop point and you can repeat after me, even though I don't feel comfortable with being angry.

Speaker 1 21:00

Even though I don't feel comfortable with being angry, For whatever reason, or for a million reasons. For whatever reason, or for a million reasons.

Speaker 2 21:10

I love and honor all parts of who I am anyway, I love and honor all parts of who I am anyway. Even though I have really bad memories of anger being destructive in my life.

Speaker 1 21:23

Even though I have really bad memories of anger being destructive in my life.

Speaker 2 21:29

So it's really scary for me to go there. So it's really scary for me to go there. So it's really scary for me to go there. It makes me feel out of control. It makes me feel out of control and I hate it, and I hate it and I deeply honor all my thoughts and feelings about this.

Speaker 1 21:44

And I deeply honor all my thoughts and feelings about this. Even though culturally, women aren't supposed to get angry, even though, culturally, women are not supposed to get angry.

Speaker 2 21:56

And I have adhered to that.

Speaker 1 22:00

And I have adhered to that.

Speaker 2 22:03

I didn't realize it was to my detriment.

Speaker 1 22:05

I didn't realize it was to my detriment.

Speaker 2 22:09

And I love and honor myself anyway. And I love and honor myself anyway, and I honor my courage in tackling this issue. Okay now we're going to start tapping on the eyebrow point.

Speaker 1 22:25

I'm so afraid of feeling angry On the side of your eye now.

Speaker 2 22:30

I don't like it at all. I don't like of feeling angry. I don't like it at all. I feel out of control when I'm angry.

Speaker 1 22:43

And it feels like I have failed somehow.

Speaker 2 22:53

If I let people get to me enough that I have an outburst of anger that I have an outburst of anger. That means that I am out of control.

Speaker 1 22:59

That means that I am out of control.

Speaker 2 23:02

To stay in control with my anger.

Speaker 1 23:05

And I'll do my best to stay in control with my anger.

Speaker 2 23:10

It might even be best to allow it in a safe situation first. It might be even best to allow it in a safe situation first, maybe I could rage at somebody in my life while I'm alone in my house.

Speaker 1 23:27

Maybe I could rage at somebody in my life while I'm alone in my house.

Speaker 2 23:32

In a way where no one gets hurt, in a way where no one gets hurt and I can allow my anger. And I can allow my anger Without anybody judging me, without anybody judging me, and I'm not hurting anyone and I'm not hurting anyone. That would feel so cathartic, that would feel so cathartic. That would feel so cathartic and I deeply honor all my feelings about this and I deeply honor all my thoughts and feelings about this. And I honor my courage in being willing to go there.

Speaker 1 24:03

And I honor my courage in being willing to go there, because this is a vital part of who I am, because this is a vital part of who I am, because this is a vital part of who I am, and incorporating it back in will make me feel whole again. And incorporating it back in will make me feel whole again.

Speaker 2 24:21

It's my inherent right as a human being.

Speaker 1 24:24

It's my inherent right, as a human being, to all of my emotions, to experience all of my emotions okay, nice, deep breath.

Speaker 2 24:42

So normally at this point in a session I would ask if you had any thoughts or feelings come up, and when you initially start doing work on anger, there's always a question in my clients that's like can I really do that? Can I really get angry?

Speaker 1 25:01

That's totally what I was thinking when you said you can just rage on your own in your house, right?

Speaker 2 25:07

Yes, at least keeping your anger in a safe way, mm-hmm, at least keeping it, your anger, in a safe way, allowing it in a safe way where no one gets hurt. It doesn't have to be directed at anyone, but it does have to be allowed. And while my clients will often say I would feel silly doing that, if you really allow yourself to feel the anger instead of just acting like you're angry, then it doesn't feel silly, then it feels justified, then it feels powerful. And when you start to feel that power again, then it really changes things. It changes your perspective.

Speaker 1 25:44

Gosh, I know when you think of anger turned inwards and depression. I'm meeting so many people that struggle to get help with their depression and I think people think it's not Western medicine. But at the same time major hospitals all throughout the area give referrals to people doing EFT, so it is in the mainstream.

Speaker 2 26:13

You know it's getting there At this point. I think there's been over 300 studies completed about tapping and they all show how effective it is, how fast it is, and it's because it's like a triple threat. There's the energetic work that you would associate with acupuncture, but then there's also the cognitive work about talking through whatever it is you're trying to release and the somatic work of tapping on your body. That really brings your focus and your energy into the present moment instead of worrying about the past or worrying about the future. That's why it's so powerful, that's why it's achieving such great results and it won't be long before it is mainstream everywhere I can definitely see that and, like before, I do just want to call attention to the session that we did using that tapping script.

Speaker 1 27:06

We were saying pretty negative things, right, we were going a little dark, it wasn't, I will be free of anger. We were going into the places that are dark and hard and that always it interests me because it's counterintuitive to start there.

Speaker 2 27:25

Yeah, I've even had some people say that it's toxic. I assure you it is not. What is toxic is pushing our shadow emotions aside, thinking that they are unimportant, because they are a vital part of who we are and they are great clues about the things that need our attention. We are, and they are great clues about the things that need our attention. So when we're feeling angry about something, it's because something feels unfair. And why does it feel unfair? Anger gives us clues about something else that we need to look into. So there's nothing wrong with anger.

Closing Thoughts and Contact Information

Speaker 2 28:04

There is nothing wrong with hurt or vulnerability or all of those things, but when we push them away from us and make them wrong, that's when it hurts us. So it's the process of allowing these emotions, allowing the negative thoughts, that allows us to free them from our body. You would think that talking about anger would encourage anger. It does in a healthy way, though, and it's not going to make you a rageaholic by any stretch of the word. It will just allow you to release anger that has always been stored in your body but just didn't have a place to go. There's nothing negative about experiencing all of our emotions when you push them to the side, making them unimportant. They will build up over time and either cause something like depression or cause some physical manifestation in our bodies. It doesn't go away unless you actually feel it Well.

Speaker 1 29:09

Thank you so much, amy. Your tapping work has really changed my life. So, yeah, it's been huge. Hi, it's Janine Bipolar. She is currently an independent podcast. I'm its writer, producer and host. Please consider this podcast as a work of advocacy, getting important stories to those that need them. As we gather ideas how to keep the show running financially, please do engage with the podcast wherever you find it. Offer up some stars and some likes. You can visit us at VipolarShecom or at VipolarShePod on Instagram and thank you, as always, for your support.