Bonus Episode: Feel It to Free It: How to Regulate Overwhelm Fast (A Somatic Tapping Practice)

In this bonus episode of The Real Mom Hub, we walk through a simple, powerful somatic tool you can use in real time when overwhelm hits. If you’ve ever tried to “think your way out” of anxiety and felt even more stuck, this is for you. Doula Amanda Granberg introduces us to Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), a body-based tapping practice that helps regulate your nervous system without needing to solve the problem first.

This is especially relevant for moms—when your mind is overloaded, your body is exhausted, and your emotions feel close to the surface. Instead of pushing feelings away or fixing them, this practice invites you to sit with them safely.

You’ll hear exactly how to do it, what it feels like in real time, and why it works—even if you’re skeptical. This is a simple, accessible tool to help you move from overwhelm to a grounded, more neutral state in just a few minutes.

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Host & Show Info

Hosted by: Cally & Emily O’Leary

About the Hosts: We’re real moms and real sisters. We may look and sound alike, but our motherhood journeys are uniquely ours. We all do Motherhood differently, and thank goodness for that. Let’s learn and grow together. 

Podcast Website: https://therealmomhub.com/

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Transcript

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So another way to resource yourself somatically, and that's just like coming back to your body, so it's called a bottom-up approach. So sometimes people will try a top-down approach, and that's like rationalizing about why I feel this way.

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But if we're feeling really anxious, for me personally, getting in my head about why I'm feeling a certain way doesn't always help. Sometimes just coming back into my body and feeling what my body is experiencing

it's a way that I can more readily and easily access a sense of safety.

And so the EFT, or emotional freedom technique, is a somatic technique that we're coming back into our body when big emotions are coming up.

I'm not trained in this modality, but I do use

please find a practitioner who is formally trained in this if you're wanting to learn further about it. But I'll just kind of give a brief example of what this would look like. So we're going to access different acupressure points in our body.

we

start with the spot on our palm. That's kind of-- I call it the karate chop

on the pinky edge side of your palm.

it's about halfway

your palm. And so you're just going to start kind of tapping at this part on the side of your hand, the pinky side edge of your palm.

So I'm literally chopping--

like I'm doing a karate chop with my left hand onto my right hand.

Right hand, yes, yes.(...) And you're just going to say whatever you're feeling. For me, it's usually I'm feeling really overwhelmed. I am so overwhelmed right now. I'm really overwhelmed. And you're just naming exactly how you're feeling without trying to fix it, or change it, or shape it. You're just naming, I am overwhelmed. I am really overwhelmed right now. I feel like I'm about to lose it. I'm overwhelmed. I'm feeling overwhelmed.

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And then we're going to move into our other hand. So just change sides. I'm feeling really overwhelmed right now. I'm so overwhelmed.

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And just notice where are you feeling this inside of your body? What does that sensation feel like? Is it sharp? Does it have a sensation? Is it heavy? Does it have a weight?(...) Does it have a color?

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So just kind of bringing some descriptors to how that's feeling inside of your body.(...) I am feeling so overwhelmed.

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And now we're going

move

above our eyebrows. So we're using both hands to tap

I just use my index finger and my middle finger. I'm tapping over my eyebrows.

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I'm so overwhelmed right now. I'm overwhelmed.

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I'm overwhelmed.

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And then we'll move to the spots underneath our

So just right on the cheekbone. I'm feeling really overwhelmed.

And we don't need to get into the story. The story usually isn't helpful.

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There's a good reason why you're feeling overwhelmed. You probably haven't slept. And we're just going to stay on the surface of I am feeling overwhelmed. I'm overwhelmed. And then we're going to move to the top of our lip, just with one hand, right underneath our nose, the top of our lip.

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I'm overwhelmed. I'm overwhelmed.(...) I'm feeling so overwhelmed.

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And then we're going to move to below our lip, on our chin.

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I'm feeling overwhelmed.

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I'm feeling overwhelmed.

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And as we're doing this, we're just slowing ourselves down. And we're allowing the motion to be here.

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And then we'll move to just below our collarbones. There's a little softer spot underneath our collarbones, both hands this time. So we're putting one hand underneath the right collarbone. And the other hand, we're tapping under the left collarbone, just about an inch.

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I'm feeling overwhelmed.

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And then we'll move underneath the armpit, right about your bra strap area on your rib cage.

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I'm overwhelmed. I'm feeling overwhelmed.

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So as we get to the end of the sequence, we're just noticing, OK,(...) has anything shifted? Am I still feeling the same sense of intensity? How has the intensity shifted?(...) And we're going to repeat the cycle, starting again with the outer edge of the palm.

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And you continue to repeat the cycle, just stating, I'm overwhelmed. I'm feeling overwhelmed. And you just continue through the cycle and the different pressure points.

again, not trying to fix it, not trying to solve it, just really being in radical acceptance of, I'm feeling overwhelmed right now and being present with that.

And so then as you cycle through this, what I start to notice is that me allowing this emotion to be here,

as I start to feel it neutralize and I don't feel as much intensity with the feeling, because it makes sense that I'm feeling this way.

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And so usually after about two or three rounds of going through it, I feel more of a neutral stance of, yeah, that was really intense. I'm glad I slowed down.

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And I was able to be with it.

And then you just stop at the point when you can feel that shift into neutrality.

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And there's an acceptance, right? You can say I deeply and completely accept myself for feeling this way.

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It's OK to feel this way.

And then we end underneath the armpits. It's more

the lateral. So it's going to be farther away from the midline on our rib cage.

And then once you finish that,

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sometimes it takes a couple of cycles through. But usually for me, after three or four cycles, I notice the intensity has really gone down. And I feel like I'm in more of a space of neutrality, of acceptance of, yeah,

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I really am feeling overwhelmed.

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more in a place of,

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it's OK to feel this way. It makes sense why you feel overwhelmed, given all of the things that are on your plate right now.

And it's a pretty radical thing to ask yourself to not problem solve, to not look for the solution.

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And when you said that, I think at the end of your first round, you were saying overwhelmed, my feeling was tight, it's been very tight and stressed in my shoulders. And at the end of the first round, I was like,

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OK, this is not doing anything. Like, I think I'm feeling it more in my body. Thank you for identifying and making me face all the problems. Amanda,

I was like, where are we going? And honestly, I think by the time we got to around the

the lip, the second time, it was kind of crusting, like it got worse. And crusted.

I was I was sitting in a place of skepticism. I'm not going to lie. Yes. A beautiful end result.

(...) Yes. It really does, because I think we can kind of avoid the feeling and the more we avoid it and the more we like push it away, it almost is like the sphere of facing it that it's just

we're afraid of it,

Transcription Pending

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