Tapping for Your Best Midlife, Part 2 - Calm in a Stressful World

Part 2: In this second episode of our Confidence Deep Dive tapping mini-series, I’m guiding you through a specific practice to handle general stress about world events, political strife, and the negativity we see in the news.

If you find yourself "doom scrolling" or feeling unsafe in these turbulent times — and you’re ready to lower your cortisol so you can breathe again — this episode is for you.

What You’ll Learn:

✔ The "High Stress" Protocol: Why you must tap on the negative emotion first if your distress is an 8, 9, or 10 

✔ Why watching the news is often worse for your nervous system than reading it (and how to set boundaries) 

✔ A guided tapping round to validate your fear and calm your body without trying to "fix" it immediately 

Take Action Today:

• Save This Episode: Click the "plus" or save button in your podcast app so you can return to this guided session whenever the news gets overwhelming.
• Check Your Number: Before tapping, ask yourself: Is my stress above a 5? If so, start with the "negative only" round to honor those feelings first .
• Audit Your Intake: Experiment with reading the news instead of watching it to reduce the emotional impact on your nervous system.

Why This Episode Matters

Midlife is already complex enough without carrying the weight of the entire world on your shoulders. When we get mired down by external strife, our bodies stay in a state of high alert. This practice gives you a way to acknowledge the reality of the world while still choosing to create a safe, calm space within your own body.

Transcript

Cheryl Fischer 0:11

Hello, Confidence Deep Dive. It is part two of our tapping mini series. And as promised in last week's part one, I am going to give you a tapping practice each week that you can do on your own. You can save this particular recording depending on what app you're listening in. You click the plus, save it to your episodes, something like that, and come back to it and

Welcome Back & Series Setup

Cheryl Fischer 0:40

play it again and again. Now, if you haven't listened to part one of this series, please do pause this and go back and listen to part one. Because what we talked about was what in the world tapping is, why it does work and has been shown to work, and how to do it. What are all the tapping points? And admittedly, I was pretty careful in explaining what the points are because you can't see me. So I have to give you enough information. So please do pause and go back and listen to that if you haven't already. Now, if you did listen to that already and you are ready for part two, today's topic is going to be tapping for general stress about the state of the world. And I try very hard not to involve politics in the podcast. So that's not what this is. But I do think that we can see there is a lot of strife. No matter what your views

Why Tapping For World Stress

Cheryl Fischer 1:44

are, there's stress, there's strife, there's hard times, there's differences of opinion, there's cruelty, there's a lot going on. And sometimes we get very mired down. Maybe we watch the news too much. And as an aside, I will tell you, I don't think watching the news is healthy for you and your brain and your body. Do be informed, limit the time, maybe read it instead of watch it, figure out appropriate sources, because what you want to stay away from is news outlets that are trying to scare you. Now, come let me come back to the main thing. No matter our views, it can feel overwhelming just to be in the world sometimes, no matter the time, quite frankly. So we're gonna focus on that in a general

News Hygiene And Fear Triggers

Cheryl Fischer 2:37

way today. And the cool thing about tapping is I'm gonna say repeat after me, but you can change it, you can alter it, you can say the words a little bit differently so that it works for you in the best way possible. Okay, so I'm gonna show you a way of doing tapping today where you might need to start this way if you're having a lot of emotion about something. So remember in part one when I talked about the sud scale, before we start tapping on something, we want to ask ourselves, how emotional am I feeling about this particular topic right now? How worked up am I? Zero being not bothering me at all, 10 being wow, I feel all in my feels about this. So if you give yourself a five to a 10, somewhere in that upper half of the range, sometimes you

SUDs Check And When To Start

Cheryl Fischer 3:32

may need to help your body calm a bit before doing the full tapping, if that makes sense. Because we're gonna talk about stress and fear today, but whatever the topic is, if you are so worked up about it and and your nervous system is going haywire, some of the things we might say in a typical tapping practice will feel a little bit odd to you. So we want to just stay with that negative emotion, as odd as it may seem, for one or two rounds of tapping, and then you can repeat as many times as you want and see if that number comes down to a five or below a five. Okay, so here's what I mean. Let's say that I am asking you, how do you feel about all the stuff going on in the world right now? And you are saying, eight. Oh my gosh, like I just feel think where do you feel it in your body? You know, my chest is tightening or my shoulders are tightening, or I have something in my gut going on. There's there's there's a lot going on in my body. Okay, you're at an eight. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna start tapping, talking about the negative thing. Seems counterintuitive that I would tell you to do that, but we're gonna do it while tapping. So, for the sake of our example, our negative thing is going to be along the lines of I'm so scared about what's going on in the world, and I'll throw in I'm scared about what's gonna happen and whether I'm safe and whether my family is safe. Okay, we're gonna keep it too

Negative Rounds To Release Charge

Cheryl Fischer 5:07

general like that. As I said, once you see what I'm doing, you can change the words, of course. So we're gonna skip the karate chop point of the hand while we're just focusing on this fear, this really super emotional thing we have going here. And we're gonna start with under the eye. Excuse me, I said that we're not gonna start with under the eye. It helps if I read my own notes. We're gonna start with the top of the head. Okay, so you're tapping with a couple fingers on the crown of your head, and you're going to make the statement about your fear. I am so upset about what's going on in the world. Now, inside of the eyebrow. I'm worried that my family won't be safe and I won't be safe. Outside of the eye. I'm so upset about what's going on in the world right now. Under the eye. What if my family's not safe? I won't know what to do. Under the nose. I'm just, ugh, I'm so stressed about what's going on in the world right now. Under the mouth. I'm worried about my family, I'm worried about my friends, I'm worried about me. Collarbone. I'm so upset about what's going on in the world right now. Under the arm. I hope my family's safe. I don't know if we'll be safe. Top of the head. I'm so upset about what's going on in the world right now. Inside of the eyebrow. I'm worried about my family. I'm worried about me. I'm worried about my friends. Outside of the eye. I don't know what's gonna happen. Every day seems worse. Under the eye. I'm so upset about what's going on in the world right now. Under the nose. What if something happens to my family? What if something happens to me? Under the mouth. I'm just I'm so stressed about everything going on in the world and in the news. Collarbone. I I've been watching the news and I just keep getting so upset I can't believe the cruelty. Under the arm. I'm so stressed about what's going on in the world right now. Now, that was two rounds, starting with top of the head, ending with under the arm, and hopefully you got the pattern. You are saying the thing that is making you stressed. And to be to be frank, I even though I know I'm doing a demo and I'm being careful of my wording, I feel already more calm from doing that with you. And I hope you do as well. Tapping is a real thing for calming your nervous system. It's incredible.

Reassess And Repeat As Needed

Cheryl Fischer 8:04

So what I want you to do is pause, rewind back, and do that again. If you still would put your level of emotional turmoil about this particular topic above a five on a zero to ten scale. Okay, you can do it as many times as you want. Absolutely no limit. Never hurts. Do it again, do it again, do it tomorrow, do it the next day. It will help. And repetition is good. Now, what we want to do once we get that level of emotion back down to between that zero and five range is we want to create a, I'm gonna call it a setup statement. It doesn't matter what we call it. We want to create a statement that we can start with and end with that isn't entirely focused on the bad thing or the hard thing. And you'll see in the

Building The Setup Statement

Cheryl Fischer 9:06

next couple of weeks in our next sessions. I'm not gonna always focus on the state of the world. I'll pick something to do with uh, well, I'll pick a couple of things to do with midlife and some of the situations that you might be dealing with right now, so that you can have some of those as well ready for you. But what we ideally want to do is to be able to say this trigger statement. I'm so upset about what's going on in the world right now, or I'm so stressed about what's going on in the world right now. And what we're gonna do is we're gonna say, in front of that, even though, so even though I'm so stressed about what's going on in the world right now, I fully and completely love and accept myself. And for some of us, I know that seems a bit silly to say that, but it's bringing in a hint of something better. A hint of self-trust and self-belief. And so what I'm gonna do now when we do our rounds of tapping is I'm gonna start with that statement and say it three times, tapping on the karate chop point on the outside of my hand. Then I'm gonna go through all the other points, and you're gonna hear me talk about the fear, and then you're gonna hear me bring in some statements about the positive. What can I do? What can be different? And the goal of that, and you can again do your own words, is that we start to segue into something that is focused on moving forward, and then we'll end with our same statement that we started with. Okay, so tapping on the karate chop point on the outside of your hand. Even though I am so stressed about everything going on in the world right now, I fully love and accept myself. Even though I'm so stressed about everything going on in the world right now, I fully love and accept myself. Even though I'm so stressed about everything going on in the world right now, I fully love and accept myself. Now we're gonna go to the inside of the eyebrow. I'm so stressed about everything going on in the world. Outside

Blending Fear With Choice And Action

Cheryl Fischer 11:15

of the eye. I've been watching the news and everything is just so nerve-wracking. Under the eye, I can't seem to turn it off. I'm I'm thinking about it all the time under the nose. I'm worried about my family, I'm worried about my friends, I don't know what's gonna happen. Under the mouth. Maybe I can change the way that I take in news and information. Collarbone. Maybe I can limit how much time I spend on the news of the world under the arm. I'm so scared about what's happening in the world and how it affects me and my family. Top of the head. Maybe I can take in less of that information and change my focus. And now we go again through that cycle saying similar things. You can change these as you like. So inside of the eye, I'm so stressed about what's going on in the world outside of the eye. Maybe I can focus on what I can do in my area under the eye. Maybe I can focus on relationships with my family and friends and good things under the nose. If I have ideas on how I want to help any particular group, maybe I can try them and do it under the mouth. Maybe that will help with my stress about what's gonna happen. Collarbone. If I can do something to help, that will feel good under the arm. I'll limit how much news I take in so that I can feel better. Top of the head. And I'll take action when it feels good to do so. Now we go back to the karate chat point. Even though I'm so stressed about what's going on in the world, I fully love and accept myself. Even though I'm so stressed about what's going on in the world, I fully love and accept myself. Even though I'm so stressed about what's going on in the world, I fully love and accept myself. Now you can alter these words however you would like. You can do this as often as you would like. It's already calming me down. I

Closing Encouragement & Next Steps

Cheryl Fischer 13:39

can feel it in my chest. Really just I could take a deeper breath now, and I hope it's been that way for you. I'll see you on the next one.