What changed when I added EFT to 15 years of therapy

There is a strange battle online between talk therapy and somatic practices, as though one has to be the answer and the other has to be useless.

As a certified EFT practitioner who has also been in therapy for about 15 years, I don’t buy into that.

In this episode, I’m sharing what each modality has given me, why I’m still in therapy, and how EFT helped me create more internal safety so I could go deeper in the therapy room.

I talk about:

•  why expecting one practitioner or modality to “fix” everything sets us up for disappointment 
•  what talk therapy has offered me through some of the hardest parts of my life 
•  how EFT works with the mind-body connection and reduces the emotional charge around old patterns 
•  why nervous system capacity matters when we are trying to process difficult experiences 
•  how layering different forms of support has made my own healing more meaningful 

This is not about deciding which modality wins. It is about finding the combination of support that actually works for you.

Because your nervous system does not care whether you got there through EFT, therapy, yoga, meditation, or something else. It cares that you found your way back to safety.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to the Aligned by Design podcast. I'm your host, Alexa Stone, certified EFT practitioner, recovering people pleaser, and nervous system guide. This podcast is for the millennial woman who's done a lot of inner work, but still feels stuck in patterns like overthinking, people pleasing, burnout, self-doubt, and feeling like she's somehow behind in life. Each episode will explore the subconscious beliefs and nervous system patterns driving those experiences, along with practical tools, EFT insights, and honest conversations to help you feel more regulated, more confident, and more like yourself. If you're ready to stop holding it all together and start creating a life that actually feels good to live, you're in the right place. Let's dive in. Hello and welcome back to this episode of the podcast. I'm gonna be honest, this is the third time I'm recording this episode because apparently my computer doesn't want to record my audio and I do the entire thing. And I go to play it and nothing plays. So hopefully third time is the charm. Maybe there's something revolutionary I'm gonna say in this version that I didn't say in the others, and that's why we're doing this again. But so for this episode, I really want to talk about what I see online is like this battle between somatic practices and talk therapy. Specifically, obviously, since I'm an AFT practitioner, I'm gonna speak more specifically about that modality, but I'm kind of bothered when I see on the internet people saying that one thing sucks and the other thing is better. And I understand that from a selling perspective or trying to be more edgy, people do this, but I think it really damages all the good that these different modalities bring. Because I think that there is truly a place for almost every form of wellness care, and it's more about finding what works specifically for you. And even better if you can find modalities that you can layer on top of each other and they do a lot for you. I think that's going to expedite your healing even faster. And an example that I like to share to just put into context how silly this whole shitting on modalities is, is if you went to a personal trainer with the goal of being healthy, and you mentioned to them on the side that you're also working with a nutritionist, they hopefully shouldn't say something like, Oh, that's not gonna get you anywhere. That's not gonna get you to reach your goals, you should just stop working with this nutritionist. Because we all know there are multiple layers to your physical body health. Nutrition and exercise are two forms of it. So alienating one and thinking you're gonna walk out as this magical pony afterwards is ridiculous. And this also gives you the freedom to not put all of your eggs in one basket and expect a certain result. I think this can give us some peace of mind knowing that we're doing multiple things with the same goal in mind. And I think recently, especially, I feel like people have been demonizing talk therapy almost unfairly. Yes, it depends on what your expectations are and what you're bringing to the table. But if you are also not doing the work and working with your therapist to get through your problems, you're never going to. They're not going to say something one day that completely changes the way you live your life. You have to do the work as well. And again, I don't know the life experiences that these people are going in, but I don't think it's fair to shit on talk therapy because we're all trying to do the same thing, whether you are an EFT practitioner, whether you're a therapist, whether you're an acupressure specialist, any of these things. We all want our clients to be better. We want them to get what they want. No one is trying to trick anybody into actually living a shittier life. So I'm uniquely qualified to talk about this because again, not only am I a certified EFT practitioner, but I've been in therapy for about 15 years. Most of my life almost, I have been in therapy in some shape or form. I first started going in my first year of college because I was struggling a lot with anxiety, depression, perfectionism, and being incredibly hard on myself. And I genuinely needed support that was outside of my family, outside of my friends, someone who wasn't going to judge me and someone who was going to give me a higher perspective because I feel like I kept like diving into the same toxic pool every time I wanted to talk to somebody about my problems, and it wasn't honestly helping me at all. And fast forward to today, I am still in therapy, and I've actually been going to the same therapist now for almost 10 years. She has seen me literally through it all, and I tallied it up. We have three breakups, one divorce, one postpartum experience, one diagnosis of PTSD, one diagnosis of OCD, and many other small life moments in between. And I would truly be a shell of a human if it wasn't for her. And plot twists that no one saw coming, she's incredibly supportive of my EFT work. And we talk about it almost every session now. She's proud of me for doing something I believe in. She has seen improvements in me when I'm coming in for sessions. And we don't talk like competitors because we're not. And I think it's so beautiful when you can even reach out to people in similar areas of industry or practices or whatever and have fruitful conversations. Like I've even talked to her about growing my practice because she built her own therapy practice. So like she is definitely qualified in business and providing services like this to people. Our target audiences overlap a little bit, and it's also brought us closer, I think. Again, you you're not really supposed to have a personal relationship with your therapist, but I feel like we both now see a different side of each other, one that's interested in business and entrepreneurship and leadership. And it's just been really nice. I can't complain, and I love that we can talk about these things in between when I'm sobbing about my daddy issues. So I want to step back and talk about the benefits of both of these modalities and things that I've noticed doing them both at the same time. Starting with talk therapy, I think it helps create a safe space where you can explore what's going on beneath the surface. Even if it's not a physical space, especially in this post-pandemic era where a lot of things are virtual, it's still knowing that at the same time you can really expect to talk to the same person. You don't need to rehash things all over again. They're not here to judge you, and you can just talk about whatever is going on. It is time specifically for you, and you don't have to share with anyone what happens in there. People don't even have to know you go to therapy if you feel some sort of way and you don't want to. And a good therapist helps you uncover patterns and beliefs because no, like they're not supposed to directly tell you the answer. They're supposed to help steer your ship into the direction of healing and what will serve your best and highest good. They're also great support to have when you're going through something challenging. Again, there's something so comforting knowing that you can go to someone who isn't in your day-to-day, who has no stake in what happens to you, and be able to talk like a regular human being. Especially for hyper-functioning, independent, vigilant women. I think leaning on this form of community is really helpful. And I know when we think about community, that word, we think of a bunch of people, right? But I think you can have a community of two. And this is a form of support that you can get no matter what's going on in your life. You can always rely on it. And you have someone in your corner. And I think that's something that's so special. And again, I am a woman who resonates with all of those things, and it has meant so much to me to have this constant support in place to go. And a benefit of therapists, I don't think people talk about enough, is that they've always got a guy. No matter what you're going through, if you're looking for a doctor, a specialist, something, at least my therapist, she always has a guy. Like when we were talking about exploring different medication options for me, she knew a great psychiatrist to refer me to. And I still go to her. I love her. And outside of those literal referrals, my therapist loves to share with me either book recommendations, learning about new or different theories, things to consider. Like I remember one of our very early sessions, she sent me information about highly sensitive people. And it was really eye-opening to me, not only being sensitive in the way that we think about it with our emotions, but people who are sensitive with emotions are typically sensitive in other ways, including physical ways. Like they might be more sensitive to noise, more sensitive to the sun, more sensitive to smells. And that made me feel so much better because that all resonated with me. So it wasn't like I was just overreacting. It's like I truly am a sensitive person in all of the ways. And it made me feel so much more seen by her. And to then talk to other people in my life and have them understand me a bit better by understanding that not only sensitive in this one area of my life, that it's truly across the board. And now switching over to EFT and what EFT does really well is working with the mind-body connection because we are literally tapping on our physical body while acknowledging certain beliefs or patterns at the same time. And this is something that doesn't come with talk therapy unless you have a therapist who is specialized in T, EMDR, some other kind of physical sensation. You're typically just getting one of those things in talk therapy. And this helps regulate your nervous system because we tap on specific acupressure points to help bring the body out of fight or flight, that helps bring the body out of a survival response into a rest and digest period. And within that rest and digest, that's when we're able to rewire our beliefs because our body feels safe enough to be open to it and to receive it. And something I think people misconceive about FT is that it helps you get rid of limiting beliefs or it helps you get rid of these patterns. And I think more than anything, it's reducing the emotional charge behind those limiting beliefs and patterns. Because to a point, that those are all part of our story, right? Like we don't just magically go from having daddy issues one day to being completely healed another. And those daddy issues can influence the way that you move through your life, even if you don't have the emotional charge around it anymore. So it's easier to talk about certain things or reflect on them when the emotional charge is gone and you're able to be more of an observer of what is going on with you. And through this work, it helps create more capacity to stay present when things are getting difficult. And if you've been learning about wellness, nervous systems, tomatic practices, we talk a lot about capacity. And you might have even heard the term window tolerance before. So what this means, and a good example of this, is that when we expand our capacity and our nervous system, we're able to be less reactive to things, and we are able to take it on a little bit again, more like an observer. So an example I love is thinking about a cup of water. An example I love is to think about an empty cup. And this cup is going to represent our capacity. So if you wake up one morning and your glass is empty, it's able to take on the water that's representing burning your hand on the curling iron, your kid is screaming, your boss sent you a nasty email at work, and you're able to hold these things in a safe way because you have capacity. Whereas if you wake up and your cup is full of water, as it's taking on the additional things that I just mentioned, it is overflowing. You can't contain it. And that's where we become reactive, stressed, down on ourselves. That's where all of this comes from. So again, it's not like when we're healing our nervous system, we are getting rid of having these emotions altogether. It's that we're creating space for them to coexist. So what I've personally noticed having so what I've personally noticed before and after EFT integration with my therapy is therapy used to sometimes feel like I was building the airplane while flying it. I was trying to process things in real time while being a bit dysregulated. And once I started doing EFT, I was able to come to therapy a little bit more prepared to talk about things and work on things because I wasn't as reactive. I was more of this observer figure. And I could be a little bit more curious about my patterns, my limiting beliefs and memories instead of immediately being overwhelmed by them. And when I started having this combination, we were able to discuss topics that I wasn't really able to touch before. I didn't feel ready, or it was like I was going through something entirely different. So no, I'm not gonna talk about this long-standing issue that I have when I'm currently trying to get through something else. And I feel like it's truly allowed me to go in deeper and to have more meaningful EFT sessions to be in this space. And it felt like EFT was helping me create more internal safety to match the physical safety I felt with my therapist, and we could talk about deeper things in a more meaningful way. So, what I'm hoping you walk away after listening to this podcast is remembering that things aren't black and white. Multiple things can be true. You don't have to choose one or the other, and this can go for anything else. You don't have to choose Pilates over yoga, you don't have to pick being vegan, being vegetarian, or being keto. Healing is more impactful when you allow balance and when you allow different things that you enjoy to mesh together. This is not a competition to win over your nervous system. Your nervous system doesn't honestly give a fuck about how you get to a regulated place. All it cares about is that you get there. So if EFT works for you, amazing. If EFT gives you more anxiety, don't do it. Do what works for you. And I truly believe when we can thoughtfully and consciously layer different modalities together, that's when even deeper healing can happen. And I hope that maybe if there's a different modality or technique or practice that you've been thinking about doing, but you don't want to cannibalize anything else that you're doing, I hope this invites you to just try it out. Honestly, what's the worst that can happen by adding one more helpful thing? It's like adding one more vegetable to your salad. Like, oh, you're just gonna make it taste more delicious and be healthier. Boo-hoo, it's it's such a problem. So if there's any other kind of practice, whether it's somatic or anything else that you're interested in hearing my perspective on and how it compares to any other modality, I would love to hear. Feel free to share it with me, whether it's DMing, commenting on this episode, or wherever you can find me, because I am everywhere. All right, until next time, be well.