One tap at a time

On a gloomy morning in February, I tapped for the first time.

And no, I’m not talking about tap dancing or tapping on someone’s door or any other task that may make more sense when you hear the word “tapping.” I’m talking about tapping meditation.

After starting 2024 with a new therapist, we spent about a month going over the problems I was facing and the anxieties I was feeling. One of the constant issues that I kept repeating to her was that I never really felt at peace in my own mind. I would seek out immediate gratification, like getting a sweet treat for myself or angrily writing in my journal for a few minutes, to momentarily appease whatever it was that I was feeling, only to return to the dark hole I created for myself minutes later. In response to this, she began to slowly introduce the idea of meditation to me, but I hadn’t quite realized what she was doing yet.

Until a gloomy morning in February.

***

On a gloomy morning in February, I listened to my therapist for the first time.

Since we began working together, she had been suggesting different ways we could start working on lowering the volume of the little voice inside my head that told me I wasn’t good enough or pretty enough or funny enough or smart enough or cool enough. She would send me links to 20-minute yoga sessions that I could do alone in my room, recommend books about mindfulness for me to read and suggest different types of meditation that I could try in order to feel more centered in my emotions.

Even though everything she sent me seemed very cool and vibey, there was something about it that discouraged me from trying it out. As my therapist sent me more meditations to try, I honed in on the fact that I didn’t perceive myself as someone who could even find what I was looking for in meditation, or in any other mindfulness practice for that matter. I had built a character out of myself in my mind and, in doing so, I unconsciously stunted my need for change and hindered my potential to grow outside of my all-consuming feelings.

Let me walk you through the image I had of myself in my brain. I have always perceived myself as a pretty uptight person. I’m fairly anxious, and I must also admit that I think I’m very controlling. I overanalyze situations a thousand times to try to find new answers to explain how I’m feeling, which tends to upset me even more. I often feel frustrated and insecure when things don’t go as I anticipated them in my head, and this makes me fall further down the rabbit hole of soul-permeating anxieties and stressors that often make me feel like I can’t breathe in my own body. This all sounds extremely uncomfortable, mainly because it is.

The way I perceive myself and how I chose to act upon these preconceived notions began to manifest themselves in my daily life. Between overanalyzing situations, rumination and general anxieties, my mind felt like an inescapable cage. However, it’s not an uncommon mindset to harbor as a young adult. More than 25% of college students suffer from anxiety. Anxiety, in its many forms, can leave people dealing with it feeling out of place in their own mind. This discomfort was undeniably manifesting itself in my mind, but even if it made me feel like an alien in the only space that is entirely my own, I believed them to be such a deep-rooted part of me that the idea of working to relax once in a while felt foreign and unachievable.

When I expressed this to my therapist, her explanation was fairly simple. She explained to me that, no matter how hard I tried to resist it, change is the only thing that is certain in life. Consequently, boxing myself and my personality up would eventually do me more harm than good. If I believed that I didn’t have the capacity to alter these harmful traits that so haunted me, it would only put me at a further disadvantage when trying to work on understanding myself and processing my feelings wholly and healthily.

Not to sound stereotypical, but at the end of this session, I could feel something actively shifting in my brain. As I jotted down a few last notes about what we had discussed in my journal, my therapist said that she was going to send me the link to an application called “The Tapping Solution.” She explained that it’s an app that provides users with several tapping meditations to try out whenever they feel consumed by an array of uncomfortable feelings. In simplified terms, tapping meditation aims to help you tune in to specific issues you want to address by tapping on nine of the 12 meridian points of the body, each of which corresponds to an internal organ. You start at the side of your hand, then you make your way to the top of your head. You eventually start moving down your body by tapping your eyebrow, the side of your eye and then under it. You follow this with tapping under your nose and under your mouth, your collarbone and finally under your arm. By engaging both the mind and the body, tapping’s main focus is to help you identify and make sense of your issues in full consciousness. 

There was something about tapping meditation that appealed to me in a way that other meditative practices didn’t. I finally felt ready to get to work.

***

On a gloomy morning in February, I woke up anxious.

I hadn’t slept well the night before. I tossed and turned in bed because my mind wouldn’t shut up. I didn’t know what exactly I was anxious about. I thought that maybe it was academic stress, but I had already submitted all of the assignments I had due. I was unsure why my mind wouldn’t let itself rest, and I was tired of feeling like there was no solution to my stress. 

As if my own mind was trying to tell me something, as I washed my face and readied myself for the day, I remembered the tapping meditation app my therapist had recommended that I download. To be completely honest, I’m a pretty superstitious person, so I took the fact that tapping came up in my mind as a sign to give it a try. What was the worst that could happen?

I finished getting ready for my 10 a.m. class and walked out my apartment door as soon as possible. I don’t know why, but I felt like walking as I tapped would calm me down even more. So, ignoring the fact that I probably looked insane as I walked around campus tapping my head, my eyes and my eyebrows, under my nose, my mouth and under my arm, I tapped for the first time.

These tapping meditations first attempt to validate your feelings as you begin to tap, then try to alter your approach to a stressful situation by encouraging you to acknowledge that it’s OK to change the way you feel as you continue to tap. In the end, the narrator checks back in with you to reflect on your feelings after completing the meditation. 

It sounds dramatic, but this first tapping experience was genuinely transformative for me. I’m very socially anxious but, for some reason, as I walked and tapped, I wasn’t worried about whether people were looking at me like I was crazy. I typically walk to class at a very fast pace, scared that I’ll get to my required location late, but this time, I paced myself to a walking speed that felt apt for the meditation I was doing. I even got to class a few minutes late, but instead of acting on the way I perceived myself as this uptight and anxious person, and instead of ruminating on the fact that I was late, I simply apologized to my professor for having lost track of time, found a seat and took the class in stride.  

On that gloomy morning in February, things started looking a little less gloomy inside my mind.

***

On a sunny morning in June, I completed my first five-day tapping challenge.

After encouraging me to try tapping meditation for the first time and seeing how excited I was about how it was making me feel, my therapist started recommending tapping challenges that she thought I would like and would be good for me to complete. Funnily enough, even though I already clearly enjoyed tapping and it made me feel at peace, I was apprehensive to actually sit down for five days straight and tap away. It felt like too large of a commitment and I didn’t feel like it would be as fruitful because it isn’t like I woke up every morning feeling anxious, right?

However, as summer began to bloom in full form, I realized that I couldn’t rely on tapping meditation to make me feel better only when I was at my worst. In order to stray away from my toxic cycle of immediate gratification and actually work toward improving my mood more solidly, I had to make a habit out of tapping. And so, despite how initially harrowing a five-day tapping challenge seemed, I sat down and hit play on the first of five meditations about improving one’s self-confidence.

The five-day Confidence Tapping Challenge curates a series of five different tapping meditations that center users in the current levels of confidence they possess in distinct facets of their lives and encourage them to alter their current states of being in beneficial ways. I purposefully started the challenge during the first week at my internship in order to enter this new chapter with an open mind. I decided to document how I felt before and after each meditation as a way to track my progress. 

The first meditation in the challenge is titled “Confidence to Take Action.” In my journal entry for that first morning, I note having woken up feeling very anxious but not being able to pinpoint exactly what it was that was triggering this feeling. I later note that, as I completed the meditation, lots of thoughts I wasn’t expecting to come up began to spawn into my mind as explanations for the anxiety I was feeling. A lot of decisions are coming up in my life, and I’ve never felt more insecure in my ability to make these decisions wisely than I do know. This, I discovered, was the main source of the anxiety I was feeling that morning, and I was able to identify it thanks to the meditation.

The next day, I opened “The Tapping Solution” app to find that the meditation I was scheduled to complete for that day was titled “Quieting the Critical Voice.” The little voice inside my mind often drives me to points of no return, so I knew this meditation would be interesting and beneficial for me, but even then, I almost didn’t complete it. I was close to giving up the challenge altogether, mainly because I hadn’t really woken up with any particular feelings of anxiety that day. In my post-meditation notes, however, I note feeling grateful that I ended up completing it. Throughout the meditation, I paid close attention to the way my posture shifted as I was guided through the tapping. I went from having my head held low and hunching my shoulders to sitting up straight and closing my eyes in relaxation. It was so interesting to see myself physically gaining confidence as I simultaneously challenged my mind. 

By the third day, I decided I wanted to try something different. I had completed the first two meditations sitting with my legs crossed, but I now wanted to see what it was like to tap laying down. So, I layed down flat on my back and spread my arms and my legs out so as to lay claim to my own bed. As I hit play on the meditation, which was ironically titled “Moving Beyond Your Comfort Zone,” I could feel the discomfort creeping into my bones. Contrary to the two very positive tapping experiences I had the two days prior, this tapping was not as enjoyable. In my journal, I write that I was uncomfortable throughout the duration of the meditation. Never once did I feel relaxed. It was as a result of this experience that I began to notice the importance of making a habit out of practices that are intended to heal your mind, body and soul. 

Onto the fourth day, and I felt like this challenge of mine was going downhill and there was no way back up. For starters, I wasn’t able to complete this meditation in the morning because I woke up later than I wanted to and basically had to rush out the door if I wanted to get to work on time. So, that night, before hitting play on a meditation titled “Stepping into Your Greatness,” my pre-meditation notes ran a bit longer than usual. I wrote about how work was OK, how much boys frustrate me sometimes and how yummy the frozen yogurt I had that afternoon was. After my little rant, the last thing I wanted to do was tap my hand and my head and my eyes over and over again. I just wanted to go to sleep. But alas, I knew I had to tap. 

This second to last meditation was undeniably a challenge. In my journal, I wrote that I believed it was the first meditation that calmed me yet made me feel tense all in the span of ten minutes. This meditation was also very eye opening for me, as I felt that I finally processed why tapping works for me in the first place. With each tap, I am reminded to concentrate on the journey I’m embarking on and the progress I want to continue making. Each tap brings me back to my center. 

Once the last day of the Confidence Challenge rolled around, I knew I wanted this meditation to be a centered one. I was a bit upset because I wanted to wake up early and exercise before work, but there was little I could do now that I had woken up later than I had intended. So, I got ready for work and had breakfast. A few minutes before I had to leave, I sat down in the dining room in my house and got to tapping. This final meditation, titled “Boost of Confidence,” was short and sweet. I closed my eyes and crossed one of my legs over the other, listening to what each tap was telling me. There was one sentence spoken by the narrator of this tapping meditation that really struck me. “Where I look is where I go.” 

As I completed the five-day confidence challenge, it became increasingly clearer to me that progress is never linear. One day, the morning meditation I was doing would feel great and would do exactly what I needed it to do to get me ready for the day. The next, it didn’t really do much to alter the state of feeling I was in. But I found that it was all in the habit I was creating for myself. It all lies in trying.

***

It took me a very long time to find the mindfulness practice that worked for me. Although I now feel confident and centered in the benefits that tapping meditation has on my own mental wellbeing and can safely assert that meditation overall is capable of improving the emotional wellbeing of many, it takes time to find mental health treatment that works for you. Even then, the number of options at our disposal is so overwhelming that sometimes it’s easier to steer clear from the possibilities altogether. 

Although therapy is the main outlet most people seek out to work on their mental health, and treatment for mental health is by no means a one way street. Testing the waters and exploring what really works for you is what will eventually benefit you in the long run. For me, this was tapping meditation. It might be something different for everyone, but you lose nothing in tyring. 

As I continue building the habit of tapping, I am constantly challenging myself. Some days are gloomy, while others are sunny. Some meditations are enjoyable, while others make me feel tense. But, at the end of each tapping, my mind becomes a bit less gloomy and a lot sunnier, one tap at a time.

Statement Correspondent Graciela Batlle Cestero can be reached at gbatllec@umich.edu. 

The post One tap at a time appeared first on The Michigan Daily.