If you’ve seen a practitioner work together with somebody or Robert Smith tap on someone on his videos, you probably noticed that the emotions, feelings, and sensations are addresses most of the time. Indeed, the kinesthetic sensory mode is the one that is used by people most frequently to represent their issues. Even the name FasterEFT includes “EFT”, which stands for Emotionally Focussed Transformations. However, all this doesn’t mean that if you can’t feel anything as you think about your problem the modality can’t help you! Now, I’m going to show you what to do in such a case and what its possible reasons are.

Is it safe to feel?

You may have repressed your emotions in the past, which makes it difficult to feel today. That’s what I did in my childhood as well because I felt like it wasn’t safe to express myself. Before that, I had cried because of even the smallest things, and I believed I only bothered others and it was an unmanly thing to do. (I think this last belief is part of our culture.)

If this sounds familiar to you, try saying to yourself, “It’s safe to feel. It’s safe to notice how I feel.” You can go further and ask yourself, “If I could feel anything, what would I feel?” Notice if there’s any shifts in your body. This might be well enough to make it easier to become aware of what emotions/feelings/sensations are created in your body (and also how sharp, dull, hard, soft, tight etc. they are), but you may also notice some resistance at this point which you can tap on.

The VAKOG representational system

As I mentioned at the beginning, kinesthetic is the most common sensory mode, which means that most people represent their issues through feelings, emotions, or sensations. However, a lot of people not (only) feel but see, hear, taste, and/or smell something. These sensory modes make up the VAKOG system (where VAKOG is made up of 5 words: Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic, Olfactory, and Gustatory).

As everyone processes their problems differently, you may do so not through feelings, emotions, or sensations, but things you can see, hear, taste, or smell. So, notice how you know you have a problem. As you see something when thinking about it, notice how close or far you can see it from you, whether it’s in black and white or in colour, a still picture or a film etc. If you can hear something, how loud is it, where is it coming from, what’s its tempo like (if it has any)? In the case of smells or tastes, notice how pleasant/unpleasant, sweet/salty/bitter etc. it is. Just pay attention to these, and notice how strong they are and how you react to them. And only then start tapping.

If initially it’s difficult being aware of these different sensory modes, don’t worry! The more you tap the better you become at keeping track of what you’re doing inside you. So far you’ve practised representing your problems a lot—which may have involved repressing certain things or you’ve done them so often you don’t even realise how you’re doing them—and now you need to do something else (i.e. use tapping as a new skill) to resolve them.

Beyond the VAKOG system

When I ask people how they know something bothers them, all some of them say is “I just know.” There’s no problem when this happens either: just focus on the part of you that knows whether what you’re doing inside you bothers you or is not good.

Conclusion

It’s perfectly normal if you can’t feel anything. Possibly, it haven’t been safe to feel, you’ve practised your problems so much that you no longer realise how you do them, or you just use different sensory modes to represent them. In the first case, you can work on not being safe to feel, otherwise, it’s only a matter of practice and you’ll be able to aim what you do inside yourself.