Areas › Your body › Grounding and settling
Some people find it helps to tap lightly on points around the face and hands while saying out loud what they are feeling and that they accept feeling it. It is easy to try and hard to be sure about.
The full method comes with a sequence of points and a set number of rounds, and free manuals for it are everywhere. What it puts together is rhythmic tapping, saying the difficult thing out loud, and a line of self-acceptance, all of which have some standing on their own. Try it if you like the shape of it. Just hold your expectations loosely and notice whether it actually changes anything for you.
Qur’an and Sunnah
when hardship afflicts you, it is to Him alone you cry out for help (Quran 16:53). Saying the trouble out loud is older than any technique, and the technique is only borrowing it.
وَمَا بِكُم مِّن نِّعۡمَةࣲ فَمِنَ ٱللَّهِۖ ثُمَّ إِذَا مَسَّكُمُ ٱلضُّرُّ فَإِلَيۡهِ تَجۡـَٔرُونَ
Whatever good things you possess come from God, and when hardship afflicts you, it is to Him alone you cry out for help
Qur’an 16:53read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A systematic review of 132 self-help strategies used without a professional concluded that the evidence base for most of them, including relaxation and distraction, is much thinner than their popularity would suggest. That caution applies squarely here. It is a reason to keep trying things that seem to help you personally, and a reason not to treat any of them as settled.
Wolpert M, Dalzell K, Ullman R, Garland L, Cortina M, Hayes D, Patalay P, Law D. (2019). Strategies not accompanied by a mental health professional to address anxiety and depression in children and young people: a scoping review of range and a systematic review of effectiveness.. The lancet. Psychiatry doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Several things that separately help are bundled into one short routine, whatever the tapping itself contributes.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
The same check-in can take two minutes or fifteen. Match the length to the day you are actually having, not to the version you were taught.
If your child is learning to settle, learn it alongside them rather than supervising. Parents who practise report less stress of their own and less flying off the handle.
Say it plainly whenever you teach anything: the way I am showing you this is not the way it has to be done. Change it until it works for you.