Cravings rarely appear out of nowhere. Most people who struggle with emotional eating can name the moments when food becomes a solution: the 3 pm slump at work, the quiet after the kids are in bed, the drive home after a tense meeting, the loneliness of a Sunday afternoon. Those moments hold a charge in the body, not just the mind. The heart rate lifts, the jaw tightens, the stomach knots or turns heavy. Reaching for food helps because it shifts state fast. EFT therapy, short for Emotional Freedom Techniques and often called tapping, offers a way to turn toward that charge and reduce it without relying on willpower alone.
I learned EFT working in clinics where clients bounced between diets and shame. The pattern felt familiar: immense effort during the week, then one surge of stress that toppled the plan. Adding tapping did not turn clients into different people. It gave them a method to change their body’s stress response in the moments that mattered. Over time, many found that cravings faded in intensity, frequency, or both. Not every person responded the same way. The ones who improved used EFT as part of a broader set of tools drawn from CBT therapy, anxiety therapy, and sometimes depression therapy. Some even used it with their partners, alongside couples therapy, to lower conflict-driven eating.
What is EFT in this context
The acronym EFT can mean two different therapies. Emotionally Focused Therapy is a well-established couples therapy focused on attachment patterns. Emotional Freedom Techniques is a brief, somatic-cognitive method that combines focused attention on a problem with tapping on standardized acupressure points. This article is about Emotional Freedom Techniques for cravings and emotional eating.
The EFT process is simple enough to learn. You identify a troubling feeling or urge, rate its intensity, voice a brief acceptance statement, and tap with your fingertips on points at the eyebrow, side of eye, under eye, under nose, chin, collarbone, and side of the hand. Each round takes about a minute. The method can look odd. The logic is straightforward: keep your attention on the trigger while you calm the physiology that has linked that trigger to urgency.
Several hypotheses attempt to explain why EFT may help. Some researchers frame it as exposure with safety signals, which can update fear-based learning. Others point to autonomic regulation, given that gentle facial and upper-body stimulation can affect vagal pathways. There are also likely expectancy and context effects, like with any ritual that promises relief. The best way to evaluate it is pragmatic: does tapping reduce the urge in your body right now, and can you reproduce that effect across situations you care about.
How cravings and emotional eating take root
Cravings ride on learning and physiology. High-sugar or high-fat foods deliver intense sensory rewards. Pair those rewards with relief from stress enough times, and your brain starts saving you time by predicting, then pushing you toward, the next hit. Add sleep debt, irregular meals, and blood sugar dips, and you carry a body that is primed to seek quick energy. Put that body in a work culture where breaks are scarce, or in a household where conflict spikes at dinner time, and you will crave.
From a therapy lens, I listen for three threads. One is the immediate trigger. It might be a Slack notification, a text from a parent, or walking past a bakery that smells like your grandmother’s kitchen. Another is the hidden payoff. Food might mask boredom, smooth conflict, or create a brief island of control. The third is the story you tell yourself about the behavior. Shame statements, like “I have no discipline,” fuel more distress, which then fuels more eating. EFT therapy works best when all three threads are named: the physical charge, the learned relief, and the self-attack that follows.
A weekend story from practice
A client, let’s call her Lina, came in worried about weekend overeating. Weekdays were structured. Saturdays dissolved into errands, kids’ sports, and open time. Around 5 pm, after a day of “managing other people’s needs,” as she put it, Lina would stand at the kitchen counter and start grazing as she cooked. Pasta while boiling, cheese while grating, a couple of cookies if she spotted them in the pantry. Dinner would happen, but the urge never really left.
We worked with EFT in specific slices. The first target was the moment she opened the pantry. Her words were, “I deserve something now,” followed by a hit of guilt. We set a two-week experiment. As soon as she noticed the pull, she would step to the hallway for two minutes and tap, naming the exact urge and the exact emotion. She recorded ratings before and after on a 0 to 10 scale.
By the end of week one, her average urge dropped from 8 to a 4 after two rounds of tapping. The behavior did not vanish. She still nibbled. What changed was speed and choice. She plated a small snack and sat down for it rather than standing at the counter. By week three, we tapped on a deeper layer: the resentment of doing all the weekend planning. That round brought tears and a hard sentence, “If I stop moving, no one will take care of me.” She shared that line with her spouse during a calmer moment. They rebalanced chores using a bit of relational life therapy structure, speaking directly, naming agreements, and not slipping into old patterns. The pantry habit faded to a 2 or 3 most days, spiking to a 7 when work pressure rose. When it spiked, she had something to do other than fight herself.
No single technique did the work. EFT blunted the urge in the moment. Clearer conversations lowered the load that created the urge. And practical food planning meant there was a ready snack at 4 pm. This layered approach is common when the goal is to loosen emotional eating without making food the enemy.
The basic EFT sequence for a craving
Use this as a field method. You can learn the points from any reputable diagram or a short video, then commit them to memory. The goal is not perfection. The goal is to stay with your felt experience while you downshift your body.
- Name and rate the urge. “I really want the ice cream right now, and I feel it as a pressure in my chest.” Rate it 0 to 10. Create a setup phrase. While tapping the side of the hand, say, “Even though I have this strong craving in my chest, I accept how I feel right now.” Tap a round on the points. Keep your attention on the craving and repeat a simple reminder like, “this craving in my chest,” as you tap each point. Check and adjust. Re-rate the urge. If it dropped, keep going for another round or two. If a new emotion shows up, like anger or sadness, target that next. Test. Imagine taking a bite or hold the food if available. If the charge jumps, tap again until it settles to a manageable level.
If strong memories surface, slow down. You can adjust your setup phrase to include the emotion or image that appeared. If you feel flooded or numb, that is data. Many people do best with short rounds, frequent grounding breaks, and a gentle pace in the first week.
Crafting phrases that actually land
The most common mistake in EFT is using generic words. Your body needs you to point at the thing with some precision. Compare “this craving” to “this thick, sticky pull to eat something cold and sweet as soon as I close the laptop.” The second phrase recruits more of your neural network. Specificity matters with emotions too. “I feel bad” is too vague. Try “tight, jumpy, and braced against the next email” or “heavy and slow, like moving through syrup.”
Balance honesty with acceptance. I resist sanitizing language in the setup phrase. If your mind says, “I hate that I want this,” you can name that. Then add something like, “and I am open to being kind to myself right now.” Acceptance is not approval. It is dropping the internal fight for a moment so your body can calm down.
What to expect in the first two weeks
For most clients, the first week is uneven. Some cravings melt within two minutes. Others barely budge. That variability is not a verdict on you or on EFT. Often, the sticky urges link to deeper themes like disappointment, loneliness, or anger. Keep sessions short, two to five minutes, and frequent. Track two things: the average drop in intensity after tapping and any shifts in behavior. A 2-point average drop is meaningful. It makes room for a different choice.
By week two, pattern recognition kicks in. People discover that mid-afternoon fatigue responds quickly, while late-night loneliness asks for a different kind of attention. Some begin pairing tapping with a micro-plan, like making a cup of tea or stepping outside once the urge drops under a 4. In several cases, clients used tapping before work meetings, not for food, but to settle the same nervous charge that later drove evening snacking. That cross-context transfer is a good sign.
When EFT is not enough on its own
EFT is a tool, not a life philosophy. Some situations need additional or different support. Use this quick screen to decide when to integrate other approaches or seek more comprehensive care.
- Binge episodes with loss of control, frequent compensation, or medical risk. Persistent depression symptoms such as anhedonia, psychomotor changes, or daily hopelessness. Trauma reactions, dissociation, or panic that intensifies with tapping. Complex relationship dynamics where food becomes the third party in conflicts. Significant executive function challenges that derail meal planning and sleep.
Each of these can be addressed with structured interventions. Evidence-based anxiety therapy and depression therapy can work alongside EFT. If appetite changes come with mood episodes, a psychiatric evaluation might be indicated. For binge patterns or a history of trauma, a therapist trained in trauma-focused CBT therapy, EMDR, or parts-work can help you move carefully. When fights with a partner set the stage for night eating, couples therapy brings the system into the room so food does not carry the weight of unspoken needs.
Pairing EFT with CBT therapy
CBT therapy offers a sturdy frame: identify cues, beliefs, emotions, and behaviors, then run experiments that update the model. EFT therapy fits inside that frame at the moment of cue exposure. Here is how the pairing looks in practice:
- Use CBT to build a detailed chain analysis of a typical episode. Map the time of day, setting, thoughts, body sensations, actions, and consequences. Drop tapping into the hottest links in the chain. If the sharp rise in urge happens when you smell dinner cooking, tap there. If it happens while scrolling after midnight, tap there. Run weekly experiments. For instance, “On three nights, I will tap for two minutes when the urge exceeds a 6 and then practice a 10-minute delay before deciding about food.” Track results like a scientist. Challenge core beliefs during tapping. When a thought like “I blew it at lunch, might as well give up” shows up, make it the target. People often discover that once the body softens, the thought loses credibility.
CBT also helps you install the basics that make cravings easier to handle: regular meals with adequate protein and fiber, consistent sleep windows, and realistic plans for high-risk times. It is not glamorous, but physiology sets thresholds for your coping skills. If you are underfed or underslept, every urge will feel like a five-alarm fire.
Linking EFT with relationship work
Emotional eating often sits in a relational web. The person who eats to steady themselves during conflict is not a weak-willed individual. They are applying the fastest regulator they know. Couples therapy can reduce the frequency and intensity of the conflicts that spark eating. When I work with partners, I teach them how to notice escalation early, call for a pause, and use a brief tapping round separately before returning to the conversation. This is not a gimmick. It is acknowledging that nervous systems need downshifts to think clearly.
Relational life therapy gives another structure: speak in direct language, own your part, and negotiate without scorekeeping. I have seen partners agree to micro-changes that altered eating patterns, like a 20-minute decompression window after work with no problem-solving, or a Saturday rotation for dinner planning. When the home environment becomes less reactive, food stops serving as armor, and change sticks.
Coaching the work context
Several clients found their cravings surged at work. The link was not hunger. It was performance anxiety and constant switching. A bit of career coaching helps here. We clarified values, set tight boundaries around break times, and used tapping as a pre- and post-meeting regulation tool. For a software manager whose late-afternoon snacking mapped to code reviews, the combination of a two-minute tap, a glass of water, and a five-minute walk dropped evening calories by 150 to 300 on most weekdays. That is not a magic number. It was a visible, measurable shift that mattered to him.
Research, without the hype
EFT for cravings has been tested in small to medium randomized trials. In several studies, participants who used tapping reported significant short-term reductions in craving intensity compared to controls that received education or sham tapping. Laboratory tasks that presented images or smells of desired foods showed drops in self-reported urge after a few rounds. Some research has reported decreases in cortisol after tapping sessions and improvements in anxiety or depressive symptoms over weeks. Results vary. Not every study shows large effects, and the field includes debate about mechanisms and study quality.
What I take from the literature is this: tapping appears safe for most people, easy to learn, inexpensive, and capable of producing meaningful short-term reductions in subjective craving for many. As with any self-regulation skill, dose and context matter. Daily practice builds fluency. Combining the method with structured therapy and practical planning improves durability.
Troubleshooting common hiccups
Some people yawn, sigh, or feel spacey during or after tapping. Yawning is often a sign of downregulation. Feeling floaty can mean you need to re-ground: open your eyes wide, look around the room, press your feet into the floor, or switch to tapping on the collarbone only while breathing steadily. If you notice urges hopping from one food to another, treat that as success revealing a layer beneath the surface. Once the top target softens, a linked emotion or memory may ask for attention.
Another predictable snag is boredom. The novelty of tapping wears off. Build a light ritual so you actually do it. I like a two-minute timer, specific language, and a cue like closing the laptop lid or washing your hands before cooking. You can also pair tapping with an implementation intention: “If my urge hits a 6 after dinner, then I tap for two minutes before making a choice.”
Some worry that if they tap cravings away, food will become joyless. That has not been my experience. The goal is not to make you indifferent to chocolate or ramen. It is to give you the option to choose them when you want them, in amounts that feel aligned with your health, not as reflexive anesthesia for stress.
Building an environment that supports the work
Therapy tools thrive in friendly ecosystems. Start with your kitchen. If certain snack foods trigger autopilot eating, consider storing them out of reach or buying single-serve portions while you practice regulation. If late meals push you into ravenous cooking, put a backup meal in the freezer or keep a protein-forward snack in the front of the fridge.
Sleep matters. A week with five hours of sleep per night can raise hunger and cravings notably compared to seven or eight hours. You do not have to perfect your sleep. Aim for a consistent window and dimmer evenings. Movement helps too. A 10 to 20-minute walk blunts stress hormones and improves insulin sensitivity. On high-pressure days, that walk might prevent the spike that makes tapping necessary.
Social context plays a role. If a roommate pressures you to “live a little,” have a clear line ready: “I’m practicing feeling my cravings before I decide. Give me two minutes and ask me again.” That sentence has defused more awkward offers than any lecture about health.
Safety and ethics
If tapping stirs up painful memories, especially from earlier life, treat that as a sign to slow down and bring the work into a therapeutic setting. Skilled clinicians can titrate exposure, integrate grounding, and make sure you are not white-knuckling through trauma. If tapping reduces urges but you are also restricting calories to the point of dizziness, that is not therapeutic progress. Health includes adequate nutrition, not just fewer snacks.
For clinicians, especially those offering anxiety therapy or depression therapy, consider teaching EFT as a self-regulation skill, much like paced breathing. It fits into brief visits and supports homework adherence. For dietitians, use it to extend the reach of your sessions into real-world moments. For coaches, including those providing career coaching, it offers a way to help clients regulate in high-stakes settings without drifting into psychotherapy territory. Stay within your scope. Refer when the patterns indicate an eating disorder or mood disorder that requires specialized care.
An everyday script to try
Here is a compact script you can adapt. Bring the exact craving and emotion into the words.
Even though I have this strong pull to eat something sweet right now, and I feel it as a buzzing in my throat and jaw, I accept how I feel and I am open to being kind to myself.
This buzzing in my jaw.
This urge for cold, sweet comfort.
This tight, restless energy from that last meeting.
This belief that https://telegra.ph/Couples-Therapy-for-Navigating-In-Law-Boundaries-05-06 I deserve a treat right now.
This mix of pressure and relief in my chest.
Pause. Rate again. If sadness or anger appears, adjust.
Even though I feel angry that I have to hold everything together, and that makes me want to eat, I honor that feeling and I am open to finding steadier ground.
Keep it real. If you feel nothing shifting, say that too. Sometimes the line that unlocks the work is blunt honesty: “Even though I do not want to tap and I just want the chocolate, I am open to trying this for sixty seconds.”
The arc of change
People often notice three stages. First, a technical win: the urge drops from an 8 to a 4. That is a foothold. Second, a content shift: the same two or three emotional themes show up under many cravings. Loneliness on weeknights. Resentment on weekends. Performance anxiety on workdays. You start targeting the themes, not just the food. Third, a systems change: you renegotiate routines with your partner, you protect your lunch break, you add a pre-drive ritual before you pass that fast-food exit. The food loses its job as your only regulator.
None of this requires perfection. It asks for practice and truthful observation. If you track even a month, you will likely see that certain times and places account for most of your struggle. Target those with EFT therapy. Where you need structure, bring in CBT therapy techniques. Where you need repair, make room for couples therapy or relational life therapy. Where work fuels the cycle, use elements of career coaching to cut friction and build better boundaries.
I have watched clients reduce their weekly episodes from daily to twice a week within six to eight weeks. I have also seen people stall at a stubborn plateau. Those plateaus usually break when we integrate the next piece, whether that is a sleep intervention, a renegotiated chore schedule, or treatment for underlying anxiety or depression that saps energy. The path is not linear. It is human.
If cravings and emotional eating have felt like private battles, consider testing EFT for two weeks. Keep it simple, two to five minutes at the key moments. Let data guide you. If you see even a small, repeatable drop in intensity, you have a lever you can pull in the moments that used to feel inevitable. From there, build the supports that make relief sustainable, and let food return to its rightful place in your life: nourishment, pleasure, and connection, not the only door out of stress.
Name: Jon Abelack Psychotherapist
Address: 180 Bridle Path Lane, New Canaan, CT 06840
Phone: 978.312.7718
Website: https://www.jon-abelack-psychotherapist.com/
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Jon Abelack Psychotherapist provides psychotherapy in New Canaan, Connecticut, with support for individuals and couples seeking practical, thoughtful care.
The practice highlights work and career stress, relationships, couples counseling, anxiety, depression, and peak performance coaching as key areas of focus.
Clients can meet in person in New Canaan, while virtual therapy is also available across Connecticut and New York.
This practice may be a good fit for adults who feel stretched thin by work pressure, relationship challenges, burnout, or major life decisions.
The office is located at 180 Bridle Path Lane in New Canaan, giving local clients a clear in-town option for counseling and psychotherapy services.
People searching for a psychotherapist in New Canaan may appreciate the blend of therapy and coaching-oriented support described on the website.
To get in touch, call 978.312.7718 or visit https://www.jon-abelack-psychotherapist.com/ to schedule a free 15-minute consultation.
For map-based directions, a public Google Maps listing is also available for the New Canaan office location.
Popular Questions About Jon Abelack Psychotherapist
What does Jon Abelack Psychotherapist help with?
The practice focuses on psychotherapy related to work and career stress, couples counseling and relationships, anxiety, depression, and peak performance coaching.
Where is Jon Abelack Psychotherapist located?
The office is located at 180 Bridle Path Lane, New Canaan, CT 06840.
Does Jon Abelack offer in-person or online therapy?
Yes. The website says sessions are offered in person in New Canaan and virtually across Connecticut and New York.
Who does the practice work with?
The site describes work with both individuals and couples, especially people dealing with stress, communication issues, burnout, relationship concerns, and major life or career decisions.
What therapy approaches are mentioned on the website?
The site lists Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Emotionally Focused Therapy, Gestalt Therapy, and Solution-Focused Therapy.
Does Jon Abelack offer a consultation?
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What is the cancellation policy?
The FAQ says cancellations must be made within 24 hours of a scheduled appointment or the session must be paid in full, with exceptions for emergency situations.
How can I contact Jon Abelack Psychotherapist?
Call 978.312.7718, email jonwabelacklcsw@gmail.com, or visit https://www.jon-abelack-psychotherapist.com/.
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