Three Facet Tapping
Tapping is a great tool for defusing unhelpful emotions or stuck states, all you need to know is what to tap on! In some cases this is really obvious, we, or our clients, know the pain points, and it’s easy to bring tapping to bear to give quick relief.
In other cases what is causing us trouble is a tangled knot that is difficult to undo.
The process I am about to describe is one way to unpick those knots so that you can get the tapping to the place it’s really needed.
I have used this process with clients to get access to tappable issues, but more often I’ve used it for myself when I feel stuck or blocked and need to get to what is below the surface of the issue.
The tapping techniques themselves are easy to learn, but when you come to use it for yourself it can be difficult because:
- you don’t know where to start.
- you don’t know how to break the situation down into tappable issues.
- you can’t keep track of progress.
‘Three Facet Tapping’ is a simple, step-by-step process which is designed to help you:
- find a good place to start.
- have a systematic method to break a problem situation down into tappable pieces.
- give you a way of keeping track of progress and knowing what to focus on next.
Facets Of A Problem
There are many ways to look at problems, in this technique we divide the problematic situation into three distinct facets.
- The Situation: This is what is going on: The argument, the loss of the job, the illness and all the other difficult situations that people find themselves in.
- The Others: Unless you live alone on a desert island, most difficult situations involve other people who have a part in what is going on for you.
- Your Self: Finally, you and all your feelings, reactions, behaviours, ideas, beliefs, previous experience and all the rest of you are present in this situation.
Each facet of the problem can be unpacked and worked on using this simple process.
Try this experiment
- Get a piece of paper.
- Pick a modest problem of your own - tune into it for a few moments.
- Now complete the sentence *“It is …” (where “it” is the problem).
- Something will come to mind, write it down (don’t judge or edit what comes to mind, just write it down).
- Now complete the sentence “It is … “ again.
- Something else will come to mind, write that down as well.
- Now complete the sentence “It is … “ again.
- Something else will come to mind, write that down as well.
- Continue until no more “It is …” statements come to mind (either you are repeating yourself or ’the well has run dry’).
- Now you have a list of tappable issues, but which ones are important?
- Give each one an “intensity score” from 0 .. 10 (where 0 is no emotional intensity at all and 10 is very intense).
Each of these sentences will be an ‘aspect’ (to use an EFT term) of the problem, some of these sentences / aspects will have low scores, some will have much higher scores.
Now you have a list and the score, you can start tapping on highest score aspects to get the most effective response because the most intense aspects are probably the ones that are holding the problem in place.
Note: it is important to keep completing the sentence “It is …” until either the ‘well runs dry’ or you start repeating yourself. Sometimes the most relevant issue is the one that is most hidden from you, getting all the aspects from the “It is …” facet of the problem makes it more likely that you get to the deeper harder to see parts of the problem.
We have just unpacked one facet of the problem. We can apply the same process to work with the other two facets of the issue.
It is …
Completing “It is …” sentences will uncover:
- the description of the situation (the argument, the letter, the phone call)
- the emotional charge of the event itself.
- any judgements about the situation (it’s not fair, it shouldn’t have happened to me etc)
Once you have listed the statements and scored them from 0 to 10 you can use them for simple tapping setup statements and reminder phrases, or an IEP (Intention Tapping) releasing phrase.
For example:
“Even though it is not fair, I accept myself and how I feel.” or “I release all my emotional attachments to it’s not fair”.
You don’t need to think up any extra clever wording, what you have written down is perfect.
They are …
Completing “They are … " sentences will unpack all the things the other person or people did that contributed to this situation and your reactions to that including:
- judgements about the other people involved
- blames
- hurts
- resentments
- what they are doing
Once you have listed and scored all these phrases they can be used to create simple tapping statements like this:
“Even though they are unreasonable, I accept myself and how I feel.” or “I release all my emotional attachments to they are unreasonable”.
I am …
Completing “I am … " statements will uncover all the stuff that is going on in you and for you as a result of having this experience.
- feelings
- beliefs
- reactions to the situation
Once listed and scored, these statements can be tapped on using setup phrases like
“Even though I am disgusted, I accept myself and how I feel.” or “I release all my emotional attachments to I am disgusted”.
In each of these cases all you need to do is complete the sentences, score the results and put the sentences into a setup statement and reminder phrase then get tapping.
How this process might work
Let’s imagine that someone crunches into your car leaving a big scrape on the bodywork.
If you complete the sentence “It is … “, “They are …”, “I am …” lists you might come up with something like this (probably in much more colourful language). ![[Pasted image 20251204092653.png]]
From this list you can see that the “I am furious” statement has the highest charge so you might want to start tapping there.
Fortunately, you don’t need to tap on all the aspects to get relief
From the example above, you might think that you have to tap on all 14 aspects, but you don’t need to. Because these aspects will be interrelated you will probably find that many of the aspects are soothed ‘automagically’ when you sooth the most intense aspect(s).
Work your way through the list, giving each aspect a new intensity score. You will most likely find that some / most of those aspects have diminished in intensity.
Choose the aspect with the new highest score to work on next.
Repeat this process: re-scoring each aspect, and tapping on the aspect with the new highest score.
You will probably find that you only have to do a few of the important aspects to have a significant shift in the overall problem.
Summary Of The Process
- Get a piece of paper
- Briefly describe in writing the situation giving it an overall score
- Draw three columns, on the page, labelling them “It is …”, “They are …” and “I am “
- Start with “It is …” - Make a list of sentences that start with this until you have run out of reactions.
- Give each “It is …” statement a 0-10 score
- Write a list of sentences that start “They are … “ - continue until you have run out of statements
- Give each “They are …” statement a 0-10 score
- Write a list of sentences that start “I am …” - continue until you have run out of statements
- Give each “I am …” statement a 0-10 score
- Find the most intense statement and start tapping on that aspect.
- When you have neutralised that aspect, go through your three lists, giving each remaining aspect a new score.
- Start tapping on the new highest score.
- Repeat the re-scoring and tapping on the new intense aspect until the problem feels resolved.
That’s all there is to it. No profound insight about the situation is required, just working with what is present in experience can give you relief.
When to use this process.
You can use this process with clients to unpack problems, but I think it’s best use is as a paper and pencil way of guiding someone’s tapping when they are out of a session. So this may be a useful approach for client homework or as a self-help procedure.
I think it’s main benefit is for us as practitioners to get unstuck when there is no-one around to be our practitioner.
Important: This process is designed for everyday challenges not major catastrophes or traumas. If the situation you are facing is very intense or difficult, then get appropriate professional help to sort it out.