Work Stress Keeps Coming Back: What Your Trigger May Be Trying to Tell You

With Amy Vincze

One person at work can flip a switch in us and suddenly we’re not in a normal conversation anymore, we’re in panic, shrinking, or trying to disappear. That’s the moment we unpack today: why the colleague who “shouldn’t” have so much power over our mood might be activating an older emotional wound, and how we can calm the nervous system quickly and safely. 

I’m joined by Amy to talk about EFT tapping (Emotional Freedom Techniques) as a practical tool for workplace stress and work anxiety. We walk through three grounding questions you can ask yourself when the same stress keeps coming back: does this person remind me of someone from my past, what exactly about their behaviour makes me feel unsafe, and what is the real threat I’m reacting to? From fear of judgement and criticism to imposter syndrome and fear of rejection, we show how getting specific helps you tap on the true driver of the reaction instead of staying stuck in vague overwhelm. 

We also cover how often to practice tapping when you’re starting, why repetition lowers intensity faster, and an important caution around severe OCD where tapping may need a gentler approach with professional guidance. If you’re new to EFT, Amy shares a smart starting point: work through your “top fears” first, because symptoms like procrastination often trace back to deeper fear of failure, not being enough, or not belonging. If this resonates, subscribe, share the episode with a friend who’s carrying work stress, and leave a review. What workplace trigger do you want to reset first?

 As an EFT specialist myself, I was especially keen to explore this with Amy in a grounded, practical way for people dealing with work stress, anxiety and emotional overwhelm. 

About Amy Vincze

Amy Vincze is an EFT tapping coach with more than 16 years of experience and the founder of the Soar with Tapping App. She helps people use tapping as a practical self-regulation tool for stress, anxiety, emotional overwhelm and recurring emotional patterns.

 In this three-part series, Amy joins Cheryl to explore what tapping is, how it may help people steady themselves during workplace stress, and how repeated work anxiety triggers can be approached with more curiosity, safety and choice.

Website: https://soarwithtapping.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amy-vincze-1a86063

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/soarwithtapping/

Guest Resource

Soar with Tapping App Podcast Special

Listeners can visit the podcast special page to find a code for 50% off the first year of an annual subscription to the Soar with Tapping App.

https://soarwithtapping.com/podcast-special/ 

The contents of this podcast are for informational purposes only and should not be considered medical advice. If you have a specific health concern or condition, please consult a qualified Healthcare professional for more details. Check out herguru dot uk forward slash disclaimers

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:26

Hi Cheryl here, welcome to work, stress, anxiety. You know, sometimes the person upsetting us today isn't the whole story. Today's conversation explores how old experiences can quietly shape

Welcome And The Trigger Pattern

SPEAKER_00 0:46

our reactions at work and how EFT or emotional freedom techniques help break that constant cycle. So I hope you enjoy the episode. So hi, this is Cheryl. Welcome to work stress anxiety. I am here with Amy, and we are having another episode around EFT, and in particular, when the same work stress keeps coming back. So welcome, Amy.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

I'm excited to be here, Cheryl. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

I'm so happy to have you here. I'm so glad that we've been able to do this series of episodes around EFT. And what I was hoping to today, Amy, is to talk about a particular incident that may um may be affecting lots of women. They may have had an experience in their life, and they're now in a situation where let's imagine there's someone in their workplace

Why One Person Sets You Off

SPEAKER_00 1:53

who always makes them feel small or panicky around them. Maybe it's a particular manager or colleague. I was hoping that you might be able to explain what might EFT and tapping help them make them feel safer and you know more grounded in those kind of situations.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

So if I had a client come to me with that scenario, there's quite a few questions that I would want to ask first. And maybe your listeners can ask themselves these questions. Um sometimes it's difficult if you're not like conversing with somebody who knows how to ask the questions, but just trust, trust yourself and try to ask yourself these questions

Three Questions To Target Tapping

SPEAKER_01 2:32

and see if you can find an answer. If not, it doesn't mean that you can't tap through it. It just means that it's going to help inform what you're going to tap about. So the first question I would ask is something you and I discussed earlier is does this person remind me of somebody that has hurt me in the past? It could be a parent, it could be a sibling, it could be a partner or a friend maybe that you felt betrayed by. You know, something along those lines that reminds you of a past experience that made you feel unsafe somehow. That's going to be probably the number one reason why some person in particular triggers you. And I and then if the answer to that is yes, then that can inform how you tap around it. Um the next question I would want to ask myself is what is it about what this person is saying or how this person is treating me that makes me feel insecure or small? And you have to kind of do some internal investigations about what the feelings actually are. Is it insecurity? Is it fear that this person is a threat somehow? Is it, you know, maybe it's like imposter syndrome, like this person is intent on exposing you for a fraud? Something along those lines. So you have to do a little internal investigation and figure out what it is that actually feels scary or threatening about this person and makes you want to hide or makes you want to kind of go into that small place. And then the last question I would want to ask myself is what is the actual threat? Is it that I'm gonna get fired? Is it that this person is gonna see through me? Is it that they don't think that I'm good enough? They're judging and criticizing me. So those are those are three different topics that we can incorporate all of them into the tapping. But if it's a specific thing, if it's a that person reminds me of somebody, or if I'm I'm feeling this particular way, or if there's this particular threat, then we can really focus in on the tapping and be able to just acknowledge and honor that over and over again. But we can incorporate all three of those things in a tapping very easily too, and bring the intensity of those emotions way down in a very short period of time.

SPEAKER_00 5:19

Okay. And uh, I know you've got you've got your app saw with tapping, just say someone wasn't using the app, what sort of tapping routine would be ideal for them? Would it be something that they would practice every day or multiple times a day? What sort of thing would you suggest someone i is doing?

SPEAKER_01 5:39

I would say use it

Practice Frequency For Lasting Relief

SPEAKER_01 5:40

as often as you can until you don't feel those feelings anymore. I mean, if you need to use it several times a day in the beginning, make time and space to do that for sure. And then over time it's going to dissipate. But because the more time and energy you devote to it, the easier it is to get over and get around and even you like not have it be present at all. So I like to put it this way: like with working with an individual client, you know, we do a session together, it's 90 minutes. I make a recording after each one, and I say, if you can do this same recording, like two, three, four, even five times before we meet again, it's going to totally delete this issue, or make it so that your intensity around it is down to like a two on a scale from zero to ten, and we just have that much less to deal with, or we can wait until your next session. It's just going to take that much longer to neutralize. So, as often as you can do it, make that a priority because it will diminish the intensity every time.

SPEAKER_00 6:55

Okay. One of the other things I wanted to ask you was would you say there's any boundary to what can be treated with EFT and tapping? Is there anything that you would say definitely is a counter-indicator to it at all?

SPEAKER_01 7:14

The only thing that I have come across

Limits, OCD Caution, And Support

SPEAKER_01 7:16

that feels like it's not a good matchup is for people with severe OCD. And I'll give you an example. I have a client that she was concerned that she experienced some sexual assault when she was younger. And she started with obsessive thoughts about and worry about herself becoming a perpetrator. She had really obsessive thoughts about that. And we tried to work through that with tapping a little bit, and it made that voice louder in her mind, and that became problematic. And so I still think that there's a way to work with it, and I would just do it very, very gently and with the help and advice of a professional around that. But any anything else, I would try tapping on everything, everything, everything. I would not hold back because with everything that you're working on, there is always an emotional element to it. That doesn't mean that I would use tapping exclusively, because if there's a physical issue, I definitely want you to still seek medical advice around that. If there is a, you know, a nutritional issue, I would incorporate a lot of different modalities to work through something, but I wouldn't ever hesitate to use tapping on anything.

SPEAKER_00 8:39

Cool. Now you have got an app, Saw with Tapp In, and I know you have a 14-day free trial. Um what would you suggest they practice first so they they can start building their confidence in using tapping so that they're when they're in a more challenging emotional

Top Fears And Finding Root Causes

SPEAKER_00 9:00

situation, they use the tapping and then they can move on to something a bit more complex?

SPEAKER_01 9:06

Oh, this is a great, great question. And always my advice for somebody just starting and they want to work on some deeper stuff is to always go to we'll say your top 10 fears. And I'm not just talking about fear of spiders or fear of, you know, planes or something along those lines. I'm talking about deep fears, fears of not being enough, fear of judgment and criticism from other people, fear of rejection or abandonment. Those are all core, core fears that most people have to some degree. And it's working through those first that is gonna make your progress moving forward 10 times faster. For example, if you procrastinate, in my mind, it has been shown that that is a symptom of a deeper issue. And if you trace it all the way back to what the root cause is, it is always generally gonna be some kind of big fear: fear of failure, fear of not being enough, fear of, like I said, rejection or abandonment or fear of not belonging. Those are all massive, massive fears that most people have. And so you if you start there, it lessens the chance that procrastination is even gonna come up anymore, right? But if you keep just focusing on the symptoms of procrastination, procrastination, it's never ever gonna touch that root cause. So going down to the root cause could prevent you from ever having that some something like procrastination to deal with again. So top 10 fears, always my advice. That's the best place to start.

SPEAKER_00 10:51

Okay, now Amy, I really want to thank you for spending time with me today talking about EFT. I don't know if I've actually said what it is, but can you explain just before we go what is EFT?

SPEAKER_01 11:08

That's a good question. EFT is a healing modality that is a way for you to release and neutralize uncomfortable

What EFT Is And Closing Takeaways

SPEAKER_01 11:19

emotions. Uncomfortable emotions that live in our body if they don't get processed from trauma of any kind. It could be a big tea trauma, like a like a physical assault of some kind or a wartime trauma, or it could be a small tea trauma, which is more like maybe you had a really angry parent and you were scared to come home every day from school because you weren't sure what you were gonna get and felt like you were walking on eggshells all the time. That's more of like a small tea trauma. And but they all kind of create these fearful, uncomfortable emotions in our body that need to be processed so that they don't manifest into unwanted behavior or unwanted physical responses in our body, like pain or disease. In my mind, they all start with unprocessed emotion. So tapping is a great way to move through those emotions, neutralize them, and release them from our body so they don't cause more harm.

SPEAKER_00 12:22

Thank you, Amy. I want to thank you for your time today. I just want to say I'm such an advocate for EFT. I've used it myself, I continue to use it. When I learned it, I was so fascinated by how something so simple could be so effective, especially around work stress and work anxiety. Thank you so much for being with me today. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise. And is there anything that you'd like to say to my listeners before we go?

SPEAKER_01 12:57

Um, thank you for having me too, Cheryl. I've really enjoyed my time with you. And I just want to encourage people to just give it a try. It won't do any harm except for maybe that one scenario that I mentioned, and it will only help. And if you don't connect with it, you know, no harm, no foul. It doesn't mean that it doesn't work, it just means that it's not for you. So I would definitely encourage everybody to just try. Just try it out.

SPEAKER_00 13:29

You know, for me, one of the themes running through this entire conversation is that lasting change often happens and comes from addressing the root cause rather than constantly firefighting your symptoms. So whether you use EFT, emotional freedom technique, or another approach, for me understanding your patterns is one of the kindest things that you can do for yourself. So, bye for now.