Does Tapping Work as Well as Eye Movements in EMDR?

Not quite, based on the most direct comparisons available. Eye movements tend to edge out tapping on distress reduction, including one 2021 study where eye movements outperformed tapping by about 24%. But tapping isn’t a weak substitute. It calms your body just as effectively, and it’s the practical choice whenever eye movements aren’t possible.

What happens when researchers compare tapping and eye movements directly?

Most EMDR research tests eye movements against no bilateral stimulation at all, not eye movements against tapping. Head-to-head comparisons between the two are rarer. A few do exist.

A 2013 study in the Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry gave 64 patients a disturbing memory to hold in mind. Half had PTSD; half had other mental health conditions. De Jongh and colleagues compared eye movements to alternating tones and found a trend toward eye movements reducing the memory’s emotional charge more than tones did, in both groups. Tones aren’t tapping, but they belong to the same non-visual family of bilateral stimulation, so this points in a similar direction.

The more direct comparison comes from real EMDR sessions delivered over videoconference: a 2021 survey in Frontiers in Psychology asked 23 therapists about 102 sessions. Researchers found that eye movements produced significantly larger drops in subjective distress than tapping, by around 24%. That’s a real gap, but two caveats matter: this was therapists’ reported observations, not a randomized trial, and remote “tapping” usually means self-tapping, not a therapist-guided device.

Does tapping calm your body as well as eye movements do?

Here the picture flips. A 2025 study in BJPsych Open tested both stimulation types in the same people: 20 with PTSD, 20 without, each trying visual and tactile bilateral stimulation in turn. Both eye movements and tapping produced similar increases in calming brain-wave activity and similar drops in physical stress markers, no matter which one they used.

That split is worth sitting with. Eye movements may have a modest edge for taxing working memory, the mechanism most researchers point to for why bilateral stimulation softens a disturbing memory. But for the faster, simpler effect of calming your nervous system in the moment, tapping holds its own. Our deeper look at how bilateral stimulation affects your nervous system covers both mechanisms.

Here’s the split at a glance:

	Eye movements	Tapping
Distress reduction	Best-supported channel; edges ahead in direct comparisons	Real effect, usually a step behind eye movements
Calming the body (heart rate, brain activity)	Strong, well-documented effect	Matches eye movements closely
Good fit for	Default choice when it’s comfortable to sustain	Visual discomfort, telehealth sessions, dissociation risk, or personal preference

Why does EMDR default to eye movements, then?

History plays a large part. Eye movements are what psychologist Francine Shapiro noticed reduced the intensity of her own disturbing thoughts in 1987, as EMDRIA has documented. They’ve stayed the most-studied form of bilateral stimulation ever since, so most of EMDR’s evidence base was built on them. Our companion piece on why EMDR uses eye movements digs deeper into that mechanism.

Tapping and tones were added later as practical alternatives, not downgrades. The EMDR Institute lists all three, eye movements, tones, and taps, as legitimate forms of bilateral stimulation. A trained therapist switches between them based on how a client responds, not out of habit.

When is tapping actually the better choice?

Several situations call for it in practice:

• Eye movements feel uncomfortable or hard to sustain for a full set.
• You’re in a telehealth session, where guiding eye movements through a screen is harder.
• Holding eye contact with a moving target makes you feel more disconnected, not less.
• You simply focus better with a physical rhythm than a visual one.

None of this makes tapping a lesser option. It makes it the right tool for that person, in that moment.

Is this the same “tapping” as EFT?

No, and this mix-up is common. EMDR’s tapping is a plain left-right rhythm, alternating touch on the hands or knees, standing in for eye movements or tones. EFT tapping is a different technique entirely: a fixed sequence of acupressure points, tapped in order while you name the problem out loud. If you’re weighing those two against each other, rather than comparing stimulation types within EMDR, our EMDR vs EFT tapping comparison breaks that down fully.

Can you try tapping-based bilateral stimulation yourself?

Yes, for everyday stress. The butterfly hug is the simplest way in. Cross your arms over your chest, and tap your left and right upper arms in a slow, steady rhythm while a mildly stressful thought sits in mind.

If you’d rather follow a guided pace than count your own rhythm, EmEase, a self-guided EMDR app, offers visual and audio bilateral stimulation you can adjust at app.emease.com. Either way, treat this as a wellness practice for everyday stress, not a stand-in for therapist-led work on anything heavier.

So, does tapping work as well as eye movements?

Eye movements have the deeper research behind them, plus a modest, measurable edge on distress reduction. Tapping matches them closely on calming the body, and it’s a genuinely effective choice whenever eye movements are uncomfortable, impractical, or just not your preference. Neither one is the “real” version of bilateral stimulation. They’re two channels for the same mechanism, and the best one is whichever you’ll actually keep using.