If you were referred here by something said previously that angered or frightened you, or if you’re just generally afraid that even thinking about White racism, let alone trying to dig it out of your psyche, will make you think so ill of yourself that you’ll have to make yourself sleep on the couch for the duration, you’ve come to the right place. “Perfect love casts out fear,” says the first epistle of John. By the same token, we might say that perfect fear casts out love.

Tapping, which works on acupressure points, is one of those modalities that were being jealously guarded when I first encountered it, though unbeknownst to me, in fact the knowledge of working on acupressure points is found in different cultures all around the world, of course, because the pressure points are the same on everyone and people can discover things, or think of things, independently. Now books about it have been written and published and it’s all over the Internet. Simply, it’s great for clearing fears, phobias, anxiety, and anger—the cortisol-fueled emotions that are pumped out of our adrenal glands and make our lizard brains think strange things and do stupid stuff. It works well for hate, too. A friend of mine once relayed something a teacher of hers had said about the difference between anger and hate: “Anger is like a hamburger—you cook it quick. Hate is like a stew—you keep it cooking, you keep stirring it, and you keep adding little things to it.” A steaming toxic stew, with anger and fear as the primary ingredients. We can tap on that, too.

There are those who are so enthusiastic about tapping that they may say it’s good for just about everything. It’s always good to remember that there is nothing in this world that’s the be-all and end-all; purely anecdotally and as a caveat, I tried using tapping to get over an addiction to computer games, and it removed all my anxieties and inhibitions about playing computer games. I played them more than ever and just wasn’t so worried about it anymore, until I finally got over it by means of an entirely different spiritual ruse (see Appendix A).