Rule of Emotional Logic 1: The purpose of all negative emotions is to keep us safe.

This is the most important aspect of Emotional Logic. Whatever the emotion you may actually be feeling, ultimately it is rooted in Fear. The emotion you are having is designed to prevent or somehow avoid the thing that your unconscious thinks is a threat to you. The Fear can take many guises, for example:
- Performance nerves or anxiety are a fear of failure, of being judged negatively by others, or even a fear of being noticed.
- Cravings are a fear of not having enough or of not being able to calm underlying anxiety.
- Anger is usually triggered by loss or violation, plus an assumption (fear) that the loss is irrecoverable.
- Procrastination can be a fear of success, or a fear of failure
- Work Stress can involve multiple fears including the fear of losing one's job, the fear of not getting a pay rise or promotion, or simply the fear of not performing to one's own standards.

How can we use this knowledge when applying EFT? Start by looking for what you might be afraid of in the situation - what might happen - and what might NOT happen. When it’s proving hard to find the “core issue” for a problem, ask yourself “What do I fear will happen if this emotion goes away?” Often, asking this question will reveal what the problem emotion is keeping you safe from. For instance I was working with someone on their issue of “putting themselves forward in the world" (specifically relating to building up their business). We went around the issue a few times and kept coming up against Safety as a problem. I asked “If you didn’t have this fear of being out in the world, what would happen?”. The answer was “I’d be noticed, and that would be dangerous”. This triggered some childhood memories of when being noticed was a definite danger – neutralizing these memories with EFT resulted in the fear of moving forwards also being reduced.

If you can't find the specific fear involved in the situation, it's still worthwhile assuming there is SOME fear involved and using a general setup statement such as:
                                     "Even though there's a fear behind this problem, I deeply and completely..."
Your emotional mind will know what it is, even if you don't.