If you have been diagnosed with, or have been suffering from:
- Generalized anxiety disorder
- panic attacks
- PTSD
- stress
- seasonal affective disorder (SAD)
- a chronic disease that gives you anxiety
You are not alone. Anxiety disorders affect about 40 million American adults (about 18%).
There are many types of pills, capsules, counseling options and therapies being sold as a treatment for anxiety. What Chinese medicine offers is nothing less than something completely different. Your acupuncturist seeks the root of your disorder, will help redefine your anxiety, tapping into essence of who you are, what your purpose is, and how you are seeking it.
Sound like a monumental task? It is not easy, or else these “silver bullet” treatments would be a lot more effective. Anyone looking for a magic bullet need look elsewhere. Our relationship will be one of trainer and trainee, student and teacher, physician and patient. Finding peace from anxiety requires re-training of your body’s innate communication system, educating the conscious mind, and developing a lifestyle that supports you.
The heart governs the emotional body. When any of the other organs is out of sorts, the heart responds by sending a signal to our consciousness that something is amiss. That signal sent by the heart is what most of us term ANXIETY. The important piece to take away from this is that anxiety is only a signal of deeper imbalance. Blocking the signal is like “killing the messenger”. The result is that you will get another signal in time, one that is deeper, louder, and probably more physically related so that it is harder to ignore. Acupuncture and its related experience will help you find out where the signal is originating from, and support you in clearing imbalance at the root.
Emotions can damage the body and cause specific symptoms over time, or when experienced beyond our capacity to cope for even a short time. On the other hand, the part of us that governs each emotion also contains an important part of our character that, when balanced, benefits us greatly. Health is the ability to feel emotions to counter insult to our emotional system, then to turn it into virtue by correct thinking and action. These are listed in the final column below.
| Emotion | Corresponding Organ | Imbalanced Emotion | Virtue |
| Anger | Liver | Anger, resentment, frustration, irritability, bitterness, and “flying off the handle.” | Benevolence, discernment, flexibility, esteem, patience |
| Fear | Kidney | Fearful, insecure, aloof, isolated, and have weak willpower. | Wisdom, contemplation, cleverness, concentration |
| Excited, Overjoyed, Fright | Heart | Delusional, guardedness, attachment, controlling | Insight, intimacy, mastery, propriety |
| Sadness, Grief | Lung | grief, sadness, and detachment | Righteousness, balance, purity |
| Overthinking | Spleen | Worry, dwelling, or focusing too much on a particular topic, excessive mental work | Integrity, altruism, reciprocity, engagement, adaptability |
Research:
From a 2007 review of 12 studies, acupuncture was found to benefit anxiety disorders, though the number of subjects in each was limited.
- “Positive findings are reported for acupuncture in the treatment of generalized anxiety disorder or anxiety neurosis.”
- “Initial indications are that acupuncture, specifically auricular acupuncture, is more effective than acupuncture at sham points and may be as effective as drug therapy in [treating perioperative anxiety].”
Acupunct Med. 2007 Jun;25(1-2):1-10. 17641561
At Modern Point Acupuncture, we are experts in the treatment of anxiety, a common complaint of most of the patients we see on a daily basis. If you are having anxiety about acupuncture as a new and unknown experience, give us a call and we will speak with you over the phone, free of charge, to answer any questions you may have. Or, you can drop us a note through this website.
