Anxiety

Each of these causes above create hundreds of unique anxiety presentations. I have helped patients dealing with anxiety manifesting with:

• Panic attacks
• Chest pain or tightness
• Abdominal pain or tightness
• Rapid heartbeat
• Irregular heart beat
• Insomnia
• Worry or rumination
• Obsessive thoughts
• Difficult concentration
• Overwhelm
• Irritability
• Depression
• Mood swings
• Digestive irregularity
• Relationship difficulties
• Difficulty fulfilling life responsibilities or pursuing life goals

As you can imagine, each person’s anxiety is unique and has its own Chinese Medicine Diagnosis and individual treatment plan based on your combined symptoms, pulse and tongue. In order to resolve the anxiety, we together work on rebalancing the underlying cause. In some cases it may be important for you to work with another practitioner, like a therapist. I can help you find a perfect modality or practitioner to support you, if necessary.

Here are a couple of examples of how Chinese Medicine might look at your anxiety:

Heart Blood Deficiency: The body requires blood for the spirit to rest. When this aspect of the body becomes deficient there will be more chest symptoms and possibly insomnia. Ironically, the body generates blood at night when you sleep. Once insomnia starts happening, it becomes a negative feedback cycle, making it harder to resolve. Nourishing the blood with acupuncture, herbs and nutrition are important interventions to bring balance back to this condition.

Heart Heat: This is a more severe presentation with panic attacks, severe insomnia, incessant worry. It can happen because of chronic heart blood deficiency as well as severe Kidney Yin Deficiency. The body needs yin to keep it cool in the face of hard work, high stress, extreme exercise, even aging. The heart can become easily heated up by all of these situations. If yin is deficient, the body fails to keep the heart cool. Nourishing yin and blood with acupuncture, herbs and nutrition are important interventions to bring balance back to this condition.

Sometimes it’s hard to even think about what supplements to take, how to eat, important lifestyle changes that will make an impact, setting boundaries with your colleagues, friends or family or just seeing where there might be alternative ways of approaching life. Having the support of regular acupuncture, regular accountability, regular assessment and awareness go a long way toward turning the ship around.

Would you like to have a conversation about what it would look like to work on this project together?