Acupuncture and herbal medicine can help with the following symptoms:

• Anxiety, trauma, or phobia (fear of flying, fear of failure, fear of commitment, social phobias)
• Compulsive neurosis, OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), compulsive thinking, worrying
• High sensitivity
• Self-image: lack of self-knowledge or self-confidence, negative self-image
• Burnout and other stress-related complaints
• Loss and grief
• Depression, postnatal depression
• Uneasiness and irritability
• Worrying about “what if this, what if that…”
• Identity crisis, heavy challenges (move, change of job, divorce…)
• Psychosomatic symptoms
• Unprocessed emotions, traumas
• Sleeping disorders, nightmares, insomnia
• Psychosomatic symptoms

Psycho-emotional symptoms can be treated in a holistic, natural way along with classic medical treatments (anti-depressants, calming drugs, sleep medication, anxiolytics).  Acupuncture has the major advantage that it does not have any side effects at all. Often, both treatment methods complement each other and can be used at the same time. For serious symptoms, it might be best to first consult a specialised doctor/psychiatrist.

Our consciousness (Shen) determines the health of our body. It is evident that continuous, recurrent, or heavy emotions can cause health problems. Anxiety, grief, feelings of guilt, hate, anger, etc. cause a feeling of falling apart, loneliness, seizing up, shrinking, etc. Generally, these are feelings contrary to the natural, revitalising, warm, radiating, and binding effects of feeling the love that is the basis of life and health.

As an acupuncturist, I distinguish, based on a simple specific wrist-and-belly diagnosis, between “excessive” emotional conditions (external stress) and more internal “deficiencies”, which are a consequence of a weakening of certain aspects of the Shen, from our deepest convictions. The latter can be congenital or acquired.  “Ghosts” or Gui (pronounced “gkwei”) are compulsive patterns of behaviours that arise out of unprocessed emotions or traumatic experiences. Practically everyone walks around with small or large “ghosts”: everyone has experienced something that has left a strong impression, which could cause the derailment of one or more physical or psychological functions. A “ghost” can also remain still, very unnoticed. Emotional blackmail by parents, lack of parental warmth, or pressing cultural or religious convictions for example, can sometimes demolish the natural consciousness (Shen) and convert it into a disturbed deep conviction, which may give rise to deviant character traits, such as feelings of depression, inferiority complex, jealousy, envy, suspicion, fear of failure, aggression, etc… which can be a deeper cause of disease.

In threatening situations, an automatic response can be necessary self-protection; fighting for your life, jumping out of the way of an approaching car, but also deleting, or forgetting unbearable events (which happens for example with child abuse or incest). The painful experience (physical and/or emotional pain) is hardly “processed”, if at all, and stored in the conscious memory so it stays imprinted in the subconscious like a snapshot. Later, when a similar stressful situation arises (unconsciously experienced as “analogous” to the original one), it reactivates this picture and evokes the same reflex response as the original event.

This automatic reaction may originally have been necessary and appropriate, but is often not anymore. It is an overreaction. If the snapshot is permanently enabled, then this emotional charge becomes a Gui, a “Ghost”, which is continuously on standby to impose certain compulsive behaviours or psychosomatic symptoms. This is comparable to Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome.

From the brochure “Acupuncture for Psycho-emotional symptoms” – ICZO (Bruno Braeckman)

Picture Matt Sclarandis - Unsplash