(201) 556-8210(This an expert from the book “Rethink Your Shrink” by Dr. Sam Von Reiche)
Ancient treatment for modern angst
Kara was sure she was going crazy. A 45-year-old woman
with a keen, creative intellect and a big personality, she had
suffered with chronic anxiety since childhood. This had
progressed to severe daily panic attacks in the last several
years that left her drowning in fear and despair.
Kara’s mother Dina had been physically and psychologically
abusive, beating her with closed fists, belts, and even a shoe
that she hurled directly at Kara’s face as a young child. The 7-
year-old’s eye was injured so badly she had to go to the
hospital, prompting a call to child protective services. On top
of all the abuse, Kara was neglected, too. There was often not
enough to eat at home because her mother rarely went to the
grocery store, and Kara felt ashamed of her outdated clothes
One of Kara’s most vividly disturbing memories was when
Dina ripped one of her few favorite Kmart T-shirts down the
middle, screaming as they crossed the street because she
thought it was too tight.
Her father was too passive to protect Kara from the abuse
and traveled a lot for work, so she grew up feeling trapped,
fearful, and alone. As a teenager, Kara became angrier and
began fighting back to protect herself; at one point, she
punched her mother so hard that the beatings finally stopped.
Despite her success as a well-known photographer, Kara
inwardly remained that frightened and angry child. She
carried her painful memories locked inside her body, where
they continued to make her feel unsafe. She had all the
symptoms of post-traumatic stress: the intrusive thoughts and
memories of her abuse, and the intense fear and hyperarousal
of her nervous system, still driven to protect her from danger.
These were triggered by all kinds of situations, but especially
when she had to interact with her aging mother,
a pathologically narcissistic and anxiety-ridden woman who had
no support other than Kara. Once again, Kara felt trapped,
believing she had a responsibility to care for Dina, now 71
years old.
Kara was progressing after our first two visits, but suddenly
took a dive. She arrived at the next session so frantic and
wired it was difficult to get her words out. I explained to her
that even solution-focused psychotherapy is heavily weighted
toward verbal interaction and conscious thought. I suggested
that we needed to calm her nervous system down as well,
because it was constantly mobilized to protect her. I strongly
recommended she make an acupuncture appointment with an
awesome colleague of mine—an idea Kara was very relieved
and hopeful to hear about.
Not one to delay, she left my office and went straight to the
acupuncture center. Acupuncture felt like what she described
as a “magic pill” that calmed her so much she actually began
laughing on the table
Kara described feeling like she
could finally “take a deep breath,” like she could function
again. She states: “Acupuncture accesses your body in a way
that speaking can’t.”
Americans generally put needles in the same category as
stomach pumps or root canals. And for the 10% with a
needle phobia, getting a shot or having blood drawn can
result in abject terror. “Mommy, am I going to get a shot?”
young children ask quivering, throwing desperate glances
around the waiting room like convicts being escorted to the
electric chair!
But for the 3 billion people living in modern China today,
needles are No Big Deal. In fact, acupuncture is the primary
modality of medicine practiced there for 3,000 years and used
for the treatment of every ailment in addition to wellness
care. Like many Eastern treatments that gained influence in
the West in the ’60s and ’70s, acupuncture gained legitimacy
in the United States with an article written by the New York
Times journalist James Reston in 1971. Despite his initial
Despite his initial skepticism, he had experienced major pain relief as the result
of acupuncture following an emergency appendectomy.
My love affair with acupuncture began rather reluctantly in
1995, when I tried it for one of my agonizing three-day
migraines. A girlfriend drove me for two and a half hours to
see this Korean woman as I sobbed in the back seat, wrapped
in a blanket. While talking to me at top speed in a thick
accent I could barely understand, the acupuncturist
(curiously) began needling the top of my head. When she was
done with me, I looked like a human incense burner! My
friend Edie showed me the smoking needles with her compact
mirror, not knowing whether to laugh out loud or call the fire
department. But 40 minutes later, that unrelenting 10 on a
scale of 1-10 headache was nearly gone, and I was completely
blown away. How could something so crazy, so National
Geographic actually work?!
How It Works
Simply put, acupuncture corrects imbalances to the body’s qi
(pronounced chee), or life force energy. This qi moves
through passageways called meridians (areas of the body with
high neural activity), which connect the organs of the body.
Controlling the flow and balance of energy between yang
(hollow organs like the stomach) and yin (solid organs like the
lungs) is believed to help prevent and treat disorders and
diseases. Acupuncture is used to correct these imbalances in
the qi by placing ultrathin, thread-like needles at specific
points associated with each issue.
So, what do these needles actually do? A major hypothesis
based on current research is that they affect the body’s
neurohormonal pathways. Specific needle points stimulate
specific nerves, which in turn send signals to the brain. The
brain then releases neural hormones such as beta
Endorphins. These hormones increase the patient’s pain
threshold and they feel less pain, both physical and
emotional.
Acupuncture itself doesn’t directly release feel-
good chemicals to reduce pain, inflammation, and stress, but
it works higher up the chain by triggering the pituitary gland
to produce the extra hormones, among other things. Another
hypothesis supported by both animal and human studies is
that acupuncture reduces pro-inflammatory markers, or
proteins in the body including TNF and IL-1β, to decrease
both inflammation and pain.
By now, the majority of educated healthcare consumers are
familiar with the benefits of acupuncture for acute and
chronic pain. A large-scale study involving 18,000 patients
underscored this fact, and 3.1 million Americans have tried it
in the past decade. Even rather traditional doctors are no
longer discouraging its use; it is now commonly prescribed for
pain and infertility, as well as the nausea and fatigue
associated with both chemo and pregnancy. Yet relatively few
people know how effective acupuncture is for depression,
anxiety, stress reduction, and insomnia. In fact, acupuncture
makes no distinction between physical and emotional issues,
as they both originate from an imbalance of qi.
Acupuncture
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is believed to have an inhibitory impact on the brain’s limbic
system, which governs emotion. It has been used as a
successful treatment for psychological problems in China,
Japan, and Korea for thousands of years!
The Proof
In research conducted at UCLA’s medical acupuncture
program, a meta-analysis of eight randomized controlled
studies compared a total of 477 participants suffering from
depression. Acupuncture reduced the severity of their
symptoms significantly on both the Hamilton Rating Scale for
Depression and the Beck Inventory. The authors concluded
that patients receiving acupuncture showed improvements
equivalent to those taking antidepressants.
Similarly, in a 2018 systematic review of 13 studies using
acupuncture to treat anxiety disorders by researcher Diogo
Amorim and his colleagues in Portugal, the authors found
significant evidence that regardless of the style, acupuncture
reduced anxiety symptoms
“Overall there is good scientific evidence encouraging
acupuncture therapy to treat anxiety disorders, as it yields
effective outcomes, with fewer side effects than conventional
treatment.”
Acupuncture is also effective for stress reduction in those not
specifically diagnosed with depression or anxiety disorders. In
a double-blind study by Dr. Shu-Ming Wang and his
colleagues at Yale Medical School, bilateral auricular
acupuncture (needling points on the ear) was clearly more
effective than the placebo acupuncture (using non-therapeutic
points) in inducing feelings of relaxation for its 55 subjects. In
another study done by Patricia Reilly and her team at Brigham
and Women’s Hospital in Massachusetts, auricular
acupuncture was determined to be “helpful in reducing the
stress and anxiety of 37 medical providers, including
physicians and nurses.” Acupuncture was even shown to
decrease stress levels in lab rats, as measured by lowered heart
rate and blood pressure and lowered catecholamine plasma
levels
I regularly refer my clients to acupuncture for the treatment
of depression, anxiety, stress reduction, and insomnia, and get
excellent results. Based on my own experience and theirs, I
highly recommend an acupuncturist trained in both TCM
(Traditional Chinese Acupuncture) and Kiiko style, named for
Kiiko Matsumoto, a renowned Japanese acupuncture
authority. Kiiko style reflects the integration of TCM with
new Japanese empirical data. The practitioner palpates
specific areas of the body to decide exactly where to place the
needles at each session, rather than relying on pre-established
patterns, as is often the case in TCM.
Despite some people’s apprehension about needles, those
used for acupuncture are extremely thin. Most are surprised
at how painless a process it is. Even young children can
benefit from acupuncture without a problem, and several of
my clients have brought theirs in for treatment after seeing
the remarkable results for themselves. While it can be
challenging to lie fairly still on a massage table for 30-40
minutes, most report feeling deeply relaxed after a short period of time. Many acupuncture patients actually fall asleep
during the treatment
It would take a few more years to heal my migraines
completely, but my world changed the day I tried acupuncture
for the very first time. Not only did it eventually become my
primary medicine, but I started to investigate an array of
alternative treatments for my other (already chronic) medical
issues. I eventually applied these approaches to my work as a
psychologist and found that clients receiving acupuncture
and/or other complementary treatments in addition to (and
sometimes as a substitute for) psychotherapy reported greater
mental and emotional improvement in much less time.
Counseling that had previously lasted one to two years could
be completed in two to six months.
Although rather astounding, Kara’s results with acupuncture
are actually quite typical. To maintain her results, she has
continued to go for weekly sessions and views it as an integral
part of her healing process
nervous system but is also opening up her energy centers
(chakras), which were previously blocked. Given Kara’s
trauma history, she feels it works best for her when coupled
with psychotherapy.
In a vision she had during acupuncture, Kara saw her heart as
a “beautiful crown jewel in a box surrounded by satin.” While
she isn’t ready just yet to stop guarding that jewel altogether,
Kara is well on the path to peace.
Anthony’s Story
Anthony’s story is even more miraculous. He was an
attractive, well-put-together man of 28 who came to me with
severe social anxiety. Anthony would begin to sweat profusely
when speaking to people in social situations, especially
attractive women. His hand was even damp when he
hesitantly shook mine in the waiting room. He assumed the
sweating was the result of social anxiety because it did seem
to get worse when he would speak to someone he did not
know well. Anthony was so self-conscious that he had been
unable to date since college
He had seen a behavior therapist who directed him to douse
himself with water, and then speak to strangers to get over his
fear of sweating in social situations (a form of desensitization
called Exposure and Response Prevention, or ERP). This
technique may seem a bit out there, but is actually standard
fare in current anxiety treatment. Anthony said this had
helped quite a bit, but that his anxiety symptoms returned
shortly after he stopped the treatments.
I explained to Anthony that I thought his social anxiety was
actually coming from his sweating problem, rather than the
reverse. I believed that the origin was not an anxiety disorder
at all but simply resulted from his difficulty coping with a
chronic and embarrassing medical issue. While he already
knew that traditional medicine had very few proven solutions
for sweating, I was reasonably sure acupuncture could fix
whatever imbalance lay at the root. Anthony was skeptical but
desperate (the best remedy for skepticism!), so he agreed to
try it
It turns out that excessive sweating is a problem that
acupuncture alleviates very successfully; in fact, how a person
sweats is considered an important area of focus in Chinese
medicine. According to the acupuncturist’s assessment,
Anthony’s problem originated from a Yin deficiency; this
deficiency created a “virtual fire” resulting in warm, sweaty
palms and soles as well as excess perspiration elsewhere. After
only three acupuncture treatments, Anthony contacted me to
say his sweating problem was already under control, and that
his social anxiety had all but vanished. He was astonished and
grateful, and admittedly, even I was a bit floored!
Anthony has never needed therapy again. “Losing” a client
this way is one of the greatest feelings in the world