Stress and Anxiety

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Stress can be good or bad.

Good stress

When fishermen send living fish from England to U.S.A. by boat, they found many fish dead. To solve the problem, the fishermen put another kind of fish who can catch and eat them into the fish tanks. When this threatening fish shows up next to them, all other fish try to run away from the threatening fish. When the fish tanks arrived to the destination, most fishes were alive and fresh and strong. Setting up a goal to exercise 40 minutes a day to lose weight is an example of good stress.


Bad stress

Example 1: One daughter has an ailing parent. She has to take care of her father. She also works hard to support family. All these make her very tired and give her lots of stress. She could not be angry to her father as her father has been good to her always.

This daughter is offered for a promotion. This job requires long hours of working with lots of travel. The pay is also excellent. However she turns down the offer, as she can't leave her father alone.

She wants to have a good time with children or friends. She also wants to attend a party with co-workers once in a while. However she couldn't do that. Now her symptom changes to depression.

Example 2: One female visited the clinic. She told she had a cancer surgery on stomach. After the surgery she did not have any more bad symptoms for first 3 months. She started to have a same symptom 3 months later. During treatments I explained about emotions. When I mentioned thinking too much could damage stomach, she answered, "Yes, I am thinking and worrying very much about child's study." This example shows that the real cause is thinking too much and the manifestation is as stomach cancer.
 

How to cope with bad stress and anxiety

  1. Release anger regularly, but this anger should be short and must not continue to next day according to Bible. Ephesians 4:26: "Be angry, and do not sin, do not let the sun go down on your wrath.” One way to do this is to go to park and shout it out in the air.
     
  2. It might be a good idea to discuss with psychologist or someone who really understands the issue and problem. Talking to a pastor or priest might be good, too.
     
  3. All organs are related with stress. For example anger depression is related by Liver according to traditional Chinese medicine. Thinking too much (spleen), looking for excitement (heart), sadness (lung), and fear (kidney) will cause stress, too. All these emotions will cause stress.
     
  4. All these emotions act together making original symptoms complicated. For instances, thinking too much tends to move to worry. This worry or anxiety such as I have to, but I can't, will change to fear. Fear will change to anger. Anger will change to seek some joy.
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Here is one example. I need money to pay the next month rent. How can I get money what I need for next month? If I can't bring up the money on time, a landlord will start to evict me. (thinking too much and worry) Then what am I going to do? Going to a shelter for homeless? (fear) But I can't go to shelter. What am I supposed to do? I have to prepare money, but I can't do. This fact makes me angry myself. All these cycles could make worse the situation and complicated for practitioners to diagnose. Birthdates could be important factors in many cases. We also can analogize conception time from the birth date. Some are born and have inherited a weak function from the birth.

Acupuncture and herbs would be a big help for this kind situation. We will try to find which organ could be related with and adjust it accordingly, making a huge difference. When organ's function is adjusted based on the careful diagnoses, patient can encounter any kind of stress a lot easier.

Here is an example: I treated a woman for depression caused by taking care of her father. When she had a session with her psychologist, she mentioned that acupuncture treatments helped her very much. Her psychologist came to me to find how acupuncture works for depression and said to me curiously ‘how did just two treatments change her life completely?’ 
 

Anxiety

It’s normal to worry and feel tense or scared when under pressure or facing a stressful situation. The patient is the head of his family and runs his own business. He always worries about his business even though he makes good money. As soon as he gets up in the morning and thinks about his business such as meeting clients or presenting issues even to his subordinates, his heart starts to pound. He starts to sweat under his armpits upon any presentations. Even though he is well built, he always hides his anxiety in front of clients. When he raises his arm, he feels cold under his armpits due to sweats, reminding him he had an anxiety attack. His worries and fears force him to take Xanax everyday. Even though he understands all kinds of side effects, he feels there is no choice for him.

He asks me whether acupuncture would help his condition. My answer is yes, of course. The only problem is his insurance doesn’t cover acupuncture. He already pays his insurance premium which is not available for acupuncture. He doesn’t want to pay double. This fact gives him more stress. He decides to take Xanax continuously as long as the insurance covers, so he can save money. (I know lots of people who have similar problems like him.)

A few years passed since then. His weight had increased by 20%. He also experiences insomnia, even though his medicine’s side effect list doesn’t include insomnia. He decides to stop taking Xanax this time no matter how much my treatment costs him. He took two acupuncture treatments and one month of herbal medication based on his constitution. He could sleep again without any difficulty and frequently wakes up early.

Acupuncture and oriental herb medication are very effective against anxiety, depression and stress.