AboutR. Scott Malone L.Ac. Expertise I can answer questions on Acupuncture and Chinese medicine.
I specialize in women's issues, mental-emotional issues and headache.
Experience I have been in practice for 10 years.
Organizations I am certified and state liscensed.
Education/Credentials Graduated from the T'ai Institute of Oriental Medicine with certificates in acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine.
Expert: R. Scott Malone L.Ac. Date: 4/27/2008 Subject: Acupuncture to help with emotional trauma
Question I suffered a traumatic childhood, and as a result, I am something of an emotional mess. I have gone to counseling, taken medications, abused alcohol, and tried different herbs to try to deal with the pain of the trauma. Nothing helped and I have learned to just suppress the emotions. When they come up to the surface, I feel an enormous tension in my shoulders. Could acupuncture help me?
Answer Hello,
Absolutely.
If that is what you were looking for, you can stop reading now.
If you'd like to know how, read on, it's a bit involved, yet simple enough to understand.
In order for you to understand how acupuncture and herbology can help you, I need to explain a few things to you.
I'd like to give you a short lesson on TCM (traditional Chinese medicine, Five Element theory and mental emotional issues. I do a lot of work in this area in my practice, to me, you have to have balance in both mind and body to truly be healthy. With some patients we also discuss and work with the spirit aspect of the mind-body-spirit continuum in whatever paradigm or belief system is comfortable for them.
Unless you have a deeper interest, let's just stick with mind-body.
Notice the hyphen. Not mind AND body. They are a continuum and entirely interrelated.
In the west we have the insanity of the mind/body schism that we can pretty much blame on Decarte. We are so married to this concept, that we treat mental/emotional issues with one of two approaches, and sometimes they are used together and sometimes not.
We have psychologists who work almost exclusively with the emotions to the exclusion of the body, and we have the psychiatrists and neurobiologists that believe that the wetware, or biological hardware is the source of the mind, and so an unbalanced mind is a sign of a chemical imbalance and the answer is to balance it with drugs.
In the east, there was little to no impact in our field by Decarte.
The Chinese believe that the mind and body are both aspects of the same spectrum.
This is very important when it comes to treating mind/body imbalance with in the tradition of TCM and Five Element treatment.
Five Element treatment is an older form of diagnosis and treatment than TCM.
The Five Elements and their related organ channels and emotions:
Fire:
Heart/Small Intestine
Pericardium/Triple Burner
Joy/Lack of Joy or Apathy
Earth:
Spleen/Stomach
Worry/Nurturing/inability to nurture
Metal:
Lung/Large Intestine
Grief/inability to Grieve
Everyone knows that lots of stress can cause ulcers.
According to eastern thought it is because stress causes the liver qi or energy to stagnate, turn to fire and invade the stomach, causing stomach fire. (One possible explanation.
So the mind can affect the body.
According to TCM and 5 element theory the body can affect the mind.
We identify the emotions that are involved and their elements, look for correlating physical imbalances in the organs of the involved elements and treat the body to correct the mental imbalance.
Because the 2 are interrelated, both are affected.
Grief that you can't get over affects the lungs by weakening the lung qi, perhaps causing a constant weak cough or weakening the immune system.
Treat the lung channel to correct the physical and mental symptoms.
Balance the channel and you balance both mind and body.
In your case specifically I can make some speculation that may or may not be correct.
In childhood trauma, regardless of what else went on, there is often a common theme of neglect and/or abuse that results in what I identify as a lack of nurturing. Nurturing is the emotion that affects the spleen and stomach.
Emotionally there is a deep desire to be nurtured.
In normal development, we are nurtured and in turn learn to nurture ourselves.
With childhood trauma there is a lack of nurturing, and an inability to do so ourselves.
So what do we do?
We seek to nurture the emotions by feeding or nurturing the body. There is an empty hole in the heart that has never been filled. We go to drugs, alcohol, food and dependant relationships to fill the hole.
An emotional hole can never be filled with an external substance or emotion. Neither can you drink enough alcohol nor have someone "fix" you emotionally from the outside.
Treat the elements involved, give herbs to support the acupuncture, and balance the channel. You will find that as the channel is balanced, the mind will begin to balance as well.
I also use other techniques not common to TCM to help the patient in this process.
I apologize for the long post, but I felt it was important for you to fully understand how it works.
There is a great book, (albeit a little dry), called Dragon Rises Redbird Flies, that is about a psychologist that uses 5 element theory to heal his patients mental imbalances.
I hope this was of some benefit to you. Feel free to ask any followup questions as you like.
