Case study: The Mind-Body Connection
In Acupuncture theory there is no differentiation between pain caused by physical vs emotional distress.
In practice this means that shoulder pain can be caused by an injury as well as from frustration over hating your boss. Both block energy and cause pain. This is a pretty hard concept for most of us to wrap our heads around so I thought it would be fun to go over a case study that illustrates this mind/body connection in a more concrete way. *
A 49 year old woman came to me for help because her menstrual cycles had become heavier and irregular during perimenopause. She was borderline anemic and the heaviness of her cycle was impacting her ability to go camping, an activity she enjoyed. An IUD had been recommended by her ob gyn, however she was worried about potential side effects and opted to try an alternative option.
She also reported that she had lack of motivation, was quick to temper, frequently worried about the future, experienced recurrent achiness all over her body and had a low level of constant unease with periodic spikes of noticeable anxiety. In summary, she was miserable.
I recommended Chinese herbal medicine and weekly acupuncture for 8 weeks to regulate her cycle. Over the course of the 8 weeks she noticed a decrease in anxiety and anger flares. She described her body as being “overall less tense”. However she still lacked motivation to exercise, an activity that she previously enjoyed.
She decided to try coaching, to aid her with the goal of creating a regular exercise program. During our sessions we discussed obstacles that were getting in the way of her goal. They were:
Consistently putting the needs of others before her own
Feeling guilt when she spent time or money for herself
Making big goals that were hard to execute, such as working out daily for 40 minutes, then giving up if she didn’t execute them perfectly.
Feeling like she should be able to figure this out on her own
Together we came up with a plan to start with a much smaller daily goal so she could gain momentum by experiencing the daily success of completing her objective. Over time she began to look forward to exercising and started to self identify as “someone who makes time for myself”.
The increase in exercise led to a reduction in her general achiness. At the 12 week mark we re-evaluated her case together. She reported that her chronic worrying and low level hum of “guilt” had diminished greatly. She no longer experienced excessive anxiety and her body aches were “not problematic”. Her menstrual cycle had regulated however her cycles were still heavier than desired. She communicated that she felt that she had the “mental bandwidth” to revisit the ob gyn and consider an IUD.
I love this case study as it illustrates a couple of things that I find important. First, it demonstrates that not all issues can be resolved solely by acupuncture. This patient came with an initial complaint that was ultimately cleared up by a more “traditional” solution. However, the path that she took to get to that answer involved clearing up the mental chatter that was getting in her way.
She had been caught in a loop.
She wasn’t exercising due to physical issues. Without exercise her mental stress increased. This exacerbated the physical pain she was feeling, furthering her inability to enact her exercise plan. It’s such a clear example of what practitioners refer to as the mind-body connection.
By cleaning up the mental chatter she was able to enact a clear plan to break the loop.
If you want to break out of your loop, reach out to me, I can help.
*Case details reported with consent, name withheld for privacy, goat yoga because that was one of the fun activities she picked for exercise
