Emotional Scars Tell a Story (But You Can Change the Narrative)

Our emotional scars write a story and we live that story out according to our readings of it.

This can be good or bad, depending.  When the time comes to rethink the old narratives, though, it can help to have options.  Did you know that Chinese medicine can be a resource for you?  And that’s not all. The philosophies underpinning this ancient form of healing can also provide a lens through which we discover new readings of the tales that we tell to ourselves.

How so?

Good question! In this blog post, I will share three ways to consider Chinese medicine’s role in addressing emotional scars:

• Modalities: In other words–what do we have to offer you?
• Moods: How can we adjust your thermostat?
• Mentalities: What about your mindset and how you create your narratives and live your life?

Note: The process of unraveling major emotional scars, especially if they are deeply-held and a defining source of identity, usually require the support of a licensed psychotherapist.  Your acupuncturist or health coach is not that person.  What we can do, though, is provide the kind of support that helps your therapy to blossom for you. (And for scars that are almost healed, or mild to moderate, it can be that Chinese medicine and/or health coaching is perfectly sufficient.)

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Modalities:

Emotional scars are the result of painful, challenging, difficult, or traumatizing experiences that leave you with psycho-emotional pain. Some scars are subtle and you don’t notice them every day. Others leave you with ongoing trauma responses and even PTSD. Chinese medicine can help you with the complete range of emotional scars but, as mentioned above, it is important to include a psychotherapist in your program if your injuries are profound.

Calming down your nervous system and getting you to a place where you can be present for yourself in an intentional way is often the first step in the proverbial thousand-mile journey.  We can do this with acupuncture, via herbal medicine, by way of manual therapy, and/or through nutritional support. 

An evergreen blog post, “Stress Relief That Gets Right To The Point: Acupuncture Treatments Designed Just For You,” outlines how Chinese medicine’s most famous modality works. As to herbal medicine? We can prescribe formulas to calm your spirit or to help you to sleep better, just to start.

Tui na (pronounced “twee nah”) is Chinese manual therapy, and it’s akin to massage combined with acupressure. Have you ever gotten a massage and had an emotional breakthrough as specific areas of profoundly-contained tension are released?  That can happen in a tui na session too. When this occurs with my patients, I help them to hold the feeling briefly and articulate it in a contained fashion. This way, they are able to identify the way emotion or trauma manifests in their bodies. A person can then carry the lesson over to their psychotherapy appointment to process what they discovered in their tui na session, if they are in therapy; if not, it’s useful information for journaling or other acts of self-care at home.

Nutrition and the role of food is one of the pillars of Chinese medicine. Consequently, your acupuncturist might opt to work with you on your gut health. Combining Chinese medicine’s precepts regarding diet along with your acupuncture, herbs, and/or manual therapy can be of immeasurable benefit for anyone who struggles with intrusive thoughts, anxiety, nightmares, or other symptoms of lingering attachment to old injuries.

Making use of the full spectrum of modalities that Chinese medicine is a valuable way to address emotional scars while you either work with a psychologist or otherwise intentionally shift your habits in your daily life.

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Moods:

An acupuncture or tui na treatment will move your qi, if you consider it from the perspective of Chinese medicine. An allopathic reading of the events at hand will frame the narrative according to the activity of, among other things, your endorphins.

Endorphins are chemical messengers (aka hormones) that are produced by your body in response to stress. This can be negative stimuli (pain, for instance) or pleasure (for example: eating good food, enjoying a massage or acupuncture treatment, exercise, or sex all can induce endorphins). Your endorphins are your internal pain relievers and natural “feel-good” chemicals. Heightened activity of endorphins can ease depression, lower feelings of stress and anxiety, and help to improve confidence.¹

When you start with Chinese medicine it could make more sense to you to view things from the perspective of brain chemistry. As you become more and more familiar with acupuncture treatment and how it makes you feel, or tui na and the amazing effects that Chinese manual therapy can have on your overall sense of wellbeing, though, you might just start thinking about it in terms of qi and your Shen, or spirit. No matter the language you use, your mind and body can feel better, calmer, and much more at ease when you get regular treatments.

We nurture emotional wellbeing from its roots, and you may have experienced long-term stress to the point that your microbiome is disrupted and your blood sugar is unstable. In such cases, we would view this as a Spleen problem (the Spleen is disregulated by chronic worry), and–as mentioned above–we would work on your gut health. When the brain chemistry is doing its job and your gut is happy and healthy, good things happen. Ties to old emotional injuries lighten and dissipate.

Either via the brain or through the gut or by way of both, the intended outcome is that you feel better and that the pull of emotional scars is weaker and lessened. You may be sleeping better, which helps your mood. You could be kicking old habits like emotional eating or doom scrolling on your phone. Maybe you have more energy for things that build you up rather than keep you stuck in old patterns.

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Mindset:

Think about the concept of homeostasis.  That term is used by Western biomedicine to describe the state of balance in an organ or system or process.  You don’t want too much of something and you can’t get by with too little.  There needs to be a moderated interplay between constituent factors or things do not work properly.  Kind of the way Little Red Riding Hood chose which bowl of porridge to eat and which bed to lie down on for her nap: things are just right and balanced.

Chinese medicine seeks to find and maintain balance in its own way. Asian conceptions of yin and yang entail a level of philosophy and culture that Western definitions of homeostasis do not, true, but we all want the same thing: not too much and not too little.

But how to achieve balance when you’re not on the table with acupuncture needles placed just so and your next appointment isn’t for a week?

One option is to practice self-cultivation. Have you heard of or read Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience? If not, no worries…you surely have heard of the concept of being “in the zone,” which is pretty much the main focus of the book. Essentially, you are present, moving forward with ease, and everything just…well, everything flows.

Chinese philosophy has a concept that is similar; namely, wu wei, or “effortless action.” I am of Mediterranean heritage and I spent much of my formative years either in Spain and Italy or teaching in Spanish or Romance Language Departments, so the first time I heard the term wu wei, my thought was: Oh, this is sprezzatura for taoists.² The Italian way of effortless self-presentation somewhat mirrors the Chinese practice. Both offer up food for thought when we ponder how to live our lives.

How might a person gracefully bear certain burdens? In which cases do we simply practice non-attachment and let them go? Some scars we will keep forever; others fall away. You may want to read Flow and find ways to get into the zone. It may be that wu wei calls to you. Either way, self cultivation, no matter the tradition, makes for ease in life itself. At some point or another, we all need to choose how we read our stories; Chinese philosophy, for its part, offers a beautiful lens through which we might interpret them.

You do not have to become a Buddhist or a follower of the Tao (“the way”) in order to find value in Chinese medicine and thought.  By working with an acupuncturist, you may become inspired to investigate further, though. If nothing else, you might find that you are more easily able to access old patterns and view them in a new, kinder fashion. Everyone’s path is individual, and you open up new choices for yourself when you include Chinese medicine into your healing strategies.

Our emotional scars truly do write a story and we genuinely do live that story out according to our readings of it. How, then, and with the above-written in mind, will you choose to reconstruct your narrative?

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Dr. Paula Bruno, Ph.D., L.Ac., is a licensed acupuncturist and herbalist, an AOBTA-CP traditional Chinese bodywork therapist, a health coach, and an author.  She maintains an active and growing practice at her Austin, TX office.  Dr. Bruno is also available for distance appointments for wellness consultation or coaching.

In her first career, she was a Spanish professor.

Dr. Bruno’s specialties as a Chinese medicine practitioner include: • Musculoskeletal health (acute or chronic pain relief; Ehlers Danlos syndrome  & hypermobility support) • Digestive support, gut health, and weight loss • Aesthetic treatment, including scar revision • Men’s health • General preventative care and wellness support for all persons.

She is the author of Chinese Medicine and the Management of Hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome: A Practitioner’s Guide. Dr. Bruno also maintains a second website, holistichealthandheds.com, with resources and information curated specifically for people with hEDS and HSD.

When you are ready to discover what traditional medicine plus a vibrant and engaged approach to holistic health can do for you, either contact Dr. Bruno or book an appointment online.

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Note: Material on this web site site is not intended to diagnose, prevent, treat, or cure any disease, illness, or ailment. A Chinese medicine practitioner in Texas identifies syndrome patterns but does not diagnose illness.  Material on this web site does not purport to identify syndrome patterns.

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1. To learn more about endorphins, see “What to Know About Endorphins.” For further information regarding acupuncture and endorphins, refer to “Neurobiological Mechanisms of Acupuncture for Some Common Illnesses: A Clinician’s Perspective.” ↩︎
2. Wuwei is both simple and complicated, to be sure, and sprezzatura from Italy (not to mention duende from Spain) is not entirely simple either. But all of these pertain to ideas of self-presentation in public as a result of self-cultivation at home. “Sprezzatura and Wuwei: A Daoist Approach to European Courtly Grace”: An Essay by Helen De Cruz ” offers a truly beautiful comparison of wu wei and sprezzatura. A reader-friendly version of ways to practice wu wei in daily life is Trying Not to Try: Ancient China, Modern Science, and the Power of Spontaneity ↩︎