ngmatthews: October 4, 2021, 5:15pm
I’ve had two patients today who suffer from severe anxiety, fear, PTSD. I suddenly felt like I did not know how to
look at this from a Saam perspective, other than SJ excess and feeling unguarded. After treating Liver deficiency
for them a couple of times I had to look for a new pattern. We often think of fear in TCM terms as a Kidney sign,
but in Saam, I’m not so sure. One of them is a refugee from Bosnia. She certainly has a deep amount of fear. She
works as a nurse practitioner, is the single mother of 2 four year olds, and comes with the complaint of anxiety,
anger, and trouble stopping smoking. She certainly has some PTSD. The other is a fearful wife of two very
problematic adopted children who are teenagers and they run over her. She is timid and even afraid of her husband.
She also has severe jaw clenching with sub occipital tension and pain. Additionally right brachial plexus problems
with hand numbness. For this lady, interestingly, supplementing GB on the left helped with the sub occipital pain
and right hand today. For my Bosnian refugee nurse today I gave up on Saam and did a bunch of ear acupuncture
and things from another style because I just could not see anything other than Liver Deficiency. And I did not think
that the Liver tonification that I did the last two times did much to calm her.
Any thoughts?26/01/2024, 12:05Anxiety, Fear, PTSD – Sa’am Clinical Questions – Qiological Community
https://forum.qiological.com/t/anxiety-fear-ptsd/319/print2/2
KristinWisgirda: June 24, 2019, 11:13pm
Toby says that anxiety can be rooted in excess of any of the 12 channels but that he tends to supplement yin
channels more often than yang channels. Combining my own cases with forum/class cases, the channels coming to
mind that have effectively treated anxiety include Liver, UB, Spleen, Pericardium, Lung, Heart, Stomach, GB. Can
anyone else think of cases with other channels that have worked for anxiety?
I had a case today show me how important order of channels treated can be. She is very thin with dry skin but not
particularly LI excess in personality. Super polite, super bright eyes. Loads of GB energy- she gets very riled up
about Trump and world events. She is an advanced meditator and psychotherapist. Her chief complaint was
insomnia with agitation and feelings of doom rising up from her belly button in the middle of the night. She can
also easily get overheated at night though she can cold during the day.
Treating Pericardium+ did nothing for her so I removed the needles. Liver+ helped her settle on the table but didn’t
improve her sleep at all.
Spleen+ settled her more deeply and started to improve her quality of sleep and lessened the doom. After the
second Sp+ treatment she slept great for 5 nights in a row. Then an old Gb channel hip pain reappeared and
disturbed her sleep on the 6the night. The 7th night the old pattern of sleep resumed complete with doom. Today I
treated P+ again and she settled deeply and reported a profound reintegration of her whole system- facilitated by
multiple dakinis- heart protectors?- during the treatment. I would be very surprise if she didn’t sleep well tonight.
So with this patient treating morphology and increasing her access to the sweet mama love/contentment of Spleen,
helped her really receive the P+ treatment the second time around.
ngmatthews: October 4, 2021, 5:15pm
This is a helpful case to read, because you are showing how you can change channels from visit to visit and track
the changes. Interesting to see you come back to an earlier channel that “did not work” the first time. I would not
have done that. The whole idea of sequences has never been mentioned in Toby’s class that I’ve attended, so it is
new to me. I do change channels every other session or so, particularly if things are not improving. But I’d say the
order seems to depend somewhat on my intuition about what is the next priority. Sometimes it is hard to see a case
through a different lens also. That why its so important to have a list of a few different channels that make sense for
a give constitutional pattern, and then some for the pain if that is around as well.