Counselling and Acupuncture for anxiety

How Counselling and Acupuncture Can Help with Anxiety

Anxiety is an inevitable facet of emotional life and one that, when mild, is uncomfortable but bearable. But when anxiety escalates, it can easily take us over our threshold for coping and impact even the most basic of activities. Given how distressing anxiety can be, it’s easy to categorise it as a ‘negative’ emotion, which can then make the problem worse. If difficult feelings are classified as ‘negative’, we may assume there is something wrong when we feel them, that they shouldn’t be happening, and that the task is to eradicate them. It’s an understandable but misleading approach, because it fails to recognise the value that difficult feelings have - they signal that there’s something in ourselves or the environment that needs attending to. Imagine an animal negotiating a life as complex as ours that never got anxious, it would be unable to respond to threat, anticipate danger, or adapt to uncertainty. As therapist Aaron Beck once commented, “evolution favours an anxious gene”, meaning that evolution has preserved anxiety in our genetic makeup precisely because it provides survival value. In this sense, anxiety isn’t something that can be permanently cured or eliminated, it needs to be worked with, rather than battled against.

Rather than seeing anxiety as a negative emotion, it may be more useful to view it as the experience that arises in the face of perceived threat. The threat might be a genuine external danger, or it could be internally constructed—an imagined scenario that hasn’t yet occurred. In this way, anxiety is like a warning light on the dashboard of a car. If the warning light flashes red, you wouldn’t ask the mechanic to disable the light, you’d want to investigate the problem the light is pointing to. This is where counselling can be especially valuable.

Counselling can help uncover the unconscious meaning behind your feelings, and it can aid in developing the emotional capacity to better cope with and understand the experience. Dealing with intense feelings is much easier when we understand what they’re about, and when we have confidence in our ability to experience them while maintaining our equilibrium.

 

 

Anxiety is a Full Body-Mind Experience

 If you’ve ever been anxious (and you’d be unusual if you hadn’t), then you’ll know it isn’t “all in your head.” Anxiety and the overactivation of the nervous system that accompanies it is very much a full body-mind experience. Symptoms of anxiety can include:

- Excessive worry or rumination that’s difficult to control

- Restlessness or feeling “on edge”

- Difficulty concentrating or a sense of the mind going blank

- Irritability

- Anticipating worst-case scenarios

- Heightened sensitivity to perceived threats

- Feeling overwhelmed and unable to cope

- Sleep disturbances (difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, or waking unrested)

- Rapid heartbeat or palpitations

- Shortness of breath

- Muscle tension, aches, or pains

- Sweating more than usual

- Trembling or shaking

- Digestive issues (e.g. nausea, stomachaches, or diarrhoea)

- Dizziness or light-headedness

 

This list highlights that anxiety is a multifaceted physical and emotional response. Because it affects both body and mind, a combined approach using counselling and acupuncture can offer a deep and holistic way of working with it.

 

Working with Anxiety: Mind and Body

 Acupuncture and Anxiety

 Acupuncture has been used for thousands of years to support the body’s natural regulatory systems and is increasingly being explored for its potential to reduce stress-related symptoms. It involves the insertion of fine, sterile needles at specific points on the body and may be beneficial for anxiety in several ways:

 

- Modulation of the Autonomic Nervous System

Acupuncture may help regulate the autonomic nervous system by promoting parasympathetic (“rest and digest”) activity and calming an overactive sympathetic (“fight or flight”) response.

Research using heart rate variability (HRV) suggests acupuncture can increase vagal tone—a marker of nervous system balance linked with improved emotional regulation.

 

- Influence on Neurotransmitters and Brain Chemistry

Acupuncture has been shown to modulate the release of key neurotransmitters involved in mood regulation, including serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine.

It may also stimulate the release of endorphins and enkephalins—natural opioids that promote feelings of well-being.

Neuroimaging studies suggest acupuncture can influence brain areas involved in emotional processing, such as the amygdala and prefrontal cortex.

 

- Regulation of the HPA Axis (Stress Response System)

The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis governs the body’s response to stress. In people with chronic stress or anxiety, this system is often dysregulated.

Some studies suggest acupuncture can reduce cortisol levels—the primary stress hormone—and help bring the HPA axis back into balance.

 

How Counselling and Acupuncture Work Together

 Counselling helps you explore and understand your emotional world. It can make unconscious processes conscious, deepen emotional resilience, and create more spaciousness around overwhelming thoughts and feelings.

Acupuncture, on the other hand, works somatically—it can help regulate the physiological stress response, supporting the body to calm down when it’s become dysregulated. When used together, counselling and acupuncture can complement one another by working on different layers of the anxiety experience - the psychological, the emotional, and the physical.

I work with both approaches, sometimes separately, sometimes in combination, depending on what feels right for each individual. If you’re struggling with anxiety and want to explore either of these therapies—or both—feel free to get in touch at sean@seanheneghan.com or call me on 07717 515 013.