ACUPUNCTURE FOR ANXIETY, STRESS & EMOTIONAL WELLBEING · PORTLAND, OR
You shouldn’t have to white knuckle your way through this.
Anxiety, depression, burnout, grief, or just a season that’s asking too much of you: it doesn’t stay in your head. It shows up in your sleep, your digestion, your energy, your patience. I work with the whole pattern, not just the symptom in front of me.
Anxiety · Depression · Burnout · Chronic Stress · Grief · Life Transitions
WHAT THIS OFTEN LOOKS LIKE
You don’t need a diagnosis to belong here. Most people come in describing something closer to this:
IN THE MIND
Racing thoughts at night, a low hum of dread you can’t name, feeling flat or unmotivated, irritability that surprises you, the sense that you’re managing everything but feeling none of it.
IN THE BODY
Trouble falling or staying asleep, a tight chest or shallow breath, stress showing up in your gut as bloating, nausea, or discomfort that flares with your emotions, fatigue that sleep doesn’t fix, inflammation, a jaw or shoulders that won’t unclench.
In Chinese Medicine, these aren’t separate issues. Emotional strain and physical symptoms come from the same root imbalance, and treating one in isolation rarely holds. That’s the piece that’s often missing from other care.
You’re in therapy or on medication and want deeper, complementary support
THIS PRACTICE IS FOR YOU IF
You feel like you’re managing symptoms but not getting to what’s underneath them
Burnout or chronic stress has been your baseline for longer than you’d like to admit
You’re grieving, transitioning, or in a season that’s hard to name but hard to carry
You want care that treats you as a whole person, not a list of symptoms
Sleep, digestion, or energy have quietly gotten worse alongside your mental health
HOW WE WORK TOGETHER
I see one person at a time; no rotating rooms, no split attention. Your first visit is 1.5-2 hours: part conversation, part treatment. I work through the lens of Five Element Acupuncture, a style of Chinese Medicine that addresses the root patterns beneath your symptoms rather than managing them on the surface.
A lot of what I see is a nervous system stuck in fight-or-flight, always braced for the next thing even when nothing’s actively wrong. That might mean we spend as much time talking about your sleep and your relationship to stress as we do about what’s on the surface. Treatment often includes acupuncture, moxibustion, and custom herbal formulas to extend the work between sessions.
My job isn’t to fix you. It’s to help your body, mind, and spirit find their way back.
WHAT THE RESEARCH SHOWS
This isn’t just tradition. It’s increasingly backed by clinical research. Recent systematic reviews have found that acupuncture measurably reduces anxiety symptoms compared to standard care, and performs comparably to conventional treatment for depression when used as a standalone or complementary therapy. Studies on insomnia show consistent improvement in sleep quality and duration, often alongside improvements in anxiety, depression, and fatigue in the same patients, which reflects exactly what I see in practice: these symptoms rarely travel alone, and treating the underlying pattern tends to move all of them together.
As with all forms of medicine, results vary person to person and acupuncture works best when done in a consistent, compounding nature.
Further reading: Acupuncture for generalized anxiety disorder: a systematic review · Efficacy of acupuncture for depression: a systematic review and meta-analysis · Acupuncture for chronic insomnia disorder: a systematic review
COMPLEMENTARY CARE
Acupuncture is not a replacement for therapy, psychiatric care, or medication, and I won’t position it that way. Many of the people I see are already working with a therapist or prescriber, and this becomes one part of that larger care picture, not a substitute for it. If you’re not currently working with a mental health provider and it seems like that support would help, I’ll say so, and I’m glad to point you toward people I trust.
What I offer is nervous system support: acupuncture’s effect on the body’s stress response, sleep, and physical symptoms that often travel alongside anxiety, depression, and burnout.
What patients say
Ready to begin?
If you’re not sure if acupuncture is the right fit yet, that’s a completely normal place to start.
Schedule a free 15-minute call, and talk through what’s going on before committing to anything.
Rooted care for a restless world.