Stress, Anxiety & Burnout

Modern life places enormous demands on our time, energy and attention, but stress isn't simply about being busy. The term allostatic load describes the cumulative burden placed on the body as it continually adapts to physical, emotional and environmental demands.

How well we cope depends not only on how much we're carrying, but on the resources we have available at the time. Sleep, illness, hormonal changes, nutritional status, pain, relationships, work, family demands and major life events can all shift that balance.

When the load begins to exceed our capacity to recover, it can show up in many different ways — anxiety, irritability, disrupted sleep, exhaustion, difficulty concentrating, digestive changes, physical tension or simply feeling far more easily overwhelmed than usual.

Looking at the bigger picture

Stress, anxiety and burnout rarely have a single cause. I want to understand what may be contributing to the way you're feeling — physically as well as emotionally.

Alongside what's happening in your life, I look at sleep, energy, digestion, breathing, muscle tension and nervous system patterns, as well as hormonal changes, medications, nutrition and relevant medical history. Where appropriate, I may also suggest reviewing blood tests or investigating factors such as iron, B12, vitamin D or thyroid function that can contribute to fatigue, anxiety, poor sleep or reduced resilience.

Treatment may include acupuncture, craniosacral therapy, Chinese herbal medicine, nutritional support or a combination of approaches. Chinese medicine also gives me a way of looking at how seemingly separate symptoms fit together, rather than treating each one in isolation.

When you’d rather not talk about it

Talking therapies can be enormously valuable, and I often work alongside psychologists and other mental health professionals. But they're not the only way to work with stress and an overactivated nervous system.

Sometimes people are tired of talking, don't want to revisit difficult experiences, or simply feel that what they need is a way to help their body settle. Acupuncture and craniosacral therapy offer a different approach, working through the body and nervous system rather than through conversation alone.

Treatment can focus on reducing physical tension, settling that wired or hyper-alert state and creating the conditions for deeper rest and recovery. You're always welcome to talk during treatment, but you don't have to explain or revisit everything you've been through in order for us to work together.

SomatoEmotional Release

One of the techniques I may use when appropriate is SomatoEmotional Release (SER), an approach within craniosacral therapy that can be particularly helpful when physical tension and emotional stress seem closely intertwined.

SER combines very gentle, precise hands-on work with guided conversation, allowing us to explore what may be associated with an area of the body that seems reluctant to let go. Sometimes this process arises quite naturally during treatment; at other times I may suggest exploring it if we seem to have reached a point where physical treatment alone isn't shifting things further.

I don't use SER with everyone, and there's never any pressure to explore anything you don't want to. If you're curious about it, please ask me.

SER can be incorporated into a craniosacral therapy session or, when appropriate, a complex acupuncture session. Read more about Craniosacral Therapy and SomatoEmotional Release.