The Frustration of Being Dismissed
It’s a familiar and infuriating story: You don’t feel right—maybe you’re exhausted, in pain, anxious, or foggy—and yet every test result comes back "normal." Maybe you’ve even been told, “There’s nothing wrong with you.” In conventional biomedicine, if the labs don’t point to a diagnosis, the patient often falls through the cracks.
But with your acupuncturist, you don’t need a confirmed lab diagnosis to begin healing. You only need to feel something—and we take that seriously.
Ever been called a hypochondriac? It’s not just a modern insult—it actually has roots in anatomy. The word comes from the Greek hypo- (under) and chondros (cartilage), referring to the area under the rib cage. This is exactly where people often feel tightness, fullness, or pain when they experience what Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) calls Liver Qi Stagnation—a common pattern related to stress and emotional repression.
Centuries ago, people describing vague discomfort beneath their ribs were dismissed as faking it or being overly emotional. But acupuncturists knew better: that discomfort meant something. And today, we know that the nervous system, diaphragm tension, digestive irritation, and emotional holding patterns all manifest in this area. What was once “in your head” might now be recognized as a somatic signal—a body-based truth waiting to be decoded.
Scientific support: Functional somatic syndromes like IBS and fibromyalgia are increasingly understood as involving dysregulation of the gut-brain axis, autonomic tone, and inflammatory signaling. Acupuncture has shown measurable effects on vagal tone, limbic deactivation, and cytokine levels.
Tracey 2007; Napadow 2012; Clauw 2014
The casual dismissal of a patient seeking help is personal for me. In the 1980s, when imaging technology was still in its infancy, my mother was struggling with constant headaches and neurological symptoms. She went from doctor to doctor, and each time they told her it was all in her head. That she was exaggerating. Depressed. Crazy. I remember my uncle (her brother) taking her to appointments and coming home furious because the nurses would roll their eyes and make faces at each other when they saw her in the waiting room.
Eventually, a scan revealed advanced brain cancer. By then it was too late. She passed away not long after.
Watching how “expert health care providers” dismissed her – not just her symptoms, but her sanity and her experiences – taught me a powerful lesson: people suffer deeply when their requests for help are not heard, not validated. It’s why I listen differently now. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) taught me how to see people as more than their labs, and to respect what the body is telling us—even when our high tech machines haven’t been trained to hear it yet.
This spring a new patient—a Door County business owner—came in deeply frustrated. She had hypothyroidism, was already on medication, but felt awful. She was exhausted, bloated, foggy, and told me, “I feel like my thyroid meds aren’t working anymore.” She went back to her doctor, hoping for a dose adjustment, but was told brusquely: “Your labs are normal. You are fine.”
But she wasn’t fine. Something was wrong—just not something a blood test could catch. Her symptoms were a textbook example of Spleen Qi Deficiency, a pattern in TCM linked to fatigue, poor digestion, mental fog, and a sensation of heaviness.
With regular acupuncture and a custom herbal formula, she gradually began to feel lighter, clearer, and more like herself. By six weeks in, she was sleeping better, digesting food with ease, and had energy for things she hadn’t done in months. She had regained the energy, mental clarity, and confidence to start another busy summer season on the peninsula.
In conventional biomedicine, the absence of a lab or imaging diagnosis often means the end of inquiry. But in Chinese medicine, it’s the beginning. We work with patterns, not pathologies. With imbalances, not just illnesses.
Whether it’s Qi stagnation, Spleen deficiency, or yin exhaustion, we listen to your symptoms as meaningful messengers—not nuisances to be dismissed.
Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) operates on a fundamentally different paradigm than conventional biomedicine. It’s less focused on naming a disease and more on understanding the relationships and patterns within the body. Rather than waiting for symptoms to progress into a diagnosable condition, TCM practitioners listen for imbalance and disharmony—often long before lab tests would ever flag a problem.
When you visit a TCM practitioner, the diagnostic process is holistic and nuanced. We consider:
From this, we identify a pattern—such as Spleen Qi Deficiency, Liver Qi Stagnation, or Kidney Yin Deficiency—and treat accordingly with acupuncture, herbs, and lifestyle recommendations.
If you’ve been told “everything is fine” but you know it’s not, trust that feeling. There is more than one way to understand what your body is trying to say. Acupuncture offers a language for what conventional labs can’t name yet—and a path forward that honors your experience.
You don’t need a diagnosis to deserve care. You just need someone to listen.
Tracey KJ. Reflex control of immunity. Nat Rev Immunol. 2007.
Napadow V, et al. The brain circuitry of chronic pain and its modulation by acupuncture. Neuroscientist. 2012.
Clauw DJ. Fibromyalgia and related conditions. Mayo Clin Proc. 2015.
Hui KK-S, et al. Acupuncture modulates limbic system and subcortical structures. Hum Brain Mapp. 2005.
Langevin HM, et al. Connective tissue: a body-wide signaling network? Med Hypotheses. 2011.