For me, the only goal worth having is to get rid of IBS.
If you want to get rid of IBS, you’re in the right place. I have come to understand that it’s not fate that decides whether we have IBS or not. Which is good news if you want power over your health.
Will IBS go away? Probably not on it’s own.
To get rid of IBS, learn to see it differently – and to understand it better.
Can I even get rid of IBS?
Curiously it all starts with a visceral decision.
One day you will be SO fed up with IBS that you will decide you want better. That you are having better. No matter what.
That’s what I did. And I’m not special. But I am a little stubborn and naturally curious about how things work.
If you have decided, and are ready to learn to feel and challenge the beliefs around health you were brought up with, chances are that you will be able to improve – and even get rid of – your IBS symptoms.
IBS and living in our heads
I was brought up thinking with my head – and dragging my body around with me.
I wasn’t taught to feel my body, or to feel emotions or needs I was feeling.
My body was a sort of car I drove around in. It needed to look good and work well.
And when there was a problem with the car, you would go and see a doctor.
You didn’t know anything. You went to see someone who did.
For my IBS to go away for good, I had to challenge these views.
I had to learn to notice what I was feeling, emotionally and physically – and this was totally new to me.
Like so many children, I was brought up to perform and use my head.
All I could hear were my thoughts. And they were noisy and took up all the space. In fact they went round so fast that inside I felt overwhelmed and anxious most of the time.
And I had no idea why.
How to address health problems and IBS
Doctors prescribe you something to take to make you feel better.
However, if you have had IBS for any length of time, you may have noticed that nothing you take makes you feel better for long.
Or you have to keep on taking them.
The first doctor I ever saw actually gave me a key to IBS. He said it was psychosomatic – indicating a link between thoughts and symptoms. Although he didn’t know how to treat that.
25 years later I was suffering with worsening symptoms every day. So I gave up going to see my doctor or gastroenterologist. Apparently my IBS was not a “mechanical” problem after all.
I started researching OCD (where the body develops compulsive and often repeptitive behaviours). It felt like my body was doing this on the inside. I delved deep into the mind-body connection, and trained in NLP (neuro-linguistic programming).
NLP is a really powerful tool and has many applications. However, you can’t easily use it on yourself. So you have to keep going back “to see someone”. Which is not what I wanted.
So I went looking for an effective, empowering approach to IBS. And finally developed one based on proven healing techniques. And it is getting great results.
IBS symptoms react to triggers
I came to realise that IBS symptoms are set off by triggers. Triggers can be thoughts and feelings about what we are experiencing.
Sometimes you can be lucky and see a trigger set off a symptom. Like a preset program on your washing machine.
But there can be multiple triggers and physical reactions firing at the same time.
And this makes your IBS feel like a mutidimensional Rubik’s cube – multifaceted and hard to solve. This is why it can be tricky to get rid of IBS.
What makes this even more challenging is that we have conscious triggers – but also ones that we are not aware of. Reactions that we learned as a child in the same way as we learned to walk. They now run on autopilot.
My superpower is helping clients find their IBS triggers (even the unsconscious ones).
Feeling to get rid of IBS
I had never been taught to feel.
Have you?
Like most children who are now adults, I was taught to smile, be quiet and not make a fuss.
A little like how we want our bodies to be!
The reason we take meds, supplements, probiotics are to FEEL better.
However, what your body is actually asking for is for you to FEEL your body your own emotions better – rather than push them away or disown them.
The feelings and needs we couldn’t express growing up are still there – even if we are now adult.
They are there in the background, triggering IBS symptoms.
It looks random – but it isn’t.
Working with IBS, I often see pushed down feelings triggering a whole array of typical IBS symptoms: digestive problems, food intolerance, diarrhea, constipation, bloating, GERD, gut imbalance, anxiety.
We want to get rid of IBS symptoms in the same way we want to get rid of cumbersome feelings.
But swallowing pills and pushing them away doesn’t get rid of them. Although that may silence them for a while.
The more you allow yourself to recognize and feel your needs and feelings, the better you will likely feel.
If you want to work deeply and get rid of IBS this year, why not hire an expert guide.
It will take years off the journey!