How a PC game trained me to solve my IBS

This helped me solve IBS. A PC game actually trained me in the mindset and skills I needed – although I didn’t realise it at the time.

In this article I’ll outline the 3 essential qualities it helped me to develop that I used to solve my IBS symptoms. Maybe you already have them!

This brilliant, challenging adventure game for PC called Timelapse (1996 – only accessible now via Steam.) was based around the great civilisations: the Egyptians, the Incas, even the lost city of Atlantis. It was full of complicated puzzles and enigmas where you had to connect the dots to find the way out.

What the game taught me

I started playing this game 30 years ago. Before we had children, my husband and I would spend the dark autumn and winter evenings playing.

In particular, this PC game taught me these 3 essential things that helped me solve my IBS.

1) You’re supposed to find the way out

The first premise of the game was that winning is possible. I knew that no matter the obstacles (and there were obstacles at every turn) I was meant to find the way out.

This may seem obvious for a game. However, in “real life” life, how often do we suppose that reality – and our experience of it – is fixed.

Yet research into quantum physics and neuroplasticity suggest that more is possible than we may realise.

This is the perspective I finally chose to adopt with IBS: That there was actually a way out – and I didn’t have to suffer like this forever.

To my great surprise my intuition even started showing me what to look for.

2) Stay curious

“Problems that persistently remain insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.” Alan Watts

In the game everything was an unknown adventure.

After many hours of this fun and frustrating training I found it exhilarating finding which lever here opened a door somewhere over there, out of sight.

Sometimes those doors opened a path into a totally new world of discovery.

With IBS we tend to hear the same old tired information again and again. All the accepted beliefs. All the “It’s your (fill the blank with any part of your body) While the flares keep coming…

We can stay entrenched in our beliefs about IBS, and what we think we know.

And we can forget to stay curious and ready to learn something new. Or a different perspective we hadn’t considered before – especially if we’ve had IBS for years.

However, it is by being curious, and being willing to challenge my own deeply enrenched beliefs that I learned to solve IBS. And you can too.

3) Observe and Persevere

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” William Edward Hickson

To move forward in the PC game you had to be patient, look around you, observe, pay attention to detail, and experiment.

As well as look for patterns to find how to open doors.

You had to be willing to try and fail again and again until you cracked it.

Also, you had to be willing to accept that there was more than just meets the eye. And dig for solutions!

The game took us MANY months to complete, was highly frutrating at times – but I loved it.

IBS is the same. You have to keep observing and persevering, knowing that you’ll find your way out – because there is at least one.

How the game helped me solve my IBS

Little did I know it back then, but these are the very qualities I needed to solve my IBS:

• Deciding there was a way out of IBS (before I had any evidence of that)
• Being open to learn and unlearn
• Curiosity, observation, patience, attention to detail (patterns) and experimentation.

➡️ Take our quiz and find out which one of these qualities YOU most relate to.

When I hit a medical wall and my symptoms got really bad, my mind got to work on looking outside the obvious and linking together research in other areas.

I felt the urge to look further than classic mechanical approach of digestion, diets and meds that had not been working for me.

I came across work on pressure points, OCD, behavioural psychology, energy, emotions and NLP (neuro-linguistic programming.) It was fascinating!

And I tried to see what happened when I linked them together and pulled this lever over here.

Unlike in the PC game, there were no walkthroughs available when I got stuck.

However by persisting I actually stumbled across the solutions I needed to solve my IBS, and release it for good (I’ve been IBS free for over 9 years now). I write about all of these on this blog.

May they shed light on your IBS journey.

⏩ If you want to significantly speed up your IBS Recovery, why not work with me?