How To Effectively Manage IBS Symptoms

There is a fine line between effectively managing gut symptoms, and reacting with fear-based hypervigilance and avoidance behaviors. To ensure symptoms aren't inadvertently exacerbated, let's discover how best to help settle them.

Transcript

Welcome, This is Michelle. Let's come home to ourselves during today's talk. There's a very fine line that we want to widen. We want to create an incredible amount of space here from one side to the other and what I'm talking about is effectively managing gut symptoms. There is a line between effective management of those symptoms and then reacting with a fear-based hypervigilance and avoidance behaviors. There are two distinct ways to go about relating to symptoms and I want to share with you today how they're different and to essentially guide you how to do the first, How to effectively manage gut symptoms so that you're not inadvertently making them worse. Now if we just start with those kind of hypervigilant, You know, Fear-based avoidant behaviors, It's understandable that they happen and that's because you're trying to protect yourself. You're trying to minimize experiencing symptoms. You're trying to prevent them from happening. You're trying to help yourself feel as good as you can feel and those are really understandable. They're really valid. However, If the particular behaviors that you are engaging in are in fact causing more stress, More anxiety, More limitations in your life, More avoidant behaviors, More fear and did I say vigilance? More hypervigilance if I didn't say it already. If the way that you're relating to your symptoms is resulting in an increase or even any of those, Whether they're increased or not, Then unfortunately they're a stress-based response and they will limit your life. They will create more fear. They'll actually reinforce the anxiety and the fear that you already have and when you have more stress and fear and anxiety, Well guess what's happening in your body? You have more of those in your body and the stress response is going to be activated. When the stress response is activated in your body, Well then the gut is activated as part of that process and that's not what you want. You're going for the opposite, Right? Which is to switch off that activation in your nervous system and to switch off that activation therefore in your gut. So you're probably asking yourself the question now, Well I'm doing all of those things and I'm getting the idea that they're not helpful so what do I do instead? Help! What do I do instead? I got you. It's about effectively relating to yourself, Relating to those symptoms, Effectively managing them in a way that is not stress-producing. Yes, Wouldn't that be nice? So how do we do that? What does that look like? Well you know what the fear, Anxiety, Stress response looks like. It's a lot of grasping. It's a lot of desperation. It's a lot of avoiding things. It's a lot of having to say no. It's a lot of, You know, More and more limitations in your life. Not being able to go out, You know, To see people. Having to put in place, You know, All of these procedures for yourself before you do even leave the house. Maybe you have diarrhea predominant symptoms and and you've become so afraid of leaving the house that those symptoms exacerbate at the very thought of leaving the house, You know, To drop the kids at school or to go to work or to go to an outing. So now you've reinforced this anxiety and fear and so you experience symptoms every single time you go to leave the house and you're convinced now that you can't undo that, That that's just your experience. So what do you do? Well you have to get up earlier. You have to give your body time enough to go to the toilet, You know, Multiple times before you leave the house so you can empty your bowel so that you're not afraid of being caught out when you're out there. Yep, That's what's happening, Right? If you've got diarrhea predominant symptoms, That's a really normal response to have. You might have constipation predominant symptoms and so being caught out is not really, You know, That precarious as it is if you have diarrhea. But you might not enjoy the discomfort and you might find that you sit on the toilet for a really long time and intentionally go the toilet multiple times even when you don't need to, When your body is not giving you the signals that you need to empty your bowel. You're going and you're sitting and you're forcing those bowel movements, You know, So that you have an idea that the bowel is at least somewhat emptier before you leave the house. And there's so many variations of this, Right? So many variations. And so you understand, You know, What that looks like, What it feels like. It's a horrible situation. You can feel the dread in the pit of your belly, Yeah, And it's no wonder that it's activating symptoms within you. But where you want to find a more effective way to cope with that, To get out of that cycle, To slow things down, To trust your body, To trust that you have enough agency over those stress-producing thoughts, Those worries, Those anxieties, So that it doesn't activate, You know, That stress in the first place. How nice would it be if you could just have an idea of leaving the house without any anxiety, Without any fear, Without any management around that, That you can just up and go, Yes, I bet you'd love that. You'd absolutely love that. And it can happen. There's a possibility that that can happen. But it's about applying a different way of relating to yourself, Of relating to the stress or the situation in the first instance. It's not letting yourself go into a state of fear and anxiety. It's actually being aware of the types of thoughts that you're having in the lead-up to, For example, Leaving the house or anything. You know, You can relate this to any difficulty or limitation that you're having. If you're aware of the thoughts that you're having, If you're aware, Oh my goodness, My mind has gone down this rabbit hole, That's the first step. Awareness is actually the first step and it's being able to come back and pause and acknowledge that there are fear-based thoughts happening. Yes, I can hear all the thoughts in my mind. I can feel my heart pounding. I can feel the churning in my gut. I can feel all the fear that's within me. And actually taking a closer look at those thoughts, Are they factual or are they fear-based? There's a very big difference between fear versus fact. And if your thoughts are fear-based, Well then they're not actually happening now. We want to come back into fact, Into the current reality. And the current reality is simply just that you're getting ready, You know, To grab your bag and get in the car or on the train and go to your destination. That's it. It's as simple as that. Those are the facts. Your fears are X, Y, Z is going to happen. Oh my gosh, My gut's going to be churning as it's probably started now because I'm already in fear. Then I'm going to be caught out. I'm going to need a bathroom in the middle of my journey and then I won't have a bathroom available to me. Those are fears, Not facts. Even, Even the worst-case scenario, If you have at some point in your life been caught out, Not nearly caught out, But if you have been caught out and haven't made it to a bathroom, Yes that's a fact but it was only a fact back at the time that it happened. It's not a fact here, Right? If it happened to you two years ago or a month ago even, That was a fact for back then in that moment but it's not a fact now. Now it's just a fear. It's a memory that you have and a fear that you've created out of that memory. Your job is to come and be here in this moment and in this moment you're just picking up your keys and your bag and collecting the kids or whatever it is that you're doing to get in the car, To go to school, To go to work, To meet a friend. That's all that's happening and so it's about staying back there, You know, In those moments grounded in the reality of what's happening and just moving through, Moving through that. So that takes practice. That's worth knowing. It takes practice and practice and practice to do that because you've got into a really good practice of doing all the fear-based thoughts, Of being hyper vigilant, Of checking, Even checking in. Do you do that? You might be feeling okay but you actually check, Do I have symptoms? And so the mind is checking, Do I have symptoms? So it's about then, You know, Coming back into reality again. Just being with the body as it is and even if the body is a bit stressed, Even if the tummy is gurgling a little bit, Then it's also about staying with the body as it is now. Coming right back into the moment, Okay? So there's a little bit of gurgling in my stomach. That's the end of the sentence. There's a little bit of gurgling in my stomach. And your story probably sounds like, Oh my god I've got these symptoms in my gut is gurgling and I feel like I need to go to the toilet now and I don't have enough time but I'll just go to the toilet quickly and I'll see if I can at least empty my bowel because I'm so worried I'm thinking about my trip and that, You know, I've got to walk to the bus stop or the train station and okay I'll think about that there's a there's a toilet on the way there or there's one that when I get there or there's a toilet at a particular stop I could get off if I need to. I could get off at that stop or I could stop the car and I could, You know, Go into that service station and okay so I've got a few plans here and and what about will I make it all the way to work? I can always stop halfway if I need to and oh my god what am I gonna do and why is my gut doing this? Why can't I just stop my gut, You know, From doing this? God I wish this would go away. That is just exacerbating your symptoms. All that fear, All that anxiety, All that stress is causing it, You know, Chaos in your nervous system which is making you more stressed which is going to exacerbate the symptoms that you already have and not only that but you likely feel really unsafe, Really lost, Really unsteady in yourself, Really afraid that I can't do anything, You know, To change my circumstances, That this is why I'm fretting and just going round and round in circles and that's a horrible place to be. It's also a place that you don't need to be. There's options. It is absolutely possible to build the capacity to come into a place of steadiness and groundedness and stillness and safety within yourself. That's absolutely possible and it's imperative, Isn't it? For you to overcome these symptoms you must be able to have agency over your mind and therefore your nervous system. You must have the capacity in yourself to be able to calm all of that down and I understand that maybe you don't know how. No one's taught you and that's why I'm here because there is a more effective way to managing those gut symptoms. It's the same with food. If you are in a hypervigilant state about food and if your diet has become unnecessarily limited because sometimes your diet does need to be reduced, You know, Sometimes it does need to be narrowed down and sometimes that goes too far and your diet is unnecessarily limited because of fear, Not because of symptoms. They're two different things. There's the factual, Yes, If I eat, You know, Onion then it is a nightmare in my bowel. But there's also the fear-based, I haven't had that for a long time, I'm just so scared of eating it, Therefore it might not be onion, It might be something else. But I'm just so scared of eating and I'm too afraid that I'm gonna end up with the symptom even if I do try it. And that fear-based limitation you have on yourself, You know, Is negatively impacting you because the fear-based narrows your world. Yes, If it's factual, If you've tried that food a number of times and if you recognize that, Okay, It does have a reaction in your body, Okay, Great, You've made an informed decision about that. But what you don't want to do is have these sweeping fears across so much of your diet. Afraid that things will, You know, Exacerbate symptoms because you need to leave the house, You know, To go to work, To meet friends, Whatever it might be. So there's a difference here, Right? Remember, Fact versus fear. So we want to get out of the fear place and come into fact and, You know, And just come into the present moment, The reality of what's going on here. So there's many, Many, Many different ways, Essentially, That we can attend to your particular fears and your particular limitations because they're unique to you. Yes, There's overarching themes. No doubt this is singing to many of you and you can probably think about different ways in which you are hypervigilant or avoidant or just fearful based on your symptoms. And so, You know, I work with you one-on-one to understand what your particular fears or limitations are or your own hyper vigilance or your behaviours that you've got built in, Maybe those avoidance behaviours. Because what we want to do is expand your life back out. So not just expand your diet, But your life. We want to expand you back into freedom, Into enjoyment, Into ease, Into not thinking about your gut or these symptoms or managing anything around it, But having all the space just to enjoy your life because your mind isn't on these symptoms. And I reckon that sounds pretty good.

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Helpful advice to begin to relax around habits that form around IBS