I’m so excited for today’s episode because I was inspired to start a little series on the important concept of IBS flares, because I have been through one myself recently and I know many of you have been through them as well.
The whole concept of healing or recovering from IBS can be a controversial issue and even one that isn’t fully understood. Can we ever really heal our IBS? In this series we’ll dive into this topic of recovering from IBS and still having the occasional IBS flare.
Flares are not failures, but instead messages that we can take to heart if we so choose and learn from going forward, I know I have.
Find the full transcript for this episode and other resources at healingheribs.com/49.
Can you Actually Heal IBS?
It took me a long time for me to consider myself mostly healed from IBS and even to this day I don’t consider myself 100 percent healed, though IBS is not a problematic issue I deal with practically in my life. Looking back, from my initial diagnosis to the point of feeling of being mostly good most of the time–it was probably between two and two a half year in total that it took me to recover.
For many people with IBS, the whole idea of being “healed” is a little tricky because it’s quite common for women to mostly recover from IBS but still have the occasional flare up or stressful time that brings back old IBS symptoms.
IBS is a chronic condition and a relapsing-remitting condition as well, which basically means that for more than half of the people who have experienced IBS and then mostly recovered from it, chances are high that at some point you will “relapse” which only means that symptoms may return at certain points in your life and then disappear again.
While it can obviously be frustrating to think that you may have IBS for the rest of your life and that it may never completely “go away” ; I think it’s also important to realize that if flare ups do happen for you they could be very few and far between and if they do happen-they will most likely be much more brief and less intense than the first really big IBS episode.
If you do have an IBS flare in your life after recovery for months or years, it doesn’t mean anything has gone wrong and it doesn’t mean your IBS is “back” forever, which I know is a very common fear and thought that can lodge itself in your brain.
What I want to instill in you during this series is that if you have an IBS recurrence, that does not mean you are going back to the way things were during the worst of your pain, it just means that something triggered your gut or your nervous system, or most likely both and that because you have had IBS, you are the type of person that has sensitivity in your gut.
The wise move is to stay calm, take care of yourself fully (and I will talk you through what that looks like) and to eventually try to understand what triggered you so that you can make informed choices moving forward.
My Most Recent IBS Flare Up
I have just recently had my first pretty bad IBS recurrence and although it was unexpected and somewhat intense, I was only experiencing symptoms for about a week’s time and it had been almost four years since I had had a really big IBS flare up like this one.
I have had other times in my life where I felt constipated for a few days, and that was usually connected to travel or a change in my routine, and I wouldn’t consider those times a real IBS reoccurrence because I think that even people without IBS can suffer these gut symptoms from time to time and that they were pretty “normal” all things considered.
This time though my flare lasted a week or so and the symptoms were bad.
The trigger for this recurrence was a bad fight that I got into with someone important in my life. The fight was unresolved for a day or two and in that time I was really stressing out about what the fight meant and what would happen to us and to me.
I was having an extreme amount of fear and concern over this conflict. As I continued in this emotional turmoil, I felt my stomach in pain and felt that uncomfortable yet familiar return to my IBS symptoms. Though I was initially upset and in pain and disappointed, I was able to reflect on this flare up in a much different way from how I would have in the past.
When I was first diagnosed with IBS, I couldn’t comprehend what was happening to me. It felt like it was completely random and out of the blue for me and this confusion about how or why it started really kept me in a lot of suffering because I felt that if I couldn’t understand the how and why of my IBS, I wouldn’t really be able to understand how to get better.
The beautiful thing about this confusion was that it did lead me down a road of curiosity, into researching and into talking with experts about what IBS is, what causes it and how to recover. It eventually led me to become a health coach and to specialize in helping women recover from IBS, work that I feel so passionate about as I had needed someone that could have guided me back towards health. I needed my version of myself now to help that past version of myself.
When I had this flare up this past month (after four years of almost no flare ups) —I was sad but I also understood where it was coming from quite quickly. I understood that my gut is sensitive, and particularly sensitive to emotional turmoil.
In the past, I never would have been able to make this connection between this highly upsetting conflict that I got into with my loved one, and the consequences of this emotional suffering and fear, which were communicated to my gut.
For over twenty-four hours, I couldn’t control the emotional state I was in and my nervous system was truly in a fight or flight state. I was so scared, and this feeling of fear lasted a long time, my body couldn’t relax, and this was felt in my gut, which is also sensitive to prolonged feelings of abandonment and despair, threat.
My gut motility slowed down and my digestion was de prioritized as my body went into this protection mode.
Because I now know this about IBS and about myself now—I was able to learn something very quickly about how my body and my emotions work and how they work together. Of course, conflicts are going to happen and that can’t be avoided, but I know that during that fight I added a lot of mental suffering to my situation that could have probably been avoided.
Instead of trying to calm myself down during this stressful moment, I chose to add more and more scary thoughts and really drove myself into a frenzy. I wasn’t doing this consciously or on purpose, but I also wasn’t being very mindful or careful to my system.
I have seen this pattern before in my life and I know that I have a very intense and sometimes passionate personality and when I feel upset or experience joy—it can often be immediately magnified in my heart and mind. I am a Sagittarius, a fire sign and I’ve also recognized that tendency in myself—to feed the flames of my emotional life and to feel emotions very intensely.
Now I know from real personal experience that indulging in that habit, in the patterned way of being can have physical consequences for me. I know now that there are steps that I can take to help me process painful emotions and fear that can interrupt or calm this threatening nervous system response.
I learned that I do have more agency than I realized over what I choose to think and feel when threatened. Instead of making it better, I made it worse, and that’s okay. I’m not holding onto guilt or shame around my response and am only trying to see what I can learn from this flare up so that next time I can take better care of myself.
Psychological Stress and IBS Flares
When I first had IBS, I didn’t know about the deep loop and connection that exists between our brains and our bodies, and I didn’t understand how psychological or emotional stress could lead to IBS symptoms.
Honestly, I also felt like: Who cares?? What am I supposed to do about my stress? Stress to me was just the water I was swimming in and I really didn’t see an easy way out. When approaching healing my gut issues, it was initially much easier for me to address the food I was eating—that correlation seemed much more obvious to me.
But psychological stress can and does lead to IBS flares after you have recovered. If have been better for a while and then experience an IBS flare, it’s a good idea to ask yourself if you’ve been under more stress than usual:
- Do you have work deadline or a work relationship that’s stressful?
- Have you recently moved?
- Been through grief?
- Experiencing caregiving strain?
- Had interpersonal conficts with family or loved ones?
- Wedding coming up or another big event?
These are all events that can make you unstable and though we mentally feel like we can manage certain stressors, sometimes our bodies tell a different story. If you have had an IBS flare, or will have one in the future and think it might be stress related- I invite you to explore how you can care for yourself as if you were a child.
It’s not selfish to prioritize rest and meditation, or gentle movement practices and it’s beautiful to ask others for help when you need more help. Maybe you must do the work of setting better boundaries at work or at home.
I can’t know for certain the origin of your stress, but I know that if you get quiet and you ask—you will find its source too. Though you may not be able to 100% get rid of this excess stress in our life, there are some things you could do if you can start to put yourself at the top of your list of things to care for, the top thing. The thing everything else comes from.
Thank you for listening today and listen into the following episodes to learn more about other common IBS triggers and reasons we might have a flare.