The concept of time can be tricky when wanting to heal your IBS.
When you are feeling the constant IBS symptoms, you just want it to go away already. You want it gone yesterday.
Logically you know that healing takes time, but how much time should it take? What can you expect?
Though there is no one time frame to fit all, there are some strategies that you can use around this time question that can help you heal faster. These strategies will help you see the long game and help you not get caught up in every set back on that road.
Dealing with the daily IBS symptoms while committing to a long-term healing plan is the best approach.
Today I’ll talk about how to commit to your health, and how to not sabotage your healing because it’s taking too long.
Find the full transcript for this episode and other resources at HealingHerIBS.com/6
Patiently Healing Your IBS
Time may seem like a strange topic when talking about healing IBS. It’s an important one though because I have seen so many people get distracted from healing because they weren’t patient enough.
I have heard from women who had no specific plan or strategy for healing and spent years and years trying to heal but not healing.
If you want to get better, you should have a plan and it should be a long-term plan. I can’t tell you how long it will take for you to heal.
For me, it took several years to fully heal. Even today, I still have the occasional IBS bloating or pain, it’s not 100 percent gone from my life.
I also had specific times when my IBS healing took leaps and I was significantly better in a shorter period of time.
Healing for me was both slow and fast. For many women it’s this way. If you can believe that you will heal, if you can set yourself up for healing and ride the waves of your daily or monthly IBS symptoms, your success will be so much greater.
Getting Caught in the Day -to- Day IBS Pain
What can prevent healing is getting knocked over by the day-to-day IBS pain and losing sight of the future.
If you have a similar personality to me, you feel the present moment very strongly. I started to think whatever experience I was having in the present moment was my life, and was my future.
If I was having a bad digestion day, I saw that happening tomorrow and every day for the rest of my life. I began to worry my present would always be more future. I started to want to control every variable, or I completely wanted to give up entirely.
The worst was when I felt like I had done everything right and was still having bloating and constipation. I would begin to feel like there was no point of even trying.
Do you ever go there in your mind? Like that screw this mentality? Why try so hard and have it count for nothing?
This thinking train can derail you if you let it. Being mentally strong and committed to your healing is essential.
When you are having one of those bad gut days, it is so easy to get sucked in by that awful feeling. You feel physically bad and then you add self-pity, anxiety, and frustration onto it.
You know that eating a huge portion of pasta makes you feel even worse physically. But you are so down and you attempt to use that pasta to make you feel better emotionally.
Maybe for you it’s not pasta. For you -what is that food you indulge in to make yourself feel better?
Of course you have moments like this, but if these moments stack up and become daily or weekly habits, they can negatively affect your healing.
Whatever your healing plan is, it’s important to follow through with it for a given period as closely as you can. You need to give it enough time and re assess frequently enough to see if your intervention is having a positive effect.
Healing Through Compassion
Having self-compassion goes right along with that mental toughness and commitment.
So often when I have started to establish better habits for myself, I have tried to use will power or negative self-talk to motivate myself on my path.
I have tried to use shame to get myself to change something that I was doing. Depending on where I am in my life, this strategy has worked to a certain extent but only for a limited time. Most of the time it doesn’t work at all. Especially now.
I have found that when I have tried to use shame or negativity to motivate myself to adapt or get rid of a habit, I end up failing to change that habit. That is because willpower is a limited resource and the human brain doesn’t actually respond well to negative motivation.
On the other hand, if you are trying to adapt a healthy lifestyle because you want to feel more happiness and joy in your life, that motivation can carry you a lot further than telling yourself what you should and shouldn’t do from a place of anger and shame.
When you experience the inevitable flare up, what is your response?
If you are having one of those bad IBS days, just let it be. Let it be, be soft with yourself and keep doing the things you know will help you heal.
If you can see the end of the tunnel you are so much more likely to succeed. If you can see your bright future and your joy, that motivation can carry you through the bumps on your way getting there.
Thank you for listening to Healing Her IBS today.