Episode 46 Saying Yes to IBS

The other day I was lying in bed, deeply warm and under the covers and I could feel how cold it was outside of the bed. I was just getting over having a really bad cold that knocked me out for a few days and as I was waking up I could feel my head pounding, the beginning of a really bad headache. I desperately wanted to go back to bed because I knew it was too early to get up and I was still tired, but I also knew that I wouldn’t be able to go back to bed with my head hurting the way it was. After about ten minutes of fretting over what to do, I remembered a strategy I used to help heal my IBS and decided to try it with my headache and see if it worked. I called it the “Saying Yes” strategy and it worked. Let’s talk today about what is the saying yes strategy and how and why it works to help heal IBS. Find the full transcript for this episode and other resources at healingheribs.com/46.

Transcript

The other day I was lying in bed, deeply warm and under the covers and I could feel how cold it was outside of the bed. I was just getting over having a really bad cold that knocked me out for a few days and as I was waking up I could feel my head pounding, the beginning of a really bad headache. I desperately wanted to go back to bed because I knew it was too early to get up and I was still tired, but I also knew that I wouldn’t be able to go back to bed with my head hurting the way it was. After about ten minutes of fretting over what to do, I remembered a strategy I used to help heal my IBS and decided to try it with my headache and see if it worked. I called it the “Saying Yes” strategy and it worked. Let’s talk today about what is the saying yes strategy and how and why it works to help heal IBS. Find the full transcript for this episode and other resources at healingheribs.com/46.

Saying Yes to IBS –How To 
The saying Yes to IBS (and to my headache) strategy is exactly what it sounds like it is and proves to be quite counter intuitive to us and how we think pain and healing works in the body. It goes against what we have been taught about pain and how to manage it. Today I invite you to keep an open mind as you are listening because having an open mind can open you up to new ways of healing that you wouldn’t have considered before. Of course you should always do what works for you and leave behind what does not. But I used to be very closed minded about many things and it was only through desperation that I became open to new ways of thinking about my IBS and thank god I did. I was desperate to heal my IBS and had no one to turn to that could give me a tried-and-true path for recover, so this Saying Yes strategy came from that place of not knowing what to do and needing to try new things. I will describe first what I did with my headache and then how this translated too to what I did during my IBS flares. Later on I will tell you about the why behind this practice and how exactly it works to reduce the pain and suffering you are experiencing with your IBS. For the first ten minutes of my headache, I was stressing. As I said, it was early,  I was so comfy and warm in bed and I really wanted to stay in bed and sleep more because I knew that getting that extra hour or two of sleep would make a big difference in how I felt that day. I rolled around in bed, I considered getting up and getting medicine, I worried about how I would deal and I mostly just was feeling this pain and also feeling sorry for myself for having this headache. I was resisting it, I was fighting it. Obviously, I was fighting this headache!! It is our natural born instinct to feel a pain signal and then to resist the pain, to do something to make it go away. Pain is our bodies way of telling us something is not right, and we are absolutely in the right to take that pain signal seriously and think about how to fix it. We learn in life how to protect ourselves in this way, it is an essential survival instinct. Nevertheless, I had a headache because I had caught a virus and this was just a symptom of my cold. There was really nothing for me to “do” in this situation besides generally giving myself time to rest and allow my body to heal, drinking enough water and doing all the things most of us know to do when we get sick. As I was going through this all in my mind, I remembered the Saying yes Strategy. The strategy I used during the worst of my IBS flare ups that helped me get through those minutes and hours and ultimately helped me rewire the vicious loop of pain and worry that was keeping me stuck in years of IBS symptoms that felt beyond my control. I simply let go of the thoughts of how to fix my headache (or in the past how to fix my belly pain and bloating or painful constipation). I made the decision that I didn’t really need for the pain to go away and instead decided to set aside the fear and anxiety that I had around the pain and do my best to just physically feel the sensations of the headache without feeding too much into the thoughts of how I wanted it to go away. In fact, I did the opposite. I started to get a little bit more comfortable feeling the sensation of the pain, the throbbing in my forehead and the tightness. After several minutes, I started to say yes to that hurt and I communicated with my headache and I told her that I wanted more!! I thought about how I wanted to feel that throbbing pain a little bit more, I invited her to come out fully in my head. I spent several more minutes, maybe 5 or 6 more minutes feeling the increase in the sensations of the headache becoming more powerful, the throbbing increasing. I breathed deeply and said yes and yes, over and over again. The next thing I remember I woke up several hours later and my headache was gone. And again, I thought to myself-what a miracle! I remembered this practice that I had sort of forget about and remembered how often I would use it to help me manage the pain of my IBS, pain that was so bad it sent me to the emergency room on several occasions. I instantly knew that I needed to write a podcast episode about this practice and share with you all before I forgot again! Let me just add a small caveat here before moving on.  If you are experiencing a lot of belly pain and unexplained issues in your gut, please seek medical advice first and foremost. This saying yes practice was something I started practicing after many visits to specialists, to getting CT scans and to making sure and for certain that I didn’t have any serious issues that needed immediate medical attention. After I found out that I had no serious issues going on, I was diagnosed with IBS and this was truly where my confusion began. 

The Why of Saying Yes To IBS
When I first started practicing this “Saying Yes” strategy during my IBS flares, I didn’t fully understand why it worked. I just knew it helped. I knew it softened the pain, lowered my panic, and created a kind of space inside my body that I had never felt before. Years later — and after learning about the nervous system, the vagus nerve, trauma responses, and mind–body healing — it all makes sense. And I want to break it down for you in a way that you can really comprehend. The truth of the matter and something that took me awhile to learn and truly feel in my own body, is that pain and suffering are two different things. We have pain and then we have the thoughts and resistance to the pain---which is natural and nothing to feel shame around. However, when we push the pain away, when we resist it —our nervous system senses danger and it goes into freeze mode, or flight mode. This nervous system state increases the pain signal to our gut. The resistance that you experience creates tension in the gut, it tightens the gut muscles and it reduces the blood blow through your body and in your gut. It essentially keeps you in the loop of tension-stress-worry and more pain. If you can interrupt that loop for even a few moments , you are powerfully sending a very different message to your nervous system——you are lowering that alarm and you are gradually softening that loop. By saying yes to the pain, by inviting even more pain to come in and all the while remaining open and curios to the physical sensations that come, you are creating an entirely different environment in your body. Curiosity means your body can soften a tiny bit, whereas fear creates more tension. The softening ironically lessens the pain whereas the tension brings more. When your mind can communicate to your body that you are capable of handling this pain and that you are okay, that you are safe in this space ——great change can occur and this is how chronic symptoms change in a moment and for the long haul.

 The Long Termness of Saying Yes 

Though I am not saying this practice of saying yes is an easy one, it is how the saying goes— a simple one.  I believe it holds in it’s essence the magic of how to heal IBS over the long term. I am not suggesting that inviting the pain and saying yes to the pain is going to erase your IBS from one day to the next. What I am suggesting is that taking this stance retrains your gut- brain connection by saying yes instead of resisting the pain. This practice can change your outlook on your IBS , your stance on it and can lead you to feeling less and less of the symptoms and discomfort you are not avoiding. The first year or so of having IBS, I was in a frenzy of worry and fear around my diagnosis and my symptoms. It was like a hurricane that I had been sucked into, one that I wasn’t aware that I had any way out. I simply was not aware and so I do not blame myself whatsoever for what I experienced and how I was wrapped up in it in the way I was. Once I learned this saying yes, the belly love meditation, and other general principles about the nervous system’s role in IBS—I started to shift my orientation to my flares and my symptoms, my IBS lost it’s grip over my poor little scared brain and my out of control fearful emotions. The fire went down, the passion went down and little by little, month by month I experienced less and less pain and bloating. I hope you feel inspired to try this saying yes to your IBS the next time you are in pain and that today’s episode was inspiring.