So my stomach has been messed up for seven months. Some days are better than others but it’s definitely messed up. I have maybe three normal stomach days a month. Anyway I want to believe it is mind body and I don’t have food intolerances but yesterday really showed me it might not be. So my blood sugar has been high so I had a sugar craving and I went to CVS and got two bags of sugar free candy. I ate them pretty quick. Three hours later I had the worst upset stomach of my life. The most gas I have ever had and had to go on the toilet all night. I read online after that sugar feee stuff can do this to your stomach. So now I’m thinking this may not be mind body related and is something physical.
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That's a toughie because physical things cause upset stomachs and intestines. If you have a parasite, you're going to have diarrhea.
Eating two bags of sugar free candy, will make you sick.
It's the general pervasive feeling of sickness in the stomach or that yukky feeling when you have to go do something that semi-scares you. You'll notice that sometimes you magically feel better after the thing you were avoiding has passed.
For example, if you are feeling sick and you are supposed to go to lunch with friends that day. And you say to yourself, "I feel awful. ugh. there's no way I can go to lunch. ugh. I feel yukky." You cancel and then you notice in the afternoon after the lunch time is well passed that -- I feel a lot better now. Or even if you force yourself to go and then once it's over and you get home and you feel a lot better.
Look for those kinds of patterns and you will be very clear on how our brains use our stomachs and digestive system to keep us down.
(For me my brain gives me digestive and head combo. I feel the churning in my intestines along with a kind of dizzy/spacy/nauseous feeling in my head.)
Eating two bags of sugar free candy, will make you sick.
It's the general pervasive feeling of sickness in the stomach or that yukky feeling when you have to go do something that semi-scares you. You'll notice that sometimes you magically feel better after the thing you were avoiding has passed.
For example, if you are feeling sick and you are supposed to go to lunch with friends that day. And you say to yourself, "I feel awful. ugh. there's no way I can go to lunch. ugh. I feel yukky." You cancel and then you notice in the afternoon after the lunch time is well passed that -- I feel a lot better now. Or even if you force yourself to go and then once it's over and you get home and you feel a lot better.
Look for those kinds of patterns and you will be very clear on how our brains use our stomachs and digestive system to keep us down.
(For me my brain gives me digestive and head combo. I feel the churning in my intestines along with a kind of dizzy/spacy/nauseous feeling in my head.)
JanAtheCPA
Beloved Grand Eagle
Yup. This incident has nothing to do with anything, apart from the medical fact that many of the sugar substitutes (esp the alcohol sugars) produce the exact results you described, and many zero-sugar products have labels warning the consumer of the gas and laxative effects.
So yes, sure - not everything is TMS. The most mindful and experienced mindbody practitioner in the world would have had the same experience from eating two bags of this stuff - which is, after all, not a natural food, but rather a highly-processed additive.
Again: this incident has nothing to do with your vague digestive issues @twocups88. You can still fuck up your body by abusing it (and abusing your body will not allow you to feel love or compassion for yourself) so you might want to examine why you consumed two bags of candy in one sitting, because addictive behavior is also TMS.
I stand by what I wrote to you back in June.
Thank you. That’s why I think it’s not TMS and something else. It salary’s with me all the time. Only time it gets better is at night. I just don’t get it though. I never had stomach problems then one day after the runs they began. My mind was fixated on it though. Now it’s a 24hr obsession.
Thank you. I do have a bunch of addictive behaviors. I quit the one that was going to kill me the quickest ten years ago. I’m rehab they told me addiction is a biological disease. Maybe they are right. Now I’m addicted to sugar and refined carbs. Now maybe my stomach feels the brunt of it after years of abuse. I still think there is a psychological component just don’t know what to do. I have been to 10+ therapist in the last 18 years, tried all forms of therapy, tried medication. All this to deal with OCD and anxiety. Kind of just sick of it all. Don’t know how to get through this. Starting to think I never will.
Have you been to a doctor to get a stool test? Do that and when that comes back clean, then you will know.
There is no such thing as years of abuse in your eating causing stomach problems. Sugar does not hurt you. Carbs do not hurt you. Sugar might rot your teeth. Calories might make you fat. But they don't hurt you. People have been eating sugar and carbs for hundreds of years. (Lord knows I eat plenty.)
If you want to change your thinking or change your eating, all you have to do is decide to do so. Recognize that the lower part of your brain, "the beast" is keeping you down. It's making you feel bad. It's telling you to go eat 2 bags of candy. It's telling you that you are sick and will be like that forever. But guess what? You get to decide not your beast. You have the higher part of your brain. The higher part of the brain gets to make its own choices.
Go get a stool test and a blood test. If they say you have a parasite or bacteria, the docs will give you medicine. If they say all clear. Then you will know that your stomach is healthy. Your intestines are healthy. You can then work on whatever emotions and anger that you have. Finding them, recognizing them, letting yourself know it's OK to feel that, and letting it go.
JanAtheCPA
Beloved Grand Eagle
I'm really truly sorry that you're still struggling like this after two years here, @twocups88. But... (yep, here's the "BUT") I just don't think you're doing the work. Back in 2020, and then again in 2021, you received incredible advice from some of our most experienced forum luminaries - and yet here you are again starting in spring 2022, still saying "Yes, but... I don't think it's TMS".
The goal of this forum is to accept the TMS diagnosis, do the work, and be willing to acknowledge that any amount of progress is cause to celebrate and to keep going. Doubts are totally normal when you start doing the work, because your brain will fight against it. Recognizing this and fighting back is essential. But you can't progress unless you get started, and you are in the same place you were in two years ago.
It's not you, @twocups88, it's your brain. Your brain is clearly very resistant to doing the work. It has you convinced that if you just post again, and seek some kind of reassurance, that you're accomplishing something. This, as I love to say, is your brain on TMS.
I think it would be educational for you to revisit those conversations. You started twelve threads, and never posted on any other threads, so it's easy to get through.
Look, I understand that OCD is a really tough one. I've had a lifetime of relatively low-level and non-debilitating anxiety which includes mild OCD behaviors (some weird ones as a kid). The thing is, OCD is just addiction by another name. It's more socially acceptable than substance abuse and other addictive behaviors - but OCD behaviors are addictions nonetheless. As you know and have tried, there are medications that have supposedly helped people with severe OCD, but the ones we see here always say that the meds did not work for them. I think the reason they don't help most people long-term is because the core problem, at its heart, is not biology/physiology or brain chemistry - it's emotional dysfunction. The medications are basically from the family of anti-depressant/anti-anxiety meds -and they are trying to control emotional dysfunction by creating changes in brain chemistry. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't, and usually not long-term unless the emotional work is also done.
Mind you, I'm a CPA, not a mental health or medical health professional, so all I've got is eleven years of observations on this forum to offer. It is my strong gut feeling that extreme anxiety, depression, OCD, and addictions most likely result from extreme childhood and familial dysfunction, neglect, or outright abuse - in other words, from childhood trauma that is simply not being addressed. Our primitive brains are incredibly resistant to accessing that trauma, but the unfortunate results are physical distress and addictive behaviors which are the result of continued repression.
Your brain is reeeeally resistant to dealing with whatever trauma you probably endured, and have been repressing. You don't mention your childhood or family - and on this forum that tells us a lot. I say this with tough love and an honest desire to that you stop spinning your wheels on this forum, because we don't have the skills that you need. IMHO, your best chance at some kind of recovery will be to find a therapist who not only accepts the mindbody connection, but is particularly skilled at working on childhood trauma, and who, above all, won't let your resistant brain bullshit its way out of having you do the work.
Good luck,
~Jan
The goal of this forum is to accept the TMS diagnosis, do the work, and be willing to acknowledge that any amount of progress is cause to celebrate and to keep going. Doubts are totally normal when you start doing the work, because your brain will fight against it. Recognizing this and fighting back is essential. But you can't progress unless you get started, and you are in the same place you were in two years ago.
It's not you, @twocups88, it's your brain. Your brain is clearly very resistant to doing the work. It has you convinced that if you just post again, and seek some kind of reassurance, that you're accomplishing something. This, as I love to say, is your brain on TMS.
I think it would be educational for you to revisit those conversations. You started twelve threads, and never posted on any other threads, so it's easy to get through.
Look, I understand that OCD is a really tough one. I've had a lifetime of relatively low-level and non-debilitating anxiety which includes mild OCD behaviors (some weird ones as a kid). The thing is, OCD is just addiction by another name. It's more socially acceptable than substance abuse and other addictive behaviors - but OCD behaviors are addictions nonetheless. As you know and have tried, there are medications that have supposedly helped people with severe OCD, but the ones we see here always say that the meds did not work for them. I think the reason they don't help most people long-term is because the core problem, at its heart, is not biology/physiology or brain chemistry - it's emotional dysfunction. The medications are basically from the family of anti-depressant/anti-anxiety meds -and they are trying to control emotional dysfunction by creating changes in brain chemistry. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't, and usually not long-term unless the emotional work is also done.
Mind you, I'm a CPA, not a mental health or medical health professional, so all I've got is eleven years of observations on this forum to offer. It is my strong gut feeling that extreme anxiety, depression, OCD, and addictions most likely result from extreme childhood and familial dysfunction, neglect, or outright abuse - in other words, from childhood trauma that is simply not being addressed. Our primitive brains are incredibly resistant to accessing that trauma, but the unfortunate results are physical distress and addictive behaviors which are the result of continued repression.
Your brain is reeeeally resistant to dealing with whatever trauma you probably endured, and have been repressing. You don't mention your childhood or family - and on this forum that tells us a lot. I say this with tough love and an honest desire to that you stop spinning your wheels on this forum, because we don't have the skills that you need. IMHO, your best chance at some kind of recovery will be to find a therapist who not only accepts the mindbody connection, but is particularly skilled at working on childhood trauma, and who, above all, won't let your resistant brain bullshit its way out of having you do the work.
Good luck,
~Jan
thanks so much Jane for the thoughtful and detailed response. I guess I’m scared to do the work because I’m afraid it won’t work. Well nothing is not working while not trying it either. I will start it. I would like to find a good TMS therapist to help. So maybe I can find one. Thanks again.