Some advice please!

I've been struggling lately and I'm so disappointed in myself. When school started back up for my kids and activities started-my pain increased. I had a good summer of low pain amounts so of course I was frustrated with this.

Fast forward to now-my main symptoms have always been IBS. Mainly severe pain that will keep me on the couch. Now the pain is back and I'm started to equate it with food again. I started drinking coffee and while I did great for a bit, anytime I drink it my pain starts after sometime and my day revolves around that.

Then my doubts start-coffee causes me pain so maybe this isn't TMS. And then my mind goes from that to fear of eating other things. Of course I didn't coffee yesterday as an experiment and guess what! Low pain and I could function all day just fine.

I'm definitely getting the symptom imperatives right now as well. A couple of weeks back my IBS pain was very low but insomnia was so bad I was only sleeping a few hours at night. Of course, the insomnia went away (After I told myself night after night that it didn't matter how much sleep I got-at least if I closed my eyes and rested I would be fine the next day.) That seemed to worked and then the stomach issues kicked right back up with TMS focusing on my food/drink.

Here's my question-I don't know how to handle this IBS pain now. It seems when I get symptom imperatives I can recognize it for what it is and not freak out about it. And it will usually go away. But IBS pain? It's too real, can be so severe, and it scares me. You can see how it has a hold on me just with making me think my coffee is causing it! Do you have any recommendations of how to desensitize myself from this pain? Has something maybe worked for you that you can recommend? Ignoring it or talking to it like I do with the symptom imperatives doesn't work for me at this time.

Thank you!

 

Joulegirl, I homeschool my kids and one thing I learned yearsago is that I have to have a week off after very 5-6 weeks. I wonder if you need a week off. I know you're not homeschooling (or are you?), but just from the harder, busier stuff that is going on right now. I have had a lot of symptoms this week for various reasons but one reason is that I'm in week 6 and it is time for a break...I have been trying to think of it as "nervous system recovery week." So I'm trying to make my decisions this week based on that. There will be other times that I will push myself to meet extracurricular needs, etc., but not during break week.
Do you have any rhythms of rest and play and down time built into your time right now, or is it just go go go? Can you pull back on kid activities and give yourself a break week -- or find rides for them this week, etc., to their activities? We can't go at top speed forever. The school calendar may say its fine to go for months without a break but maybe you need something different.

 

@Joulegirl
You’ll need to learn to let it be.
When I was young, around 5, I had horrible IBS symptoms starting school. I was terrified I would not live up to teacher expectations because I could not live up to parental ones. My pain was similarly debilitating. It felt like I could not walk, and many more symptoms.
I had no choice but to just get on with it. It’s a form of ignoring and compassion - being with instead of fighting with - accepting that it’s here for now.
How much work have you done surrounding homeschooling responsibility within yourself? This seems to be a key component. What can you do to change your situation, creatively? I was a teacher, and understand the pressure. My difficulties with the expectations of schooling never ended, not even when I was a teacher (they multiplied by 10 then!).
Annnnd… I just enrolled in taking classes again myself! Triggers and symptoms abound.
I am there with them. Not fighting, not trying to change, just observing and lightly noticing them. It takes time and patience to learn this skill on difficult symptoms. Where in homeschooling are you hard on yourself? What makes this venture so personal for you?
I agree that the school calendar might be a challenge. The last school I was at (I taught kids who had challenging autism symptoms) was year around so the teachers could get breaks. Our curriculums were completely self make we had no guidance and in many ways that made it similar to homeschooling.

 

Schools and kid activities could feel overwhelmed for moms and would generate a lot of inner tensions. Too many things to handle but because it is kids' stuff, moms feel obligated to do it but mom's inner child may kick and scream: I don't want to do it, I don't want to take care of anything and anybody, I just want to take care of myself and take a break. If there are ways to get some help for the school year, or reduce activities, one could try that. It is never easy as mom since there are a lot of times mom would feel they run out of options but maybe it is OK to not to do that many things as the modern society seems to get everybody including the kids on the spinning wheels.

 

Hi, Joulegirl

#1 I’d journal nightly about the pressure of being a Mom during the school year. Just let it rip, uncensored. What’s unfair about it? What do you hate? Go into elaborate detail. Then tear it up. I’d spend a lot of time on this until the nice, good Mommy peals away, and you get some of your real frustrations onto the page. Even after you think you’ve purged it, keep writing daily. It’s extremely unacceptable to be a Mom who doesn’t love every single aspect of being a Mom. And the spoken and unspoken standards Moms are expected to meet are maddening. It’s a perfect breeding ground for TMS. (Trust me: it’s the cause of my TMS, now, in a big way. And my kids are raised!)

#2: You said it. IBS scares you. Bingo. That’s exactly where your TMS brain wants you. Hard to think about unacceptable feelings while you’re all worried about IBS and you’re afraid. (And don’t forget the rule: TMS can create any symptom it wants. Even really scary ones. Especially scary ones.) Every time you get scared, think about what you wrote about during your journaling sessions.

 

Talking to my lizard brain about my 'IBS' didn't work for me either... but then I found that it can depend on what you say and how you say it. What works for me is telling it that it's being "ridiculous" (I'm a Brit so I actually say to it "you're being bloody ridiculous") and then I keep repeating "it's ridiculous" for a while. It works well for me with new symptoms and the flaring of old symptoms too; they don't last for long. When you think about it, your lizard brain is being ridiculous, isn't it?... You can drink coffee for a while and you're fine with it and then it goes back to giving you symptoms and expects you to believe that you're over sensitive to coffee. Anyway, it's just a thought, just in case by some chance you haven't tried this approach... simply ignore me if you have.

 

I have found that the most effective way for me to "talk to my brain" is as if it is a misbehaving child having a tantrum--which it is. So I'm not unkind or shaming, but I am firm and clear. "Stop it now. You're fine. Sit here and relax and pull yourself together." That kind of talk works best for me.

 

Yep, it really can pay off to experiment and see what 'hits home' with our particular brain.

 

Thanks guys! I have some new ideas to implement to see if I can calm this down. I'm going to be trying my coffee tomorrow and if it triggers some symptoms I have some new dialogue to try. I definitely believe this is TMS and just haven't gotten the right way to get the IBS to calm down yet.

 

GI stuff is not so clear cut. Yes it is rooted in emotions and stress. Perpetual stress leads to perpetual fight or flight which slows the digestive system down. Stomach acid decreases, food moves through the stomach more slowly which can increase inflammation and cause gastritis. I’m not saying this to scare you and distract from mind body work. But you can have something physically wrong and the root still be emotional/stress based as well the cure be mind body based.

Am I definitively saying you have an inflamed stomach and thus the acidity of coffee is causing ‘legitimate’ pain? Of course not, I’m not a doctor and I don’t know your situation. But I really don’t think there’s anything wrong with abstaining from triggering foods while managing the emotional side of things. Trying to brute force stuff with GI issues, especially things that aren’t in anyway shape or form necessary, like drinking coffee seems cruel to me. It definitely can work, but if we had that inner resiliency, lack of fear, and connection with our emotions, would we be in this predicament in the first place? It’s all about perspective-I’m not drinking this or eating that because I deserve to feel good and not be in pain, but above all because I know my GI system is in a sensitive state due to my emotional state and nervous system, which I’m working on vs I’m not drinking coffee because I’m absolutely terrified of it and foods and because I think what I eat is the underlying issues rather than my emotions/nervous system.

I say this as someone with diagnosed chronic gastritis and IBS (both TMS just using the labels for solidarity. lol). When I first became TMS aware I tried brute forcing acidic foods and not caring, I was just causing pain and punishing myself. After being on a strict diet for about 5 months I’ve been reintroducing foods the past 5ish weeks with good success. But I’ve had a few set backs the last week dealing with stress from a new job, career regrets, mourning past decisions etc. Would it be kind to myself to keep brute forcing new acidic foods as I navigate these emotions, or should I just stay in my food lane for a little bit as I navigate this current predicament?

I guess my gist is, we can lower our nervous system threshold and restore a normal digestive system without putting unnecessary strain on it while it all settles down. But if we’re in a fragile state and uncertain about our ability to respond to the symptoms caused by unnecessary foods then we tread a dangerous course of increasing our fear and a crappy cycle can start.

 

Since you had a great summer and now things have changed— I don’t think this has to do with coffee. It has to do with how you’re feeling. Maybe something you’re making yourself do, that deep down, you don’t agree with.

 

@Diana-M is so wise here.
Obviously you care about your children and their education, etc. so the question is -- is what you're doing now making you feel like you care for them but don't care for yourself? Or that others don't care for you? Like you don't matter?

Because both things can be done: caring well for your kids, and caring for yourself. But it's not always obvious how. Sometimes it really feels impossible.

I've been spending a lot of time facing this in recent years and some of the decisions I am starting to make are maybe not what one would expect, but they do help. I.e. things like "my nervous system comes first this morning" rather than "I'm giving up and putting my kids in a school that I think will harm them because I can't do this anymore" kinds of things. I think I've neglected myself in part because while I saw clearly that my kids would not do well if I worked full-time or put them in our local public schools, I saw no other solution that might make things better for me. And some things that I did try -- like taking on part-time work that matters to me -- did help but was not enough, because it was a whole lot deeper than that.

So it felt like Them or Me and so of course I chose Them, because they are my children.

Now I am looking for smaller, habit and mindset and daily life solutions that are not Them vs. Me but instead are good for Us. There are lots more of these than I ever saw before! Especially about my interior attitude and response to pain, fear, anger, etc.

These small changes help! I never realized how disordered my self-abnegation was before. I knew something was wrong but the self-care I tried to do wasn't fixing it. Again, it's deeper -- really acting on the belief that you matter, not just grabbing things here and there or trying what works for the Joneses.

I don't know if this helps but maybe it's worth thinking about.

 

Another thing that helps me -- when I'm not totally losing it like the other day, ha! -- is to try to remember that the pain can be there without the fear, despair, anger, etc. When I get worked up about "WHAT IS THIS PAIN" I try to trick myself a little by saying that I will first just focus on processing the emotions and only worry about the pain once the emotions are all processed. First things first.

 

Oh boy! What a great post! Dixie, you are learning so much! And I’m right there with you. The sacrifice a mother is willing to make for her children is a beautiful thing, but it can be off track and cause a lifetime of damage. Because like you said, it needs to protect everyone, including the mother. It’s so hard to dig in there and see what’s really going on, because guilt blankets the whole thing. You have to deeply explore. Very deeply. And I honestly think it takes a while to figure all this stuff out. I get this weird feeling that my symptoms will mysteriously lift when I finally get to the very heart of my deepest and most honest feelings about what I “owe” my kids—and even my grandkids. It’s so easy to feel like a perpetual failure. And that’s not right, or fair.

 

So glad to be on this journey together, friend!

It is definitely taking a while. We'll both get there. We are growing so much!

 

I had an IBS flare yesterday and when I get them I get really nauseous as well. I kept telling myself it was ridiculous, I was not going to puke and there was no reason for this. It took a while but seemed to work.

 

@Rabscuttle I normally would think that way too-eat gentler as I heal. But I had an endoscopy colonoscopy done last year and there literally was nothing wrong. No inflammation/redness at all! My gastro was stumped prescribed me dicyclomine and sent me on my way! Also-I'm originally from Seattle...coffee is in our blood!

@Diana-M @dlane2530 I tend to think that this has something to do with my kids. As much as I hate to say it, they stress me out. I love them so much and then at the same time I'm frustrated. They are teenagers now and this is been the hardest stage to parent so far. My daughter's dance activities have me out til 9pm 3 days a week when I work full time during the day! That in itself is frustrating for me. But I have kept my Saturdays unscheduled so I can be at home and get stuff done. My son is a senior and has been touring colleges this past month. I'm so excited for him but also realize that if he attends college, he's leaving next Sept. But I'm a little sad-those 18 years flew by! I definitely think I need to get back to journaling.

@Rusty Red Your the second person to recommend telling myself that the symptoms are ridiculous. I'll be trying that today for sure-maybe that might calm my symptoms down a bit.

I'm drinking my coffee today and reading my affirmations at my desk. Thank you all for your encouragement!

 

@Joulegirl I was panicking about the foods I was eating too. I had an extra coffee yesterday and was like oh I did this to myself. Then I thought no, I have done this many times with no issues, this is silly.

Doesn't work for my pain symptoms as much but it seems to work for things like IBS! Good luck, I hope you feel better! You've been amazing on your journey here, I know you can beat this.

 

Good luck, @Joulegirl! Hope you can enjoy your coffee today! ❤️