I find that people are always searching for the right diet or supplement to make the healing difference.
Or they want to replicate the healing protocol of someone else in hopes that it also works for them.
Healing is an individual experience that depends not only on your unique body chemistry, but also your emotional make up.
It wasn’t just diet that healed me. It was also my attitude of radical self care that made a huge difference.
In order to truly heal, I had to surrender some of my basic personality traits. My ambition. My impatience. And my desire to have an full, active life.
I gave it all up and surrendered to healing. In the meantime I began the process of digesting the emotions underneath.
It’s my belief that IBS affects and is affected by body, mind and soul. And just like it’s important to feed your body the right foods, it’s equally as important to fully digest your thoughts and emotions, ESPECIALLY the ugly ones.
This video on emotional metabolism explains this concept so well, showing how our emotions manifest chemically in our bodies.
Here’s the big secret to emotional healing: You can’t tell yourself how you should feel, rather you need to honor what is actually going on for you. Negative emotions don’t mean you are a bad person, it means you’re human. Negative emotions naturally rise up in everyone.
It is how you deal with these negative emotions that determines how healthy you are. That means not denying these emotions and not fearing them.
There’s a common fear that feeling into a negative emotion will lead one to drown in the feeling, never escaping its grip. The reality is the opposite.
Feeling the emotion will give it the attention it needs and allow you to release it from your body. This is how you digest emotions, by simply acknowledging and feeling them.
Processing and digesting emotion is just as important as digesting and assimilating food. Emotionally constipation can be just as damaging to health as physical constipation, but a lot less obvious.
Core beliefs
Now, that we’ve look at emotions, let’s examine how core beliefs tie into emotions.
For me, productivity is like a drug.
It feels like a high to get things done and also keeps me from feeling my most painful emotions. The ones that center around my self worth. This is a foundation of my perfectionism. Needing to overcompensate for feeling less than.
The core belief underneath my perfectionism is “I am not enough“.
I have core beliefs underneath my anxiety too.
That “everything will go horribly wrong”.
And my hyper sensitivity comes with its own beliefs. That “I’m weaker or more vulnerable than others” This is yet another reason to overcompensate and prove myself.
That’s why in my life I’ve always tried to push past my limits instead of honoring them.
This is the opposite of radical self care. It does damage, mostly to my adrenals.
The role of expectations
Our core beliefs also feed into our expectations in life.
My chi gong teacher has told me for years that my expectations need to be lowered if I want to be healthier and happier. I’m working on it. It’s not easy.
I have wild expectations of what I should be able to accomplish and how fast. And what it will look like when I get there. If things don’t go according to expectations, disappointment ensues. And disappointment is one of the emotions I protect myself from feeling.
Instead of being vulnerable to disappointment, I deny, procrastinate, distract myself or lay blame.
What complicates things is that we have blind spots about our emotions, expectations and core beliefs. So we never truly understand what’s going on with us.
To protect ourselves, we often repress our emotions, sending them deep into our subconscious.
Trying to heal ourselves with repressed or conflicted emotions is like having one foot on the accelerator and the other on the brake. It will either slow the process or damage your morale.
We need to ask: What do we need to let go of? Where do we need to relax? What do we need to feel and digest? Where can we be more gentle or more loving to ourselves? Where can we practice radical self care?
There are no easy answers and it’s not a fun place to tread. But the healing potential in emotional work is more profound and balancing than probiotics. In fact, stressful emotions can actually kill beneficial bacteria.
Being aware of our emotions will help us detox on a profound level, bring not just health but happiness and peace.
This is the part of my healing process that I’m still working on. Examining my thoughts, beliefs and expectations. I am not trying to change them, just to notice and feel what they are. Because once acknowledged, emotions will shift on their own, releasing their affect on you.
Because of our blind spots, working with a body- centered healing professional trained in emotional work can have profound healing effects. Somatic experiencing is just one of the many therapies out there that deals with the body and emotional work. Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) is another great method for digesting beliefs. Chose a modality that resonates with you.
But there are also DIY approaches that center around self observation.
Journaling help your subconscious thoughts and emotions rise to the surface.
Or you can talk to a friend and truly listen for the themes and emotions in what you say.
A common core belief
The most common core belief I hear from clients and readers is “I’ve tried everything and nothing works“.
What’s underneath this statement? Frustration? Fear of failure? Lack of control? Hopelessness? If you feel this way, the next time you say this feel into the emotions it brings up.
Where do you feel these emotions in your body? This is how you digest emotions. By feeling them physically in your body.
Next time try a different phrase on for size..”I’ve tried everything and nothing has worked yet…” Does that feel different in your body?
Or you can start by examining your expectations because they are easier to get in touch with.
Do you expect speedy, overnight healing?
Anxiety types want to see rapid results so we can trust that it’s working. Slow progress freaks us out.
But bodies are conservative creatures. They don’t change fast. And when they are changing, they will go back and forth from better to worse. A chart of someone’s healing progress will look like a turbulent stock market prices. Ups and downs with a slow upward progression.
Can you make friends with slow progress by feeling the emotions it brings up?
Or do you suffer from trying to do too much like me? There’s a reason adrenal fatigue is rampant these days. We push ourselves too hard. We over exercise, over research, over perform, over deliver, over expect.
If you know how to be sick, you will recover faster.
You can’t push and struggle your way back to health, it’s counterintuitive. But you can take this opportunity to get to know yourself better.
Instead of scouring the Internet for answers, and getting deeply confused, go deep inside yourself for answers.
What do you refuse to digest?
You may not get an answer right away, but this shift to trusting your internal wisdom will start to bring synchronicity and deep healing your way.
Angela Privin is proof that IBS is NOT an incurable disease or a disease at all. IBS is a body out of balance. It’s an invitation for change. After solving her own IBS mystery more than a decade ago Angela trained as a health coach to help others.
Angela uses both science and intuition to help people figure out what’s out of balance in their body. She works with lab tests, dietary changes, supplementation and nervous system rebalancing. Get help rebalancing your digestive system and solving your IBS mystery here.
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