The Role of Emotions and Stress on Our Symptoms
Emotions play a significant role in triggering IBS symptoms, including the emotional response that can arise after being diagnosed with a gut problem. The personal journey to discovering your diagnosis may have had some ups and downs, and you may now be exploring the meaning as the challenges of managing IBS symptoms.
In addition to the emotions you may feel about your diagnosis and your symptoms, the emotional response can travel in the other direction as well – disordered gut-brain interactions can also lead to emotional responses. This can become a challenging and unhelpful feedback loop.
Gut symptoms lead to a negative emotional response, which then leads to an increase in gut symptoms, which then leads to more negative emotions—and on and on! Imaging studies (like brain MRI) show that adults with IBS display more activity in the emotional areas of the brain in response to physical discomfort than people without IBS. This means that folks with IBS may have a harder time reducing pain AND may experience more emotions around their physical symptoms. It doesn’t sound super fun, right?
The loop continues through our emotions, which can directly influence digestion through the gut-brain highway.
We’ve likely all experienced that stressful week at work or that unexpected family emergency, causing you to run for the nearest bathroom because your food seems to have gone through the intestines at hyperspeed.
Or perhaps you’ve experienced intense anger toward a loved one or a situation outside of your control, making you wonder if you’ll ever have a bowel movement again. The speed at which food moves through the gut can become directly tied to how we feel.
Many individuals with IBS also experience generalized anxiety and depression. These frequently co-occurring mental health conditions can also contribute to dysregulation of the mind-body communication highway by increasing pain hypersensitivity and negatively impacting your responses to day-to-day events.
While it may sound like an endlessly vicious cycle, there are simple ways to manage your emotional responses that can have a meaningful impact on IBS symptoms. As you continue your program, you will experiment with various breathing and relaxation techniques. While not every method may be the best fit for you, the hope is that you will find a few easy methods to integrate into your everyday life to meaningfully improve your stress and symptoms.