My ibs is 85% caused by anxiety.

To start off, I’m making this post in hopes that someone in a similar situation might realize the same thing, and have their symptoms drastically helped. Please bear with me as I’m not the greatest writer. I have had severe Ibs for the last 4 years, and even somewhat suffered from it as a child. I grew up in an abusive household, where I didn’t ever truly feel safe. Because of this I believe I was constantly in fight or flight and my mind thought the best way to deal with the anxiety was to push it onto my stomach.

It started to get really bad in high school. I was picked on for being short, on top of having a difficult home life I was never able to relax and be happy. I now know this culminated in chronic ibs symptoms, everyday, including chronic diarrhea, incomplete evacuation, and most importantly pain in the lower part of my abdomen. I went to countless doctors, getting multiple endoscopies, colonoscopies, and stool tests, as well as Sibo tests. All came back clear, besides a slight spike in the sibo test. Knowing this I thought all of my ibs symptoms must’ve been 100% caused by sibo which I must’ve randomly got, is what I thought.

After learning this I tried countless supplements, spent 500-750$+ as well as trying to heavily modify my diet and remove dairy gluten, nuts, sauces, fruit, vegetables, which lead to me only eating meat and losing a lot of weight. It wasn’t until I went back to the doctor with countless questions, and not understanding why anything was wrong. This is when he said he believed nothing was wrong with me physically. I argued with him thinking that it is ridiculous to assume that something like anxiety has contributed to my chronic pain and years of symptoms. But after this appointment. I sat down and really thought about when my symptoms were worst. It was always when I was in a high stress environment. When I was home, at school, working a job I hated and was stressed.

This is the last part I promise haha. Learning this I moved out with my brother who I get along with well, distanced myself from my parents, graduated from school and am currently looking for a lower stress job. I still am taking it day by day but my symptoms have drastically improved, I have diarrhea about 1x a week now compared to 7x, I try to eat pretty healthy, but now I can eat chipotle, PepperJax and other fast food chains that aren’t (McDonalds tier-Crap) as well as gluten, nuts, vegetables, pretty much anything besides spicy food. It’s a daily battle to remember that nothing is wrong with me, to calm myself down when I’m anxious but within minutes I’m back to feeling perfectly fine with either very little or no stomach pain. Not saying this is the case for everyone, but I believe there is a HUGE correlation between ibs and stress/cptsd more than most people even believe. I know this won’t help everyone, but even if it helps one person, I would be so happy. Because I was in the shoes of many other people on Reddit wondering what the hell was wrong with me. Keep fighting guys you will figure this out and get through it. Just like I am.❤️ God bless-Alex