Is your nervous system stopping your IBS recovery?

I have discovered through working with countless clients and my own life experience that the health and stability of the nervous system is what determines the body’s ability to heal.

I have many client success stories, but the clients who struggle to get better are stuck in a loop of stress causing symptom and vice versa. This vicious cycles is what blocks the body’s natural healing process. Even with the assistance of herbs, medicines and antimicrobials, it still can’t do its job.

Most of the time this is due to nervous system activation. When we get stuck with a chronically unregulated nervous system, it can also throw off immune function and cause excessive inflammation in the body.

It also compromises digestion.

In an attempt to regulate my own nervous system and immune system I discovered hypnosis, which helps the subconscious mind resolve past difficulties and sabotaging beliefs that throw a wrench into healthy nervous system function.

I personally tried hypnotherapy and had such amazing results that I decided to study and certify in hypnosis so I could support clients in breaking that vicious cycle of stress-triggered symptoms and vice versa.

My story illustrates how past events can be buried and then re-triggered to create both emotional and physical turmoil.

My story

I was always adventurous and wanted to travel and live in other countries.

But when I moved to Spain at 30 years old, I felt very isolated. I did not speak the language well, I missed my boyfriend at home and had absolutely no one to lean on. I underestimated the impact that lack of support had on my psyche.

My IBS went from manageable to unmanageable in Spain, and because of that I stayed in my house most of my time there.

As my digestive health declined, so did my mental health. I lost confidence in myself.

I didn’t know at the time, that I associated the physical and mental pain I felt with living in a foreign country. I formed a belief that I was not safe or supported when I was not in my home country.

When I returned to San Francisco, I stayed there for 18 years. My desire to travel left me.

There, I worked on healing my gut and succeeded. I formed a subconscious belief that if I wanted to stay healthy, I needed to stay there.

While I lived in San Francisco, I enjoyed good health, became a rock climber, a chi gong practitioner, dog mama, and health coach. I made a self-care pact to always work from home.

Then came time to move to Argentina. While it wasn’t my choice, it had to happen. And it triggered a lot of past stress and subconscious beliefs about it not being safe to live in another country.

And ironically, that manifested in living in apartments with toxic mold for two years.

Moving to Germany was also stressful because I had ancestral trauma associated with the holocaust and World War 2. 

While my conscious mind knows those atrocities are in the past, due to early childhood programming about Germans, my subconscious believes I’m still in danger.

The difference between the conscious and subconscious mind

Talk therapy deals wih the logical conscious mind, but it is the subconscious (emotional) mind that runs the show. Emotions always win over logic.

Hypnotherapy explores the thoughts, beliefs and emotions that live in the subconscious mind. These things are often below our awareness.

The subconscious mind is what regulates the autonomic nervous system, which regulates digestion, breathing, elimination, sleep and immunity, among other things.

Beliefs about not being safe or strong or in control can drive the nervous system into fight or flight mode.

We often don’t even realize we’re living in the fight or flight mode because it’s so chronic, it feels like our new normal.

Even if we don’t feel “stressed” our nervous system does not relax when it is in flight or flight. The results is tight muscles, shallow breathing, disturbed sleep, mood swings (anxiety/depression) and compromised digestion. This is how people get stuck in a disease state for years.

To properly heal, the nervous system needs to drop into the rest and digest state.

For me that was not possible, because my subconscious mind kept feeding my nervous system stories about Spain and World War 2, as if they were still happening. The subconscious mind does not know when you are no longer under threat.

While I didn’t experience a dramatic health collapse in Argentina or Germany (perhaps thanks to my health coach training and habits), I did flirt with autoimmune disease, have intense adrenal fatigue and lots of hormonal chaos. Most hormonal imbalances are driven by cortisol pumped out excessively by the adrenals. I had lots of anxiety and depression and searched for deeper healing that just supplements, food and the usual self care (walks, meditation, sleep).

As ancestral and personal trauma bubbled to the surface I found an interesting way to deal with it. Hypnotherapy.

How Hypnosis helped

Working with a hypnotherapist help connect me with my subconscious mind so I could release and rewire past triggers.

Because it helped me understand what I was reacting to, I felt more stable and less crazy. Understanding the root causes of my anxiety helped disarm the stress and self judgement around it.

And as I started working on my mind: my nervous system, hormonal system and body started functioning better. The alarming symptoms that plagued me months before began to disappear.

Hypnosis as minimalist medicine. With one session you can clear so much psychic weight, that you need fewer supplements and dietary restrictions to keep your body in balance.

A better functioning nervous system will rebalance what was out of whack.

Hypnotherapy is not trauma work per se, but it’s very useful in processing our difficult life history. And reversing the effects that shocking, disappointing, scary, painful or overwhelming events had on us.

It addresses the physical and emotional triggers those events created.

People who struggle to heal are typically stuck in fight or flight mode. They expect bad things to happen in life and to their body. In this scenario the body’s physiology is not aligned to heal. It is busy reacting to threats.

An out of whack nervous system leads to an out of whack immune system. Rewiring subconscious triggers that flare that nervous system is the best immune support there is. And helps improve digestion.

Digestive health always starts with good digestion. And a compromised immune system and compromised digestion will pretty much lead to IBS.

To fix IBS, you can spend money on testing and supplements or you can address the subconscious mind and nervous system. Doing both will cover all your bases.

This is foundational work that can make the difference.

The ability to self sooth and self regulate is not something that is taught to us. Those of us who are particularly sensitive (myself and all my clients) are more likely to feel an unregulated nervous system as a physical symptom or digestive problem. 

If this resonates with you, don’t keep doing more of the same things that don’t work. Explore the subconscious mind as a trigger for your stress and anxiety. And regulate your nervous system with somatic work like hypnosis.