Its all about Control.. and Letting Go

I want to be honest from the start. I have IBS and have read a lot of the articles and stories and comments on many of the IBS related sites and very frequently I see people writing: "Thank god I'm not crazy" or ?We're not crazy" and I want to say that its time to wake up. We are all a little crazy and I have to own at least some of the "craziness" that has resulted from my over focusing on my bowels. Thank God I am crazy and can now deal with that.

For me really paying attention to my bowel issues started a little over a year ago when I had to take Clincamycin for a gum infection before dental work. I look back and see that I had some issues before that but that drug just seemed to tip that balance and I quickly discovered the anxiety and panic that we all can experience when traveling to work on a crowded city bus for 30 minutes feeling like you will not be able to hold it, will be embarrassed beyond imagination, will literally explode and die. Over the passing months every stop the bus made, every passenger who rang to get off, every traffic light that took too long to change, every passenger that crowed on and in around me, all served to reinforce my anxiety and panic as they became possible barriers to my ability to reach a bathroom in time and also would serve to heighten the ultimate embarrassment I was certain to suffer when I let go.

Yes a few times I did have diarrhea, but not every time. The times I did have it however only served to reinforce my panic and anxiety every time I sat on a bus and felt any twinge or rumble, which by the way is normal on the way to work in the early morning. There were times that I had to get up and off and out of the bus because I was certain I was going to lose it, only to discover that once my feet hit the pavement, I felt fine. There were also plenty of mornings when I just hung on for the one or two more blocks to my stop so that I could get off the bus and rush into the office and rush to use the bathroom immediately, only to find that I now felt like I could hang on just a little longer and take off my coat, put away my lunch, say ?Hi? to a colleague and, low and behold, sit down, drink my morning coffee and eat some toast with friends in the break room and no longer needed to rush to the bathroom.

What I am discovering for myself is that a very real incident or two, occurring in a social situation where anyone would feel embarrassed or ashamed if they had an accident, has then snowballed into a situation where my brain can no longer tell the difference between real diarrhea sensations in my bowel and just the ordinary every day rumblings that go on all day everyday in every living animal as our food is processed and it, along with gas, moves through our digestive tract. I just jump straight to panic now because of what it might mean, and panic in anyone feels like needing to defecate and can also feel like you are about to die because why else would you be panicking - after all you are only on a bus, only in a grocery store... you must be going to die.

For me I have to own that craziness and say thank god I have identified that I am a bit crazy. I have always needed to control my environment; every living creature strives for control in order survive - everything from weeds in the garden to the Presidents of Countries - is striving for control. But over time in my life, my need to control has slowly lead me to a place where I live a very small life with few friends and activities outside of work and my home, where I live alone with my dog. And now IBS is just giving me another reason to stay home, miss work (which I have not allowed myself to do yet) and not travel (which I am thinking of not doing this Christmas - normally I fly every year from Montreal to Atlanta GA for 3 weeks to visit my sister). IBS would be the perfect excuse to say here is something else I can't control so I will limit my life even more, try to live with "tighter" control over a smaller environment, my condo and my bathroom. CRAZY!

And it is my crazy. Yeah!

So, I am now taking Imodium 1 per day. I still feel the urge occasionally but my BMs are normal, and the urge is only that - the urge. I just tell myself ?Let go of the stress around that urge, it is normal, will not kill you and will pass. If you have made it to work every day for over a year and not had an accident you will not have one now either?. And it is working. And I am starting to practice letting go of everything else I feel I need to control in my life to. There is an air-conditioning technician working in my home as I write and I am at work, not at home fretting over every little bang and bump and all the possible damage he might do to the walls, the floor etc. I am also not worrying about the fact that I have given my keys to a relative stranger in my condo association to let the tech in because she might go through my things. If the wall or paint is damaged I will not die, it is all repairable and the work and cost will not kill me. If the stranger goes through my things and finds things that surprise or shock her - so what, let her be shocked doing something she shouldn't be doing anyway. And I don't think that any of that will really happen anyway.

So for me IBS is real and has a real physical origin but has rapidly taken advantage of some of my own personality issues and our normal physiological responses to anxiety and social embarrassment to quickly become something far bigger than it need be and now wants to move on to agoraphobia. This is my craziness.

Well I so NO. You stop here. It is all about control and letting go and baby I am no linger going to be afraid of letting go. If the worst happens, I will not die from embarrassment. I will live ? Yeah!