Episode 2: How IBS Helped Me Find My Passion

“I'm still working through some of those insecurities that developed whenever I was young, the poor body image and feeling that my body wasn't good enough. There's a lot of trauma and pain there in that relationship that I've had with myself, and that still comes up in moments where I feel a little insecure. Now I have the tools to deal with it, now I have the tools to overcome it.”

In this episode, you’ll hear my personal story with IBS, including how I got diagnosed, how it affected me during puberty and high school years, and my own journey towards freedom and confidence in myself.

You can check out the podcast on iTunes here, Spotify here, and on YouTube here! Below is a full transcript of the episode if you prefer to read through it or want notes.

Don’t forget to connect to others in The GUT Community, a Facebook group for those with IBS and digestive disorders to support one another and dive deeper into each episode together.

Welcome to the gut show, this is Episode Two of season two, and I'm so glad you are here!

This episode is actually airing on my birthday, so happy birthday to me, and welcome to my party; I would not want to spend it with anyone else but those of you who are in my community! To celebrate 29 years of life, I want to share a little bit more of my own IBS story. I want to go into details about how IBS has actually impacted my life from a growing up standpoint and also from the relationship with my body and in my own career because now my life is devoted to IBS and there's a lot of reasons for that.

I want to jump in and talk a little bit about where this all began. When I was a kid, I don't remember the exact age; I know I was in first or second grade, somewhere around there. I was dealing with really severe symptoms, to the point where I would be doubled over crying and screaming in pain. My mom would rush me to the hospital thinking that I had an appendix rupture, or kidney stones or something like that because the pain was so bad.

Now, think about this for a little bit...I grew up in South Arkansas, a very rural small town. The nearest hospital at Children's Hospital was an hour and a half away. So my mom, who worked full time, would rush me to the hospital, an hour and a half away in the middle of the night, thinking that something was terribly wrong with me. And usually, I'd end up there and vaguely remember, I think there's probably trauma there that has blocked out some of those exact memories, but nothing would ever come back from that. We would get there and they would check me out; everything was fine. I'd be sent home and, you know, I had constipation, so it'd be given an enema and you know, cleared out and, and that was really it.

I remember I would constantly have stomach viruses, I seem to have like the stomach flu, at least twice a year. I very clearly remember those feelings of, you know, throwing up in the trash can on the side of my bed. I just remember thinking like, okay, well, I guess that's normal, like, kids have that, and they go through that. I didn't realize that I was having those experiences significantly more than many of my peers were having.

So this went on for a few years where I was having a lot of these issues; I would also have accidents. And it wasn't, you know, full-on diarrhea, but it was enough. And I was in elementary school past, you know, when you're potty trained, so I was fully potty trained, but I would have these accidents that were so embarrassing, and it's something I still don't talk about a whole lot, because whenever I started thinking about those feelings as being a young girl, you know, going to class and I would have an accident, and I would know, and like there's the smell, and you know, it would get all on my pants and it got to the point where I had to carry like an extra pair of underwear and even an extra pair of pants with me sometimes to school, because I didn't know if I was going to have an accident or not. And I didn't know if I would have to like, you know, ditch the underwear and change.

And so after years of dealing with this, I remember I was in therapy for a little while, again, very vague memory of all the specifics, I just kind of remember the offices that would have those appointments, and we would try to dig deeper into what was going on. I remember feeling and I don't know if that was communicated like this to me, or if this is just what I was hearing at the time being a young kid who didn't understand what was going on and you know, didn't know how to process it. I just remember feeling a lot of shame, and a lot of guilt. Like every time I had an accident, I blamed myself. And I thought like, it's my fault, like this is all my fault, I did this, like I did something wrong. I had a lot of shame around that and a lot of fear around those things happening. And it wasn't so much that it, you know, kept me from having friendships as I was so young that I don't think I had that mental processing ability yet to actually let that fear become as real and significant as it could have been. But I did have a lot of fear around people being disappointed in me if things didn't work out well. And that's something that was really hard, that I don't know how I actually worked through it, I honestly don't, I got through it somehow but, that was years of confusion and unresolved issues that were going on, and, you know, no answers anything like that.

I remember in fourth grade...after that been going on for a few years, in fourth grade, I finally got some extra testing done. So I don't remember, like, did things get worse, who knows what happened around that time, but it was significant enough that I was meeting with a specialist and got some testing done. And at the end of it all, we came out of it with nothing is severely wrong, it's IBS. And I was a kid, so I didn't take that diagnosis on, my mom did what she could with it. And I remember just, you know, dealing with constipation and dealing with using enemas, and having my mom helped me insert them and handling them and, that went on for years.

As I transitioned into middle school and started hitting puberty, I was so insecure, and some of that I think had to do with, I felt so like lost in my own body. You know, I also gained, I was very small as a child, to the point where I actually wasn't gaining weight well, and that was something that was concerning with all this going on. We finally did determine that I potentially had Giardia as a young child, and maybe that's what sparked all of this happening. Who knows, really, but that may have been why I wasn't gaining weight, and I wasn't able to keep weight on very well. But in middle school, I began to hit puberty and actually gained weight fairly rapidly. And I remember feeling like my stomach just felt bigger and just felt so like just disjointed from the rest of my body. And a lot of that is body image, you know, from childhood diet culture that was going on, you know, I was glued to 17 magazine and reading all of these articles about getting a slim waist and a six pack and I didn't have that, I had a fairly like, large belly, and I thought that that was wrong, and I thought that that was you know, abnormal, and as a young girl, I was I struggled with it. And I, you know, had a really unhealthy relationship with food.

I grew up in a semi food desert, and a lot of the food that we ate, didn't make me feel great. And I didn't understand food, I didn't understand the role of food. And I remember I would not really binge but have binge like behaviors on the weekends, and that cycle that continued on for many, many years. But that period of my of my life, I could look back on photos, and I remember, every time that photo would be taken, even if I felt good in the moment when I saw the photo, it felt so disconnected. Like, is that my body? Is that really me? Now I think I was probably bloated most of my childhood and it was really hard.

It's hard to deal with hormonal changes and, comparison of other girls and I was a cheerleader, I was in softball, you know, I was in sports, and I just didn't look like everybody and I really struggled and my constipation was still there, it just kind of took a backseat. I learned at that point in my life to just kind of deal with the pain.

As I transitioned towards High School, these are the memories I had the most of. I still had a lot of that, you know, disconnect to my body, I felt very insecure in my body, and most of the time, I was mocked for the way that I looked sometimes by some of my peers. Looking back now, it was nothing, but one thing that really stood out as I was in high school, is the fear of my symptoms and the fear of public restrooms became strong. And I linked it back and I didn't have diarrhea, I had constipation. But what I linked it back to is that my bowel movements, they were embarrassing to me. There was a lot of gas involved. There was a lot of straining involved, manipulation like you know, in my hand trying to get things out. Sometimes the pain was almost too much to bear where I would sit on the toilet for a while push, push, push, lay on the floor and cry and then push and I had this big fear of using public restrooms and I guess thankfully in a way, I was also really constipated, so I'd never needed to go to the restroom. And that I wouldn't even go and that likely to contribute to more of my constipation but the times that that stood out the most where, you know cheerleading camp, you know, a week away and wearing clothes like crops tanks and throughout the week I would just get more bloated and more uncomfortable. And I then I would look a certain way that I didn't expect and, you know, there was just this shame and guilt around that side of it.

I went to church camps, and the same thing, there were shared bathrooms, and I would try to get into the bathroom to relieve my gas, you know, before anyone else got up. And whenever we would lay down, you know, on the bunk beds in a room full of other girls, I was embarrassed and had like really terrible gas pain, but didn't want to release it because I didn't want there to be a smell and I was so insecure about that.

Anytime that we would go traveling, I just couldn't use public restrooms, it was something that I couldn't do. And there you know, there's a lot in that time in my life, where I learned how to manage it by shoving it to the side. And that included even more disordered eating patterns. I remember I stopped eating snacks before softball games, and before cheerleading at football games because I didn't want to feel uncomfortable, because I'd feel so miserable. I didn't know what to eat. I didn't even think about that. All I knew is that eating made me feel that way, so I just wouldn't.

I would skip a lot of meals, but then I would eat a lot at night and knowing that I would feel so miserable and I would do it anyways. That cycle continued throughout my high school years. When I went to college, this is where things started really changing.

As I would transition to college, my biggest fear was not living away from home. My biggest fear was honestly living in a dorm and having a shared bathroom. I remember driving to college, like, now thinking about this, like, the more that I've told this story, it's like, this isn't normal. This isn't okay, that this is what was going on. But as I was driving to college, that excitement that I had about, you know, starting over in a new place, and new friendships and the new things that I was learning and you know, being an adult and getting on my own, that was diminished by this one fear that I'm never going to go to the bathroom, like what's gonna happen to my body in this place? How am I ever going to make this work with the shared bathroom, that's like very open.

During that first year living in the dorm, I would get up, again, before everybody else. I would try to get to the bathroom early on to use the bathroom. I would stay in my stall a long time. If I did pass gas because I was so embarrassed by it, I didn't want anyone to know it was me. Again, I was already insecure, already felt that comparison, and so this was just another layer of that, that I didn't want anyone to know. I wanted it to be a secret. Friday night was my favorite time of the week, because all the girls in our dorm, most of them were in sororities, and they would go to the sorority parties, and I would be there by myself. I could do laundry and, you know, have a great time in the bathroom, and that was exciting to me. Instead of going out and you know, meeting people, I would just stay there.

I remember feeling so broken. I felt like you know, my symptoms weren't again; they weren't "bad enough" for me to say that something was necessarily wrong with me because I've been told that it wasn't, right? I was told that nothing was wrong. It wasn't significant enough...I wasn't bleeding, you know, I wasn't having diarrhea every single day, like the pain wasn't as severe as it had been in the past. So it wasn't significant enough that I thought I need to go to a doctor, I need to figure out what's wrong. I honestly thought that it was something about me, personally, if that makes sense. And so feeling like my body was broken, it wasn't like, oh, something's wrong, we need to fix it. It was I'm abnormal, and this is my fault in some way. That insecurity already had begun to grow. The toxicity that was already kind of rooted began to flourish. That led to more disordered behaviors of over-exercising, definite bingeing behaviors on foods that I knew would make me feel awful and that would make my stomach feel worse, I would go for them, I would just go through all these cycles. It's so hard to even look back on and it feels like a different lifetime. It doesn't feel like me, because I know me now, but that's what made me who I am, and that's part of the story.

So, fast forward a little bit....During my sophomore year of school, I kind of hit this point where I realized that the major I had at the time, pre-med, it wasn't going to work for me. I realized that I didn't have that passion for the classes I was taking to get to where I needed to go, and instead of falling on my face, I knew I needed to make a change. And so through, I call it a God moment that, you know, through searching and just learning about different things, I came across dietetics and nutrition and dietetics, and decided to change my career to that, and changed my major and went through that whole process.

During that semester that I was figuring all this out, I was the most stressed I've ever been, and it was hard. School was hard. I was coming across this failure that I'd never experienced before in the academic world. I was making these changes for my life, and that stress hit me hard.

I had a weekend of diarrhea, and because I dealt with constipation for so long, it threw me off. I thought I had a foodborne illness, I thought something was seriously wrong, I didn't know what was going on, and that took me to the doctor. They tested for a few things, we kind of talked it through, and when we dug into my history of IBS, they basically just kind of put the clipboard down. The doctor looked at me, I remember it and said, "Oh, well, okay, that's just your IBS." And that was the solution; that's just your IBS, of course, move on.

And I remember feeling as an adult hearing that, I was like, wait, that's not okay that it's just IBS. Okay, what do I do about it? What am I supposed to do for this? Thankfully, I was already positioned into this new major. As I began to dive into my nutrition classes, that's when I first started learning about the digestive tract. I started learning about food, I started learning about how our bodies work, physiology, I began learning about IBS. And I began to actually see solutions for this problem I had had for over 10 years. I had this unhealthy relationship with food, I had this unhealthy relationship with my body and getting into nutrition and dietetics honestly, at the forefront of it, made it worse, because I began to have the knowledge.

I began to have this weird relationship with control over that knowledge, and so I became more disordered. I began to just kind of pull out all of these resources that I was finding to see if they would work for me. Some worked, some didn't. I've told this story before, you know, it took me about five years of trying all these different things, mending my relationship with food and my body, learning what my body was communicating to me, and finally letting go of it all, that it hit me and it came together. I realized that it was bits and pieces of all those things that worked.

As I began to devote my career to this, I began to really dig deeper into why that happened, and how that can work for others and that's what's gotten me to where I am in my career. But during all of that time, I want to talk a little bit more about the kind of beneath the surface of how IBS did impact my life, even after I knew what was going on, and how upset in some ways, it still impacts my life before I get into my career, which is the best way that has impacted me.

So I'm still working through some of those insecurities that developed when I was young...the poor body image and feeling that my body wasn't good enough and you know, even uncovering some of that stuff in the conversation today. There's a lot of trauma and pain there in that relationship that I've had with myself, and that still comes up. Moments where I feel a little insecure or I'm about to travel or something like that is going to happen, that insecurity, that toxicity comes out. Now I have the tools to deal with it, that doesn't mean that it happens on autopilot; I still have to make that conscious effort and make that choice.

I still have a fear of going to the bathroom or not going to the bathroom, whenever I'm traveling, especially. I remember, you know, when I was driving to college, I was in tears and crying and was distraught and very fearful...the fear isn't the same now, but that does still control a lot of the choices I make, and it does have a significant impact on the trips that I do take. I am one that if I don't have a good bowel movement before I get on the plane or before we leave, I get very overwhelmed. I get scared, I get nervous, and sometimes I start freaking out a little bit about what will happen if I don't have a bowel movement.

When I'm planning my trips, I plan my tighter more fitted clothes towards the start of the trip, and I plan my looser clothes towards the end of the trip. Part of that is is me dealing with it, and it helps me feel confident because I know that, okay, I've got clothes that I love that feel good, and that are going to make me feel great. It's my way of kind of, you know, being prepared. It's also a control thing, and sometimes having to do that, it stresses me out, it makes me sad, to be honest. And, you know, there are times during a trip where I feel like okay, I have to get in movement, you know, I have to make sure that I've got some time in the morning to drink my coffee and relax a bit, so I get a good bowel movement in before we're out for the day. Not a lot of people think about that, or, you know, stress about that, and sometimes it feels very lonely to be in that. And that's still something that worries me if I'm at a retreat or with people who I'm not normally traveling with or with my in-laws, you know, their family.

It worries me because I do still have that fear that, you know, the way that I go to the bathroom is different than the way that others go to the bathroom. And while I talk about poop all day, and I love it, I don't want to talk about my own! I'm not one to just pass gas in front of a group of people and laugh at off. That's not something that I'm confident in or has ever been something that I've been confident in. I'll talk about the problem, but being able to express that problem in front of others is something that is still hard for me, and it makes me a little insecure, even now, again, I have the tools now to work through that to deal with it, but that doesn't mean it's completely gone. And I have less flexibility with food. There are some foods that I know trigger my symptoms. I work hard every single day and every week to increase diversity and improve my tolerance to food, and that's what I teach women to do all the time, I still have foods that don't work as well.

I am very lactose intolerant, I can't eat regular ice cream without significant symptoms. I've developed such a strong healthy relationship with those foods, it's taken me, you know, six, seven years to really get there, it's not something that was easy or overnight, it took time. While I do have that healthy relationship, I don't have the flexibility to have it and that can influence you know, social events and gatherings. If someone wants to cook a meal for me, you don't have to throw in all of these different restrictions that I have that I would love for them to work around.

One thing I've become more confident in, that I used to not be, is asking for those accommodations to be made. In the past I would just kind of brush over it and just, you know, be miserable. I realized that that was creating bitterness and tension in relationships, so what I've done instead as an adult, and as I've grown is I ask. Now, that doesn't always make the ask easy, there are moments where I feel like I'm just high maintenance where I feel like I'm too much, especially when I was dating before I met my husband. Now I don't have that as much anymore because I've got great support, but I don't have the flexibility like most people do, and that can be really hard.

I have some fear around what pregnancy and motherhood might look like for me in the future. I'm happily married and my husband's the greatest support. He was supportive from day one when we met and thankfully I met him towards the end of figuring out all of this stuff, and so I knew I was confident in myself and what I needed and I was able to communicate that well with him and he's still so supportive now. But that doesn't take away the fear I have about one day being pregnant and my symptoms being unbearable, and I help women through pregnancy all the time, and that helps me because I know that I've seen their journeys, and I have those tools, but the fear is still there and it does come up.

I have fear of being a mom, I have fear of passing along the genes that I have. And that's a very deep real fear that some may not get or understand, it might seem irrational....but when you've lived through something like this since childhood, like I wouldn't want any child to live through that, and sometimes I have that fear of thinking about our future child...I'm tearing up a little bit...um, if I'm thinking about my future child, I don't want them to go through the things that I went through, and I worry that you know, there is a genetic component that we think is involved with IBS, and what if I pass that along, that would be unfortunate.

I do still have the tendency to hold on to anxiety, I have a tendency towards depression. And as I've gotten older, again, this is something I also had a deep misunderstanding with when I was young, and I didn't have good resources for it. And now as an adult, and especially in this field, understanding the gut-brain connection and understanding how digestive disorders can be linked to more anxiety and depression, and what's going on there, I've become more in tune with myself and more gracious with myself and more compassionate towards myself.

That doesn't mean that the anxiety and depression goes away completely. There are moments where I deal with that, and I feel the weight of that. Working in this field, while also dealing with that, that can be very hard. That can be very tough. And that's something I've had to contemplate, to decide....it is worth it? At the end of the day, it always is, but it's something I do have to think about, and it's something I have to be very intentional with. So not only am I intentional for my gut and for my bowels to move, I also have to be very intentional about my mental health, and about noting when I'm going down those spirals and making sure that I've got my resources in place to be able to come out and not let those take me down, and knowing that you don't have to juggle that at all times. That's the one where I feel the most of, you know, this isn't fair.

And one thing I tell my clients all the time is it's okay to say it isn't fair, because it's not fair. The one thing I don't do is blame my body. In the past, that was the case, especially those moments of more anxiety or depression, I would turn on my body, I would blame my body for what I was experiencing. Now I don't, I am with my body. And that doesn't mean that the it sucks mentality is completely gone, because some days it does just really suck, and some days are just really hard and I have to get through it. And I do and it's okay. It's something that I've learned to live with, and I'm okay with. It's also something that's tough. So, I wanted to share those things, mostly because I want you to know that you're not alone in how IBS or digestion or whatever other issues that maybe you've dealt with that have led you to this channel, you're not alone in how those impact you, and in the journey towards, recovery and healing and control and being able to get on top of all of the stuff that's going on.

Some of those struggles, they change and they adapt, they don't always go away. And I'm a big advocate for positive thinking, and a big advocate for freedom in your life, and this is what freedom in my life looks like. It doesn't mean things are perfect, it means there are things I still deal with, but instead of those things being in control, I'm in control, I have the tools, and I can get through it. And that's what I want to make sure I'm sharing, is if you're here and you're maybe you're in the thick of it right now, like there is hope, but I'm also not going to tell you that everything's going to magically disappear. And I'm not going to tell you that your story will look exactly like mine, because it won't, it might look different.

And now what I want to do over the next season is to filter in some of these conversations, so bonus episodes of conversations with others and sharing our stories and understanding how IBS can look so many different ways. It's so important for us to talk about this, as women and men who really understand and get it. So now to the things about IBS that I love the most! So one way that IBS has had an impact on my life that I am actually very proud of and happy about is that IBS has taught me how to listen to and care for my body.

IBS has allowed me the struggle to learn the language of my body and learn the impact of true self-care, which is found in my nutrition and my water intake, my movement, my routines, my plans, I view that all the self care. And I truly don't know if I would be where I am right now, in my relationship with myself, if it wasn't for my IBS. And I wish there could have been another way, I'm not going to say that I, you know, would wish IBS on someone else! I will say that for me, as this is part of that story and it's something that I'm happy about and something that I'm grateful for. The other thing is leading me to a career that I'm so passionate about, and that is so fulfilling for me....ad that is helping other women with IBS go through this journey towards freedom, towards a healthier relationship with themselves.

My biggest mission in my work is to fill in the gap between the misunderstanding, the confusion, the mystery, the doubt that comes on when you're getting tested, and you get the diagnosis. And then where I am right now where I have my tools, I know what to do, and I'm living my life as freely as I possibly can. I want to fill that gap, and I want to provide those resources. And I want to make sure that women are supported as they walk through that by someone who truly gets it, who can validate some of those fears and those experiences, and also champion them on to seeing the results in the life that they want to see. I want to see women in happy fulfilling relationships, I want to see women excelling at their careers, I want to see them running the marathon that they want to run, I want to see them having the children and building a family and being incredible mothers and fathers. I want to see those that I work with see their lives come to play like they would love it to be. If that is you and you're in this place, know that I'm championing you on right now, and I also want to hear your story, I want to hear where you're at, and I want to, you know, be that cheerleader that you might need right now.

So my ask for you is that you share that, just like I just shared. So maybe post a screenshot of this episode, take it over to social media, tag me, share your story with me. If you're not comfortable sharing it on a public stage like that, message me on Instagram at erinjudge.rd, all of this will be in the show notes so that we can connect, and that I can hear and see where you are at.

If you find that you are in the thick of it and need support, you need guidance and you need tools, our team is here to help. The link in show notes will lead you to schedule a consult call. It's a complimentary 20 minute call just to talk about what's going on and what might be the best fit for you. And so you can go there schedule that call and we can talk more. So remember that there's no such thing as perfect in dealing with IBS, it is all about progress and about the journey. It's all about learning your body and putting in that relationship so that you can grow together as a team. I'm here for you, I'm cheering for you, rooting for you, I want the best for you! And I will see you on the next episode!