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I know that "they" frequently say that IBS is a mind-body illness, and that it's often related to child abuse. If you're okay with sharing it here, does anyone else have these experiences? Here's how I think child abuse contributed to my IBS...I was physically abused but not sexually abused.I think part of my IBS stems from my mom's major hang-ups about bowel movements and some of the abuse I endured during potty-training. My mom beat the living daylights out of me when I was 3-- I ended up in the hospital because I "fell down the stairs"-- because I pooped in my pants. I never forgot that. I really ingrained the idea that pooping was really, really, really bad.Mom also forbade any of her kids to defecate in public places; if we were on a vacation for a week, we weren't allowed to poop in the hotel bathroom. So I learned how to "hold it" for days, even weeks, at a time. I wonder if my bowels eventually stopped working right because I suppressed the urge to poop all the time.Even as an adult, I can't go at all in a public bathroom because I've still got my mom's idea that it's really horrible and embarrassing and that only trashy people poop in public bathrooms. I haven't talked to my doctor about the role that some of these issues might play, since they're so personal.
I hope it's okay for me to share it here. Can anyone share their experiences (or at least say something so I don't feel completely awkward and over-exposed?) Were you abused during childhood, and do you think it might have contributed to your problems? Did anyone else get the poop-shaming factor?
