Another great article from the Brits about achievement-oriented, perfectionistic people having a greater tendency to develop IBS after gastroenteritis (infection);

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6387675.stm

I have long suspected this since myself and so many of my readers seem to be very intellectually rigorous, achiement oriented, type A personalities. I know for myself, I have always driven myself until I drop. As my brother (also diagnosed with Crohn's) says: Go hard or go home!

Having said that, my mother and other brother also chronically overwork themselves and neither of them has IBS or IBD. So maybe it's just that driving yourself too hard results in physical breakdown wherever you're genetically and environmentally (i.e. diet and lifestyle) predisposed to it.

Jini

This was really interesting.

The following particularly resonated with me:

Dr Rona Moss-Morris, who led the research, said: "We found people's beliefs about their symptoms, how anxious they got and their behaviour were all important.

"These people were not hypochondriacs. But they did have a negative attitude towards their symptoms."

She added: "These are people who have high expectations of always doing the right thing - and going off work goes against their beliefs."

I know I've been thinking about beliefs lately, as my recent post on the Main Forum indicates. But that's probably why it really stood out to me that this researcher mentions how belief systems affect our health six times within a few sentences.

"How anxious they got." How anxious something does or does not make you is directly connected to your beliefs about that "something".

"their behavior." Our behavior is directly influenced by our beliefs....some conscious and some that have been part of us for so long, we're hardly even aware of them.

"negative attitude towards their symptoms." Again, one's attitude is a direct outgrowth of one's beliefs.

"expectations." Ditto.

I never had a hard time with the concept that it was important to heal ALL aspects of the self, not to concentrate only on the physical....that always made sense to me. But as time goes by and I read more and experience more, I'm becoming more and more convinced of the truth of this. To heal our bodies we must also heal any limiting, self-sabotaging or otherwise negative beliefs.

The wonderful thing is that tools like EFT exist that help us to get down to where these beliefs may have formed and reframe them.

If I had to get Crohn's at all, I'm very thankful that I got it after Jini wrote LTYG and that I found her work so early on.

Nicole

Thank you Nicole,

you make my heart smile.

Jini

That's very interesting. I am a hopeless perfectionist, and I consider it one of my biggest flaws.

I was studying graphic design some few years ago and was looking forward to a creative and dynamic job. But I kept pushing myself to always achieve a perfected product. When taking a break for sleep or food, I wouldn't be able to stop thinking about how I could improve or change it. So my body reacted, I got a flareup of my Crohn's and somewhere along the line I realised that it wouldn't work for me. I love creative work but it takes my malicious perfectionism to it's peak.

And now I am getting close to the end of my university degree. Driven by my perfectionist mind, I have put a lot of pressure on myself to get good results and I'm now sitting here with a flare-up since a year back that I have not managed to control with either prednisone or elemental diet.

It's so easy to walk into that black hole, I know exactly how to proceed, but I have yet to find a way of turning back

You really, really need to learn EFT.

This method is so great because when you're lying there with your mind whirling and unable to sleep, you just start tapping away and after you clear your "stuff" you can then even sleep!

Trust me, this is the best way out of the hole. Other therapies work well too, but EFT is so great because you can do it yourself, off and on all day long if you need to - and the basic training manual is free:

http://www.emofree.com

take care,
Jini