Although not fun to think about, tracking IBS symptoms is an important step in getting better. Whatever treatment plan you are on, there is no way to tell if it is working without being able to look back and see what has changed.
One of the beautiful things about being a human being is our ability to forget pain and discomfort once we no longer have it. Without that ability we would probably be too scared to get on a bike after an accident or ever have a second pregnancy. The drawback of this ability is that we sometimes don’t realize how far we’ve come. We kind of always feel the same even when we are doing worse or even so much better.
If you ask a teenager what they learned in school today, or a college sophomore what they learned this semester, they will often reply “nothing.” They don’t realize what they learned because it feels like they’ve always known it. We feel a certain way and tend to think that we have always felt this way. So try to remember how good you used to feel without IBS symptoms and put that as your goal for the future. Mark where you are now, using an app or the very low-tech piece of paper below. And when you start doing so much better you can look back at how far you have come.
Learn more about IBS and healthy, non-diet, non-medical ways to treat it at shawnrobertsonhypnosis.com/ibs
Download this low-tech IBS symptom tracker. It will be nice to look back at this later and see how far you have come!