How The Psychologist Helps Reduce The Symptoms Of Irritable Bowel Syndrome
Gastrointestinal disorders usually represent a real daily problem for people who suffer from them, since they are generally associated with special care with eating habits and daily diet.
Irritable bowel syndrome is one of the most frequent disorders of this type, since approximately 20% of the Western population suffers from it. However, it is a problem that usually presents with mild symptoms and can even be treated from the field of psychology.
In this sense, here you will see the ways in which a psychology professional helps reduce irritable bowel symptoms.
Irritable bowel syndrome and its link with anxiety
Irritable bowel syndrome or irritable bowel syndrome is a chronic type disorder which affects thousands of people in our country and significantly affects their standard of living in various aspects, including their daily diet and their tendency to avoid certain stressors.
This alteration affects the person’s large intestine and is related to excessive sensitization of the nerves responsible for normal intestinal contractions that help push food through the digestive tract.
In people who suffer from irritable bowel, the inside of the wall of your large intestine reacts in an excessive and unusual way to mild stimuli such as dairy products or emotional stress, which triggers a series of spasms that in turn cause colic-type pain and in other cases problems with diarrhea, abdominal discomfort, bloating or constipation.
In most people, this phenomenon has mild symptoms and is mainly related to stress or high levels of anxiety that they may suffer at a given time, an aspect of the disorder in which psychologists can intervene.
How can a psychologist help us reduce the symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome?
For several years, in the field of psychology, cases of irritable bowel have been successfully treated, a condition that has a very particular emotional component, related to the appearance of cases of anxiety or stress in the person who suffers. They rapidly affect the functioning of the digestive system both immediately and in the long term.
Both psychological research and research from the field of health and medicine have established that irritable bowel syndrome can be composed in its psychological aspect of emotional, cognitive or behavioral factors, in addition to the already mentioned physical symptoms of all kinds and stomach pain. .
To successfully address and overcome all these factors, especially those of an emotional nature, it is currently increasingly common in those people with irritable bowel syndrome. Go to a psychology professional and go through a psychological therapy process to treat stress and anxiety management.
What techniques and therapies are used?
The therapies that have been most effective in reducing symptoms of anxiety and stress have been those of the cognitive-behavioral current, one of the most used by psychology professionals. Through this type of intervention, psychologists can help people modify their behavior patterns and their way of managing their beliefs and thoughts to better adapt to day-to-day difficulties.
On the other hand, Mindfulness and clinical hypnosis They have also shown a significant level of effectiveness as support resources for the treatment of anxiety problems.
In cases of irritable bowel syndrome, the psychologist’s job consists of intervening in the anxiety or depression problems that the person may have and also in any other emotional alteration, discomfort, fear or anguish associated with this syndrome, whether due to causes or for being consequences (or both at the same time).
This can be achieved by equipping the person with useful cognitive strategies that allow them to reduce their levels of anxiety, stress or worry. For example, training more positive thinking models that help you overcome your discomfort and keep you away from mental states that are prone to causing cramps or abdominal pain.
