“I Was Just Diagnosed with IBD” 5 Step Roadmap
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Is your Crohn’s or colitis diagnosis so fresh in your mind that you’re still playing the diagnosis conversation you had with your doctor over and over, almost like a record that’s skipping?
If you’ve recently been diagnosed with IBD, let everything else go except for 5 things I’m about to share with you. It’s your 5 Step Roadmap and it will help you get through all the initial overwhelm, the stress, and the anxiety that comes after being saddled with an Inflammatory Bowel Disease diagnosis.
And if you’re here today because you’ve had IBD for a while and you’re just stuck in overwhelm or indecision, rest assured you are also going to get lots of juicy nuggets as well from this podcast episode as well.
Three Things You’ll Learn in This Episode
- Why your best first response after getting an IBD diagnosis should be to take no action at all
- How to move from your IBD starter plan to a fully formulated IBD healing plan (and how long you should give that plan to work)
- The 2 must-do healing resources that successful IBD mamas choose to follow
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Mentioned in This Episode:
Your Food-Mood-Poop Journaling System
Your Stress Management Toolbelt Kit
Schedule Your Free 30-Minute IBD Consultation with Karyn
Connect With Karyn:
Schedule Your FREE 30-Minute IBD Consult
Episode Transcript:
Is your Crohn’s or colitis diagnosis so fresh in your mind that you’re still playing the diagnosis conversation you had with your doctor over and over, almost like a record that’s skipping? Coming up today on the podcast, if you’ve recently been diagnosed with IBD, let everything else go and do these 5 things first.
[MUSIC]Hey there my friend, it’s so good to be here with you today. It’s a cool day in Maryland, but the sun is shining and that always warms my heart. How about you? If you are listening to this episode because you’ve just been given that lovely Crohn’s or colitis diagnosis, you’ve come to the right place because I’ve got your step-by-step plan right here. And I’ve got to tell you, sure I’m biased, but this is some juicy, life supporting information. Get your pen and paper ready.
And if you’re listening today because you’ve had IBD for a while and you’re just stuck in overwhelm or indecision, or just because you’re a long time listener, first of all, I’m so grateful for you and the connection we get to have each week, and rest assured you are also going to get lots of juicy nuggets as well from this episode.
So the first things first. I have to mention that this episode and these 5 steps are not about a particular dogma or treatment plan for IBD. There’s loads of paths to IBD health and wellness. In know it may not feel like it to you right now, but there are. It doesn’t matter what your path is or if you have no path at the moment because after this episode, you’ll have a lot more clarification on which path you’d like to choose to move forward. So no matter which way you decide is the way for you to heal and live your best remission filled life, as you’ll see as we go through the steps, you can apply each principle, no matter which direction you to go in.
So, good valuable info, for the healing modality or modalities (which is always my recommendation) that you choose.
Also, this is a road map so you’ll want to follow these 5 steps in order. It’s not a choose whatever step you want to take first road map. It’s a step-by-step road map so keep in mind, you’ll want to go step by step to get your best results.
OK, without further ado, let’s dive into your “I Was Just Diagnosed with IBD” 5 Step Roadmap
Step #1- As difficult as this diagnosis is to get, and so many of us don’t even have a clue what Crohn’s Disease and Ulcerative Colitis is when we first hear those words, the most important thing to do first is breathe… breathe a sigh of relief because you now have a reason for your pain. You have an answer to all your questionable symptoms. And for most of us, it took way too freakin’ long, going to doctor after doctor, being passed off as having IBS or anxiety or stress. And getting to where you are at this point took loads of persistence and gumption to challenge the system. You are a rock star for getting this far.
So step #1 is to breathe a sigh of relief.
You have a diagnosis. It’s almost centering in a way because you probably have felt so off, so out of balance for so long. You have an answer and you’re not crazy—so breathe a sigh of relief.
And as soon as that diagnosis comes down, everyone around you will be so rush rush… you must start this med, and do this procedure, and get poked and prodded with bloodwork…
But it’s ok, I’m giving you permission, to let the world stop spinning for a moment and let the dust settle. Take a beat to breathe and gather up strength because you are going to need it. Don’t let the medical establishment rush you here, unless there’s an immediate surgery necessary. Usually that isn’t the case, so give it a few days, a week, and just let this new diagnosis settle in.
What does this change in my life?
What does this not change in my life?
Go inward in this moment. Get help for your kids. Ignore the world, it doesn’t matter.
As moms, so often we hear about a challenge and we jump into fix it mode. It’s in our nature. It’s our natural reaction, but I really want you to fight that normal mom response to solve and let action take over.
Instead, when you get that diagnosis, go in. Sit with this. Feel all the feels deep in your soul. Let the news wash over you so that when you have rested your reserves and begin to accept the impact of how this will change your future, you will have the energy to come out swinging with hope, with resilience, with strength, and the knowledge that you will find your way. And you will still shine bright in your lifetime. And you will still shine your light and amazing spirit with the rest of the world, just like you did before IBD came into your life. You will get to that place once again. Before you move on to step 2, you must believe these things about yourself, and in order to truly get there and not fake it, you have to stop for a moment, breathe and take it all in.
Now that you’ve put your energy in the right place, in your reserves, it’s time to take some action. Step one was all about re-action and self-reflection. And now, we take the energy we’ve been storing (and its psychic energy or if you don’t want to get to woo-woo about it, it’s mental energy, because your physical energy is probably still very low) and we begin to pick up the pieces.
By now, you’ve been given a lot of information from you doctor. There may be pamphlets or notes from your doctor’s visit or patient portal information, test results and recommendations. Now it’s time to begin to put the pieces together in step 2.
In Step #2, You Formulate a Starter Plan.
Not a final plan. Not an end all be all plan. A B+ mom starter plan. One you can live with for now, knowing once the worst of your symptoms are behind you, you will probably make tweaks. And that’s OK. In fact, it’s the best way forward. That can be hard for so many of us perfectionists out there, but you will be most successful in healing if you just imperfectly start with the goal of getting to your most pressing issue first.
It’s time to ask yourself, with all the information I currently have (because you are just in the initial stages here), keeping in mind where you’re at physically right now, is your disease in a mild, moderate, or severe state—and ask yourself, what plan makes the most sense for me right now? What should I be doing immediately to relieve my worst symptoms?
In order to be able to move forward, you’ve got to get some relief. You really can’t think of anything else until you do. We’ve all been in that place before where we get tunnel vision because what we are going through is so devastating and painful, that we just can’t move on until we fix that problem.
I’ve experienced this so many times in my long journey with Crohn’s— but the thing I remember most from my early, early days with IBD was these ulcers in my mouth. So many that I couldn’t count them all. 20-30 all at the same time… they were everywhere. Under my tongue, on my tongue, in my checks, the roof of my mouth, in my throat. I couldn’t eat or drink anything, or talk or swallow, or breathe without being in immense pain. There were so many symptoms for me in those early days, but that one was really a doozy and I knew if I could fix that, I’d at least be able to leave my home again.
That’s just one example of the things that can rock your world in the early days or even years into your Crohn’s and colitis. In your early days, forget the unsolicited advice from people coming out of the woodwork telling you eat this, don’t eat that. Forget people who tell you that you just need to manifest your health or meditate, or find gratitude, try reiki or acupuncture, of an infrared sauna…
While those things can be amazingly healing and I talk about all of them on this very podcast and at some point you should try to incorporate healing modalities like these, in step 2 of your “I was just diagnosed with IBD” 5 step road map, with symptoms that are initially so severe, like going to the bathroom 10-20 times a day, blood in the toilet, 20 mouth ulcers like me that hurt even when you drink water, fatigue that keeps you from even stepping out of bed… your day will be successful if for today, you can say today, I put one foot in front of the other.
In the beginning when you just need symptom relief to feel like a human being again, deal with your most pressing problems first. The ones that will eventually get you out of your four walls, even if it’s just for a short period of time.
Because that is something to truly celebrate.
Now when it comes to what to take for those kinds of challenges, I’m not a doctor so I’m not prescribing anything specific, but for you that might mean taking 8 Imodium a day, or moving to an elemental diet where the only thing you put in your body are nutritional shakes for a week, or taking steroids temporarily, or rinsing your mouth with hydrogen peroxide and baking soda mixture multiple times a day like I had to do.
Whatever gets you to a place where you ease your most pressing physical discomfort, that’s the plan you want to be making in Step 2 of your road map.
Make a plan for your most pressing challenges and be open to whatever action you need to take to get immediate relief so you can take back your life and begin to see you on the horizon again.
Once you are on semi-stable ground, once you have some symptom control in place, you’ll have the mental capacity to begin to learn about your illness, learn more about all that IBD entails. And that’s step 3 of your roadmap:
The Knowledge is Power Step.
Before this point, and I know it’s so hard to do, but I highly recommend that as much as you can, you stay off the internet. Don’t google Crohn’s or colitis. or go on Facebook groups or other social media sites. You’ll only get more sick and more anxious. And you may even get sucked in with the drama of toxic people who try to bring you down with them.
But now that you have your immediate challenge/s sorted and quieted a bit, now it’s time to become a sponge and learn all you can.
Besides what your doctor is telling you, what other options are out there? And once you’ve soaked up as much as you can, you’re in a steadier state, you can ask yourself: Do I feel most comfortable with a medication only approach, a more natural approach or a combination of the two? What modalities sound intriguing to me? Now is a good time in stage 3 to peruse many of my episodes from the podcast to get ideas about what options are out there for you. There’s loads of information in the last 85 episodes. Like episode 26 where I talk about the benefits of far infrared light therapy or episode 45 all about good coffee substitutes, or episode 66 where I dive into gut healing herbal teas, or episode 75 it’s all about your IBD work life balance. So many good ones, and now is the time to start binge listening, soaking up all the information like a sponge.
And keep in mind, you’re still going for B+ mom status here. There’s no place for perfection when you’re trying to find ways to get into and maintain remission. You can pretty much assume that throughout your life, you will be making changes to how you care for your IBD from time to time. As life changes, so will your chronic illness. So the choices you make in stage 3, your knowledge step, these choices you are making can always be tweaked. You never need to feel like you are signing your life away. You’re just trying on possibilities here and that can be very exciting and very rewarding.
In step 3, with so much information out there on the internet and in friend groups and from well-meaning family members, and heck from our doctors too– if you find yourself getting overwhelmed or anxious, it’s OK to take a break. Step 3 doesn’t need to happen in one day or even in a week.
Little bits of information, in bite sized pieces is best if we want all this knowledge to say with us.
And as you research and think about all your options, a murky path will start to illuminate. You’ll start to feel pulled instinctively in a certain direction. Because there’s so much to consider and so many decisions to make in step 3, journaling during this time can be really helpful. Get your thoughts out and write whatever comes to your mind. For some, just the act of writing will help center your thoughts. You may never even need to read what you write. For others, re-reading what they write is the key to understanding, but journaling about anything and everything during this fresh, raw, and new time can be really profound.
And if you need it, if you wonder about how much weight you should give to each idea that you find, I highly recommend you get a second opinion. Not necessarily about your diagnosis, but about your treatment plan. Remember, every doctor is different. Contrary to popular belief, as much as medicine is a science it is also very much an art and your doctor is the artist. Find out what a different approach might look like if you’re feeling called to do that.
Then, when you’re ready, when you feel like you have enough knowledge, make a preliminary decision.
Meds only— you might say, let’s start small with anti inflammatories, the 5 ASA’s like Lialda, Pentasa or Apriso and see what happens. Or let’s go with the big guns and go straight to biologics like Stelara or Humira. Or you might decide it feels right to go natural all the way. Food, lifestyles, mindset… Or maybe a combination approach where you take medication and use an IBD healing diet as well.
There is no one size fits all answer. There’s only the one that fits for you. And it just has to fit for you right now. It doesn’t have to fit you for life.
Remember, it’s OK to move forward even if the path is murky. B + mom is where you want to be. You don’t need to have all the answers to begin.
Once you complete Step 3 on our IBD roadmap, you should begin to feel like you’ve taken some of your lost control and you’ve taken it back. When we gain knowledge and formulate a plan, we tend to feel more centered, grounded, and in control. Win or lose, that’s the power of Step 3 and fulfilling Step 3 is how we get to move on to step 4.
Step 4 is all about sticking with your plan and being patient.
Healing the gut takes time. Finding your path to initial remission can take time.
Over my years as a health coach I’ve seen clients who want to try something for one day or three days and then ditch it because they’ll tell me, it didn’t work for them. Gut healing doesn’t usually work that way. It’s very rare that it does.
That doesn’t mean it’s not possible or even that it’s not likely that healing will take place. But gut healing is about one step forward, two steps back. But over time, those one steps forward, they add up.
Patience and going tortoise slow are going to be your mantras during step 4.
Patience is my friend. Patience will guide me to success.
The tortoise wins the race in the end so I will be the tortoise.
I want you to practice patience and I want you to be the tortoise, but I don’t want you to feel like you are wasting your time. And this is where two incredible resources come into play. Two resources that if you cultivate now, you will be able to keep in your arsenal for the rest if your life.
#1 is your Food-Mood-Poop journal. This is the most critical piece that’s missing so often from this step because it’s tedious and it’s time consuming. If you are a Cheeky Podcast lifer, I’m hoping you’ll stay with me for just a sec while I catch up anyone who hasn’t heard me mention the power of the Food-Mood-Poop Journal before. In a very quick gut shell, your FMP Journal is the place you record what you eat, how it affects you, your mood, your poop and your other symptoms.
Now you may fancy yourself Wonder Woman, I certainly do from time to time. You might think I can remember what I eat. It’s all in my mind. I can remember what treats me good and what sends me to the porcelain throne or the bed in pain. I can even watch how these things change over time, but trust me mama, I’m going give it to your straight right now. You can’t. Even Wonder Woman has her limits. We moms have way too much going on in our lives to remember this type of minutia that isn’t written down.
Are journals are time-consuming? Yes, I’m not going lie. They can be. But keeping a journal like this (and mine is really streamlined) is very time limited and trust me, you will benefit so much from this now, and whenever you’re struggling down the road with a flare up. Devoting some time to your Food-Mood-Poop Journal now will get you to the finish line so much faster and then be able to get you off the journal that much sooner.
Food-Mood-Poop Journal. Do it. You will thank me for it. And Stage 4 is the place to begin. If you want to get started with a tried and true, client and Gut Love Community member tested FMP Journaling System that works, get your hands on my FMP journal. It’s free, it’s fabulous and it’s yours at karynhaley.com/journal.
OK, I mentioned there are two resources you’ll want to adopt in Step 4. The second one is your Wheel of Wellness. Can I get an amen for the Wheel of Wellness?
Long time listeners, you know what I’m talking about. First time listeners, it’s time to begin the process of cultivating your Wheel of Wellness— your well-rounded support tools that encompass everything in your life that helps you feel your best—mind, body, and soul.
It won’t be anywhere near done when the stage is over, and that’s OK. That’s perfect actually. The goal here in Stage 4 is just to get you started. The good news is that you already have the first spoke in your wheel in place. Whether it was choosing gut healing food, or supplements, or a medication or a mixed approach… Remember you already did that back in Step 3. You are working that one thing, you are choosing patience and persistence to see how it works for you. Now it’s time to start putting some other pieces in place that support your current approach, your gut health and your overall health. There’s a reason we don’t start with your Wheel of Wellness from stage 1, right from the get go. Putting together a fully functioning Wheel of Wellness, with all its spokes and moving parts is just too overwhelming in the beginning stages. It’s too much. It will spread you to thin and leave you feeling like you’ve started all these projects you just can’t complete. And nothing frustrates our mom brains more than uncompleted projects!
So, we start here in Step 4 to add to the resources we’ve already gathered with more gut healing options that become the support system to keep your most important gut healing modalities working at their peak.
Think of your Wheel of Wellness it like a beautiful tiered wedding cake with the bottom layer being the strong support for the rest of the cake. Is it as beautiful as the upper most piece with all of it’s fancy decorations? Nope, probably not. But it is no less necessary, because without the strong support of that bottom layer, your wedding cake would fall flat.
Oh no, not on your wedding day!
Now, the cool thing about your Wheel of Wellness (and maybe the frustrating thing about it as well) is that no two IBDer’s wheels will look alike. What you put into your Wheel of Wellness will most assuredly be different that mine. We are all individual and what we need as our bottom layer support structure is different as well. This can be frustrating for some mamas who are looking for a cookie cutter option to squash their IBD, but I’ve been in the C + C trenches enough to know that we call have to carve out our own path.
But what I can do to help you connect with what might become an integral spoke or spokes in your Wheel of Wellness is to tell you about the types of things to consider when you are adding to yours.
Your support system—who are the people around you that you count on for IBD support? Your spouse, your friends, your mom, your co-worker, your online buddies? Keep that support system close to your heart, now especially in your early days with IBD. You need them now the most.
Your movement practice- we all need a movement practice, whether it’s competition level weight lifting or restorative yoga or walking in nature and everything in between. No matter what type of movement you choose, choose the one that’s best for you where you are currently at. For example, if you can’t get off the toilet in the morning, a get up and go morning kick boxing movement program is probably not the best option for you. Choose a practice that is right for where you’re currently at knowing you’ll add on to it as you get healthier.
Your stress management tool belt- Oh, stress. It’s a killer. Literally. It strips you from your ability to fully fight your Crohn’s and colitis. It even causes breakdowns that lead to flare ups. We all know how important it is to find ways to manage the stress in our life. Adding this spoke to your Wheel of Wellness is crucial. If you need help in this area, don’t forget, I’ve got a resource for that. You can download my free and fabulous Stress Management Toolbelt Kit. It’s got all kinds of great ideas to help you manage your acute stress as well as your chronic stress. Getting your toolbelt is super easy. Just go to karynhaley.com/stress and you’ll find it there.
Your spirituality or faith is another possible spoke in your Wheel of Wellness. I’ll tell you what, when the chips are down, when you just feel like you can’t take it one more day, your faith can be the one thing that pulls you through. I think I told you this before, but it bares repeating. When my mom was given 6 months to live with liver cancer, it was her faith and her indelible spirit that helped her last not just 6 months, but six years before passing away. Faith my dear, it’s a powerhouse spoke in your Wheel of Wellness.
Your Wheel of Wellness may also include supportive practitioners besides your main doctor like a health coach to help you engage fully with healing modalities you’ve chosen, or to educate you on supports you may not have thought about, and be your head cheerleader support system as you move through your gut healing journey. You supportive practitioners may also include an acupuncturist or a functional medicine provider that looks at root cause healing for your IBD. Maybe a Craniosacral Therapist or a Reiki practitioner. You don’t need every type of course, but find one or two that support your needs as you continue your healing journey.
I just want to mention two more ideas for your Wheel of Wellness before we move on. Because these are ideas that might spark some insight or motivation in you to act, no matter where you’re at on your path with IBD.
Your self-care practice is HUGE. Now listen, I almost gag when I say that phrase, self-care. It is so overused and so misunderstood that it’s lost its weight. But it is so overused for a reason. It’s important mama. And it’s something we suck at! Too much mom guilt, too many kid responsibilities, too many irons in the fire, too many multi-tasking moments. We need our time. We need to know who we are away from all the demands of our life. Overused or not, self-care is needed for you now more than ever and the positive impact it will have on your physical health when you take the time for you is astounding.
The last Wheel of Wellness idea I want to mention today is to include some form of meditation and/or also therapy. As a former mental health counselor myself, I’m biased in this area, but I can also tell you from personal experience how vitally important these two healing modalities have been in my life. Therapy—when I was first diagnosed, it was life changing. My mom took me to a therapist who practiced medical hypnotherapy. Forget what you know about stage entertaining hypnotists, this is not what it’s about. The right hypnotherapist can have a huge impact on your gut health. As can a therapist who practices cognitive behavioral therapy as well as dialectical behavior therapy and so many more types. Meditation came into my life much later, but I highly recommend that as well. Mediation doesn’t have to be about quieting your mom brain. It can be about focused visualizations to assist your digest system in doing what it wants to do… heal.
Those are just some of the options out there for your Wheel of Wellness. You may have something completely different in yours. Everyone’s wheel of wellness is different and everyone’s wheel of wellness will change over time. We are not stagnant in life, why should our Wheel of Wellness never change?
And that’s why during this step, Step 4 we are just thinking in terms of getting it started on this immense project. B+ work all the way! If you just get one or two spokes added to your Wheel of Wellness besides your main health hub, during Step 4, that would be absolutely freaking amazing.
So what’s the right amount of time here, how much time should you give this Step 4 to fully percolate? Usually 1 to 3 months before making any changes. Remember I said at the beginning of this step, I see lots of mamas saying I did it for 3 days (maybe a week) and it didn’t work so I’m moving on. Not so fast my speedy friend. Take the time, your body needs to catch up to your brain.
So let’s say you decided that diet was the key to finding remission, and you started the Specific Carbohydrate Diet. Give Stage 4 with your Food-Mood-Poop Journaling System and adding in one or two key Wheel of Wellness pieces, and give that one to three months before making any decisions about moving forward. That doesn’t mean that you are looking for “I am healed” in three months, that means that you see forward moving progress. Healing takes the body time to catch up to what’s going on in our mind. Same goes for approaches like medication only or supplements or even if you choose a mixed approach.
And the last but so important thing I’ll say on this subject is that when you’re taking into account that 1 to 3 months, be really honest with yourself and assess did I really do everything that I could do within my power and according to my plan that I put in place to help myself heal. If you were hit or miss, if you didn’t take your medicine some days and you took it other days, if you ate out at McDonald’s once a week… you didn’t really do your plan as planned.
It’s OK, we’re all human and we’re all in this together. No judgment. We’re not going for perfectionism, but we are going for maximum effort. So if you can’t say that you put forth maximum effort then absolutely give this stage a bit more time so you really know what works and what doesn’t before moving on.
You’ve made it to Step 5 my friend.
In Step 5 it’s time to assess and tweak.
If a minimum of one month has passed or a maximum of three months has passed, it’s time to take stock. As I mentioned earlier, this method and these 5 Steps are not about a prescribed plan. It’s not about following a particular dogma or road to healing. It’s about following the road that best serves you for the time that you’re currently in. I can’t stress this enough mama.
I see so many ladies out there, grasping for the one true healing modality—following the path they’ve some guru or so called expert take, only to find themselves in the same miserable place they started in, or in some cases worse off. It breaks my heart when I see this.
The bad news is that there is no one perfect path to quieting your IBD symptoms, but on the flip side, the good news is that there are loads of individually proven paths that you can use to tweak and change and formulate as you design your own proven path to health. There are lots of ways to heal and in Step 5 of this process, and it’s time to celebrate because you made it to the assessing and tweaking phase.
So, in Step 5 we ask, how has that road been serving me? It’s time to figure that out. And you can access and process this thoroughly by asking yourself a few key questions.
#1 Am I better off or worse than when I started this plan?
It’s really that simple. We don’t have to overcomplicate it.
If your answer to this question is I’m not just better I am fantastic, I am great, I feel the best I’ve ever felt in my life… keep doing what you’re doing and every so often, keep asking yourself this same question. Because I can almost guarantee that there will come a time in your life when you’re going to answer this question and the answer isn’t going to be I feel fantastic, I feel terrific, I feel the best I’ve ever felt in my life. As life moves on and as our life changes direction and stress and circumstances and things that are not under our control and all happen, your plan will need to be revised. And when that’s the case, I want you to continue on with my next question.
If your answer to question number one is yeah, I’m better but I’m not exactly where I want to be, either in this moment or over time, it’s time to ask yourself question #2.
# 2- What can make my plan better? What, in my heart, with the amazingly fined tuned intuition I know I have if I just trust and listen to my inner self, what is my intuition telling me that it’s not working for me? What about this plan that I created does work?
And when you have those tweaks in mind, ask yourself how can I fit these tweaks into my lifestyle? How can I best make a new plan to make the changes that I need to make a new habit to become part of my life? Because that’s the hard part, often times we know what we need to do but it’s about the actual planning and implementing that tends to trip us up. So don’t just ask yourself the question what’s working and what’s not working? Ask yourself how can I implement? How can I make these changes that I need to make a new habit in my life?
And lastly, if you’re answering these questions with thoughts like: I really don’t have the foggiest idea where to start or if your saying no, I am really no better off than when I started. I’m not in the right direction and I don’t know where to go from here. It’s time for question #3.
Question #3 is: Who can help me figure this out?
If you’re feeling like you need to make tweaks, but you’re just not sure where to start or what those tweaks even should be… or if you’re saying I’ve done everything I could for the last 1 to 3 months and it’s just not working for me, now it’s time to get some additional help.
And often times this is where I come in. Often times people will have done some version of steps one through five– maybe they’ve done it to a T or maybe they’ve done pieces and parts of it, but some version of the stages we just went over and they realize that they just need more support. They need an outsider and a guide, but also support from someone who gets it. Someone who has been in a similar IBD situation, someone who’s just a few steps ahead of them on their gut healing journey.
So if this is where you are at, it’s a really good time to get in touch because this is exactly what I do as a coach. I don’t prescribe meds like your doctor does. I help you process and weigh all of your options, and help you see some options you didn’t see before because sometimes you’re too close to the situation or don’t have access to all the resources or the latest research on what’s working in the field of Crohn’s and colitis. This is where I can be a great support for you and the beauty of it for me is that I get to witness and be a part of your journey and your transformation as you get to the bottom of what will work for you. It’s a beautiful thing and one of my favorite things in life!
If this sounds like the kind of support you need and if a free 30-minute IBD consultation with me where the focus is 100% on you and your specific challenges, you can book that with me at karynhaley.com/consult.
Now maybe the services that I provide isn’t what you need. It does happen from time to time. What other options might be available to you? Is there a doctor in your area with a different approach than what you’ve been working towards so far? Maybe there’s a book or a class or a course… whatever helps you and gives you more knowledge that you can then turn that into help for your situation, that’s the direction to go in this tweaking stage.
Like I said, I’m here for you. It’s what I do, it’s my passion and mission in life to help others with IBD. To help lighten the load for as many IBD mamas as I can. But other healthcare professionals are available as well, so if you find that you get to Step 5 and you’re still lost, please don’t stop there. Help is still available. You’re hope should not be diminished. This is a monster of an illness and sometimes we need a couple go-arounds before we find our way. But find someone who can guide you. Someone who can keep things moving forward for you. That’s what it’s all about.
OK my love, those are your 5 stages, Your “I Was Just Diagnosed with IBD” 5 Step Road Map. If you’re newly diagnosed or if you’re just stuck feeling overwhelmed and anxious and stressed and sick and tired all the time, I hope that this gave you a roadmap forward. Let’s go over our 5 steps one last time. This is a good time to write them down so you’ll have this information at your fingertips whenever you need it.
Step 1- breathe a sigh of relief. You know what this is and that can be freeing. There’s hard work to be done so take a moment with yourself to center, get grounded, and gather your energy for the fight that’s coming.
Step 2- Formulate your starter plan. This is just your initial plan to get you out of your most pressing problem. It’s not your forever, but it needs to be a powerful enough treatment to get you living life again. And in this stage, be open to whatever works. Maybe you’re not a fan of meds, but they could really get you over the hump. Maybe you feel like all the foods bother you so why would you look at healing foods. Trust me, there are ones that bother you more than others, it’s about making a starter plan to start to figure it out. Your starter B+ plan. You can do it.
Step 3- The knowledge is power step. Now that you’ve got your barring’s and you’ve quieted your worst problem with whatever means necessary, you have the energy to do some research, dig deep into your options. Food, medicine, lifestyle… a combo approach. Whatever it is, get started here with imperfect awesome mama B+ effort.
Step 4- is probably the biggest, hardest step. It’s all about sticking with your plan and being patient while it plays out. During this time, you are putting in a solid effort for 1 to 3 months. You are using your Food-Mood-Poop Journaling System. You are just starting to cultivate your Wheel of Wellness with one or two spokes. You’re not changing every 3 days, you are in for the long haul.
Step 5- In Step 5, it’s time to assess and tweak. What’s working? What isn’t? If it’s all working, keep doing you mama. If there’s small parts to tweak or even large areas, it’s all good. It’s all just information you can use to help you move forward. If what you have done over the last 3 months isn’t working, you are not a failure, you are resilient, you are powerful, and you will keep searching for answers. Because if there’s one thing I know, it’s that there are answers. We just have to keep turning over stones to find them.
And if you are struggling, if you just feel like you are hitting your head against a wall repeatedly, it’s time to reach out. Let’s work together to see if we can put some of the puzzle pieces together for you. That’s my sweet spot. It’s what I do best. Remember there’s a link to book a free 30-minute IBD consultation call with me in the show notes, or you can also just go to karynhaley.com/consult to book there as well.
My friend, the early days of IBD are rough. I hope this information just helped you see that there is an illuminated path forward. Use these steps to shape your journey and know I’m here to help you along the way.
Until we meet again, I’m wishing you a cheeky and healthy gut healing journey. Chat soon!
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.
This podcast, video, and blog post is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.