Can Constipation Have An Emotional Component?
Constipation's cause is not as simple as a lack of fiber, or not enough water. Constipation can be influenced by many factors. My goal with my patients is to investigate those factors and take them apart layer by layer, step by step.
There can be an emotional component to constipation, and you may have no idea that it is playing a role in your life. This is different than a psychological problem. There is no logic to emotions. They are just feelings that can influence how the body functions, and what you may be able to do, or not. No amount of talking-it-out will help this emotional component of your physiology. What we need to do is identify if there is an emotional component to your constipation, especially if we have already addressed some of the clinical nutrition and natural remedies components of your condition.
Case Study
A patient told me she has had constipation since she was a child. She said her mother told her so. We had already addressed some of the physiological reasons that could be related to constipation such as hepatic-biliary function and thyroid function. We had already addressed dietary factors such as fluid intake and fiber, and the influence of excess protein intake was minimal with her diet. We had reviewed blood test results and had already addressed the function of other organs that may have an influence on bowel function, but constipation persisted.
Neuro Emotional Technique (NET)
NET is a university-studied chiropractic method of correcting the emotional components of what could be a physical issue. I've been practicing NET for many years. Sometimes it even appears to be miraculous!
Using this non-invasive, non-psychological technique, we were able to identify a certain group of statements where the patient making the statements had showed a consistent semantic response (a subtle altered physical response to the words she said). Those responses were repeatable and consistent, so the patient chose to do the NET session and see if we could clear this thing up.
I will tell you the specifics of this particular session, but I want you to know in very clear terms, this is a very personalized technique of finding the emotion and the associated event using the semantic responses we had found for that individual patient. It will not be the same for anyone else, especially you! When you come to me and we do this kind of work, we first have to find the statements for which you have this same kind of altered physical response. The words matter. Your particular situation will be different. The purpose in telling the details of this particular session is to illustrate just how awesome NET can be. Her session means nothing in your own life, but then again, this is for illustrative purposes.
The words, the emotion, the event
The semantic responses were elicited with the statement "I'm ready to have an easy bowel movement." Consistently, each time she said those words, there was an altered response from what we knew was normal (we had already established a baseline for normal). Of note, she did not have the semantic response to the statements: "I'm OK with having an easy bowel movement," or "I want to have an easy bowel movement." We used some other statements that used similar words, such as "I'm ready to have more frequent bowel movements" and "I'm ready to have softer and longer bowel movements," and she had the same altered response.
Through NET we were able to identify the associated emotion. There are a lot of possibilities, but with NET we narrowed it down to one. This is not psychotherapy where the therapist would ask "what do you feel when you say those words?" Not in any way is this similar to that. Here, the body response is clear when we get to the right point and identify the correct emotion.
The responsive emotion was "defensive." A defensive feeling. Here, we now use NET to find why, and find when this feeling first appeared in her life. Through NET we found that as a 7 year old girl, she was sensitive to a defensive feeling her mother had about overly relocating. When she was seven her family moved to a different country. At age seven, it wasn't even her own emotion, but she picked-up on that emotion through someone else's feeling, and at some level experienced the emotion that way. And what does a seven year old do with an adult emotion like that? Push it down. Push it back. Try to help mom. All unconsciously.
Do you get what is happening here? Her mom wasn't ready to move to a different country. Her mom felt defensive (the emotion) due to overly relocating. Mom's lovely daughter (the patient) wanted to help her mom. I won't move too much for you mom. I know you're not ready mom. I'll help you mom.
We did the NET correction (a physical correction) while she connected with the feeling, and then for confirmation we retested how we got there in the first place. Now, there were no more semantic responses to the statements made before. "I'm ready to have an easy bowel movement." Yes you are. "I'm ready to have more frequent bowel movements." Yes, you are. It's safe for my mother when I have easy bowel movements" Yes, it is.
Someone reading this might get caught in the reaction of "this doesn't make any sense." That's right. It is not logical. It is not psycho-logical. It is emotional, and emotions have no logic. Apparently, the patient's body held-on and resisted "overly" moving. It controlled her bowel movements to illogically satisfy an emotion; all unconsciously, and even against her will. It was emotionally driven constipation. But now that emotion is finished, and it is OK for her, and she is ready to have an easy bowel movement. And she is ready to safely move away from constipation.