Venting I can't get better mentally unless I get better physically

[qualityOV3Rquantity]

For the sake of my family, my friends, and myself, I want to get better. I desperately don't want to die by suicide. But my physical condition is so awful that I feel like I barely have a choice.

If you saw me in public, I would look like a normal, healthy young man. Very healthy, in fact. I look quite fit, and I exercise regularly. But inside, there is so much awful pain. I have irritable bowel syndrome, worse than the average case. I almost constantly feel pressure, burning, twisting, or cramping inside of me. I can't eat normal food anymore. I can barely eat anything without causing myself horrible pain. I despise every bite of food I eat because I know it will feel like battery acid in my small intestine, and barbed wire in my large intestine.

And yet I'm "healthy". Every test comes back normal. No inflammation, no tumors, no nothing. But how can I be thankful when every day is spent in pain?

I want to get better, but I can't accept living with this level of pain. My therapist just doesn't understand, I am not going to accept this much pain. I can compromise, I can live with this condition if it's more under control, but not how it is now. It hurts too much, I can barely concentrate most of the time. If I was 80 and going to die soon, I could accept holding on until a natural death. But I'm 24, and I can't endure decades longer of this. I need relief. I want to get better, but my body won't let me. I can barely think.

 

[Quietist]

They say most physical illnesses have an emotional/mental counterpart.

I was diagnosed with IBS-C 12 years ago and I find it gets worse if I'm going through a particularly stressful/high anxiety time.

 

[EgoBrained]

I know how that feels, IBS is such a debilitating disease, it sucks every single bit of joy out of you. Days spent in constant pain where the only thing you can think of is putting an end to that pain by any means necessary, how can one be expected to better themselves whilst going through that?

Physical ailments do exacerbate the mental ones and vice-versa. In the last month, I managed to reduce the symptoms to a level that I could cope with, and with that, most of my suicidal thoughts went away, allowing me to once again enjoy the little things in life for the past few weeks. But that only lasted until this last weekend, when I managed to fuck up my left ear by probably rupturing my eardrum, leaving me part deaf. And because of that, all the worrying and stress in the last few days have brought back my IBS symptoms.

 

[Chronicallyunwell]

I know how you feel...i have a chronic UTI and don't know how to get rid of it

I think there will be things you can try, apologies if you haven't but have you looked into functional medicine doctor?

 

[qualityOV3Rquantity]

I know how you feel...i have a chronic UTI and don't know how to get rid of it

I think there will be things you can try, apologies if you haven't but have you looked into functional medicine doctor?

Not a functional medicine doctor, but a few naturopaths. I recently decided to go on a carnivore diet, eating just meat, since I read some anecdotes of people who said it helped with digestive illnesses. It's quite crazy and I don't imagine it's healthy in the long run, but it's helped me feel quite a bit better in the past week. But I'm still searching for better ways to control or get rid of my illness