During my first session, I told her that IBS was ruining my life. When she told me that she had IBS too and knew how awful it was, I felt really optimistic. I assumed that I’d be able to talk freely with her about it, without getting those blank looks of incomprehension that you tend to get when you say that you are depressed because you have IBS. People often respond to that with, ‘Yes, but what are you *really* depressed about?’. Well, isn’t having IBS enough of a problem? Or doesn’t it qualify? How wrong I was!

Not-very-intelligent thing number 1: She tried valiantly to persuade me that my IBS was stress-related and had something to do with unresolved issues with my parents, or some other baloney. She wouldn’t believe me when I said that I knew this wasn’t the case. (I suppose I was in denial, as the psychologists would say?) I know that many IBS sufferers do find that stress has a lot to do with their IBS, but just as many don’t. Everybody’s different. After all, IBS is just a vague umbrella term; how dare she assume that just because she felt that her IBS was stress-related, mine must be too? Like Sophie says above, everybody’s body is different. I wasn’t sitting there trying to convince her that stress had nothing to do with her IBS, was I? I accepted what she said about herself and I expected her to reciprocate.

Not-very-intelligent thing number 2: When I mentioned that I spent time searching the internet for self-help ideas and chatting online with other IBS sufferers, she told me to stop looking for something that would relieve my symptoms. She said I was wasting my life away doing that, and it wouldn’t work. She said I just had to learn to accept the IBS; after all, that’s what she had done, and she was doing ok.

Yes, but with so many people out there who have found a way of controlling their symptoms, I don’t think I should give up so easily. I know I have spent lots of time (and money!) trying out treatment after treatment, with little success so far, but I could be just one treatment away from a significant alleviation of my worst symptoms. And once I’ve succeeded, it will have been worth all the time and energy expended.

By the way, I stopped seeing her pretty soon after that. I was lucky enough to get free counselling via the occupational health service at my work, and the lady I saw there was much more sensible and helpful. She was intelligent enough to keep any ideas she had about stress and IBS to herself . During one of my last sessions she said to me, ‘You know, when I first met you, you seemed so completely and utterly wretched and wrung out with misery, that I thought that that was just part of your personality and I suspected that that had something to do with causing your IBS, but when I got to know you, I realized that it’s only because you’ve been suffering so much with the IBS over the last few years that you’ve become like that, and it isn’t really you at all.’

And then – this is the really good bit – she said, ‘I have a relative who has IBS-D, and she always seems so anxious, and I’d always thought that that was a part of her personality and that that was why she had IBS. Now I realize that it’s more likely to be the IBS causing her anxiety, and not the other way round. After all, if I was in her position, always having to make sure that I wasn’t too far away from a toilet, because otherwise I’d be at the risk of having an accident, I’d no doubt be terribly anxious too.’ A result!