Ask Crystal: Gastroparesis Is Ruining My Vacation... What Can I Do?

Heather is on vacation in Hawaii and a flare up in her gastroparesis symptoms has left her feeling miserable. She wants to know what she can do to salvage her trip.

My answer applies to all kinds of situations, not just vacation. So if you've ever found yourself thinking, "I have to feel better so I can enjoy this," then this video is for you!

Transcript

Hi there, welcome. I'm Crystal. I was diagnosed with idiopathic gastroparesis in 2004. I'm also a wife, a mom, a dual certified coach, and I have spent the last 10 years helping other people worldwide learn to live well with gastroparesis. In today's video, I am answering a question from Heather. Heather is on vacation and she's having a gastroparesis flare and wants to know what she can do to not feel miserable for the rest of her vacation.

Here’s Heather's question.

Hi, Crystal. I'm on vacation in Hawaii and feeling terrible. Our flight here was fine, but a lot of stress before and after we arrived. I totally messed up and had a mojito Wednesday night. It's now Saturday. I'm still hurting quite a lot of pain in my upper stomach, just under my ribs. And I also feel like I'm about to vomit at any moment.

What can I do to try to salvage this trip by not being in pain? I did watch what to bring on vacation, but stupidly thought I'll be OK for just one drink. UGH. Any advice?

So I did write back to Heather and try to help her out on her vacation, but she was kind enough to allow me to use her email to make this video in order to hopefully help lots more people because this is totally common. Whether it's a vacation or a work project or something going on with our kids where we feel like in order to fully show up in that moment, in order to enjoy what's in front of us or to salvage, as Heather says, or whatever the experience is, we need to get rid of those gastroparesis symptoms.

Or on the flip side, we're trying to really prevent those symptoms from happening during one of these experiences so that it doesn't ruin it. So the first thing I said to Heather is, this might sound totally bananas, but stick with me: What if you don't have to not be in pain to salvage your vacation? Because the fact of the matter is right now, in this moment, you've got some abdominal pain, you've got some nausea, and it looks like you have to get rid of that in order to salvage your vacation.

But what if that's not true? Because I think part of believing that that is true is layering a whole bunch of other suffering on top of the actual physical experience. Then you have the, “why did I do this? What if I hadn't done this? Why did I make that decision? When is this going to go away? What if it doesn't go away? What if the whole trip is ruined?” You can feel all of that in Heather's email.

The way she says, I stupidly decided to drink a mojito, for example. You can feel the blame on top of the physical experience, and you can you can feel the resistance to what is actually happening, which is that right now Heather's having some physical symptoms. Were they directly related to the mojito? Maybe, who knows? That part feels kind of irrelevant to me, because right now, in this moment, Heather's having some physical symptoms and it looks to Heather like her enjoyment of her vacation is dependent on her not having those physical symptoms.

That means there's a lot of pressure on Heather feeling better so that she can salvage this vacation.

And so my first question to her is, “what if it's possible for you to just go on with your vacation feeling the way that you do?”  Because if that's the case, that kind of alleviates a lot of this stuff that's been piled on top. It alleviates the, “I have to get rid of this. I have to figure out how to feel better. What if I don't feel better? Why did I do that?”

All of this stuff that's weighing down on top of the actual physical experience. That's all unnecessary, that's all just added stuff that our brain does because we have this idea that in order to salvage our vacation, we have to feel better.

And so I think what Heather was wanting from me was some practical things she can do to feel better, and of course I gave her a couple of ideas. But really, the biggest thing that I can offer in that instance is to really look toward what's going on in this moment. Because there's absolutely no way that all of that thinking and all of that worry over her physical symptoms are helping her feel better physically.

And again, when I use these when I use these examples, Heather is me. Heather is you. Heather is all of us. We have all done this. But the worry over getting rid of these symptoms, the blame she's put on herself for having these symptoms, the frustration that I hear in her e-mail over the fact that this is happening on her Hawaiian vacation, none of that is helping her feel physically better. We do know there's a there's a brain connection. We absolutely know that. And we know that stress impacts digestion.

And that doesn't mean that it's Heather's fault that she's not feeling better. Definitely not. It doesn't mean that Heather has to get in there and change the thinking that she's having. Definitely not. It just means that it would probably be helpful for Heather to recognize the fact that she's not going to worry her way out of it and she's not responsible for that. When is her stomach going to feel better? I don't know.

But I do know that, probably, her stomach is going to feel better more quickly if she enjoys Hawaii. If she gets out there in the sun and the sand and the water, and let’s her body get into its rest and digest state. And even if that doesn't happen, she's still going to have a much better time than sitting there in that thought loop trying to force a physical experience to change.

Are there things that she can do to try to feel better? Sure, I offered her a couple of things. Make sure you're getting some mild to moderate physical activity, make sure you’re getting good sleep. Stay hydrated. Eat what you know works for you. But there isn't a magic bullet to change your physical experience in the moment.

All we can do is look toward where our actual experience is coming from and recognize that we don't have to change that physical experience because we can still have a different experience of what's going on simply by recognizing that we're caught up in our heads. That's all. Heather is just really caught up in her head about the idea that she can't enjoy her vacation while she's feeling sick.

And I know even saying that, my chatty little brain back here says, “well, a vacation wouldn't be very enjoyable if you're sick.”

And is it ideal? No. I mean, probably none of us would say we really want to plan a vacation where we're sick. But I think what we can see is, that’s the current situation. And Heather can still go about her Hawaiian vacation. Those things can both be true and Heather can still have a good time. I don't know about you, but I can think of times where I was feeling sick and I still had a good time at whatever I was doing. Those are not mutually exclusive.

Again, it's not ideal. It's not what we would plan. It's not what we would choose. But what's the alternative really? This doesn't have to be vacation. This can be a work project. This can be something your kids are doing. But regardless, convincing ourselves that we cannot do this, we cannot be present, we cannot whatever if we have these physical symptom? That's not going to be helpful because that's going to keep us all stuck in our heads and then we're definitely not in the moment.

So my advice to Heather and my advice to everybody in a situation similar to this is really just to consider,  can I have this physical experience and get on and do what I'm going to do on vacation, at work, with my kiddos, whatever? And the more we talk about this inside out understanding of life, I think you'll see that the answer to that is always yes. Because we are living life through our thinking. We're experiencing life through our thinking and as our thinking changes, our experience changes.

I guarantee that if Heather read that email and something in what I’m saying landed with her, her thinking, settled down and she immediately felt better. I don't know that she necessarily physically felt better, but she probably felt better about her vacation. And if I hear back from Heather before I published this, I will do a little edit right here with an update from Heather.

Update 1: Saturday afternoon...

Thank you so much. We are going out sight seeing & to the beach. My symptoms seem better right now & I do think they are more intermittent. I will persevere!

Update 2: Monday morning...

I did my usual liquid diet and yesterday morning when I woke up, I felt better. Went to dinner (crab legs, SO delicious!) and I feel good this morning.

Either way, I hope that this was helpful for you. I hope you heard something in this. If it was helpful, please share it so that we can bring more people into this conversation around the inside out approach to living well with gastroparesis.