I Think My Shy Bowel Syndrome Caused my Irritable Bowel Syndrome

Throwaway account because I feel embarrassed, but it’s actually starting to physically affect me.

This is kind of a long story, so I want to apologize in advance. I’m currently sitting in my bed, not a thing in my stomach because I am actively unable to put anything in it.

I’ve had weird bathroom habits since I can remember going to the bathroom. I had to be physically forced to sit on a toilet to go, and my normal everyday routine just never had ‘going’ as a mandatory thing. It was always every 3-4 days, which resulted in 6 year old me clogging toilets and being made fun of in my household for not being able to shit properly.

Well, in the past couple years, (15 - 17 years old), I went to a camp for about two weeks, and was incapable of using the bathroom out of fear of being bullied by fellow high schoolers. So I held it in. Two weeks. That was a great time. When I got back from camp, I noticed that I just generally couldn’t eat anything past 5 pm. It affected how I was in cars, getting from place to place, eating in general, and when my senior year of high school started, I was out of school for weeks on end because of how sick I was. It got to the point where I couldn’t hang out with friends, and I was trying not to throw up despite not eating anything before hand. I was miserable, and I could tell I was making my parents miserable too. At some point, we just had to give in, and go to the hospital to see what was wrong. Nobody was sure what was going on with me, because nobody was looking in the right areas. I eventually had to get X-Rayed, and discovered that ‘hey, she’s so backed up it’s in the wrong side of her intestines.’ Ew.

So I ended up getting the colonoscopy treatment, and emptied out the contents of my stomach over the course of 3 days to fix what was wrong with me. There’s some other medical stuff up with the reason I can’t use the restroom, but the gist is there.

Now I’m 18, going to college for my first year, this time in dorms! Yay! And at first it was okay, I could go every so often, but now I’m physically incapable of using the shared bathrooms unless nobody is in there, I have my Poo-spray, and my headphones are so loud I can’t hear myself think. But now not even those things are helping. I feel like throwing up, crying, and panicking all at once, and it’s starting to take a toll on what I’ve been eating. I’ve done everything that google and my parents have told me, exercise, drink more water, cut the sugars, and not even that is making me want to go. I feel so hungry and so full at the same time, and I can’t even get in contact with a pharmacist, or go shopping for anything to help me go, because I don’t have a car on campus.

It’s always been this bad; I’ve seen what even worse looks like. Now I’m terrified I’m going to get sick again and not be able to go home and I’m so overwhelmed I’m not quite sure what to do. On top of it all, I got diagnosed with ADHD and some other mental disorder that makes it hard for me to go in general?

Like I said, I apologize for the long post, but if there’s anything I need to clear up, or if you have any questions that might be able to help you properly figure out how to fix me, I will give out what I can. I’m not sure if this is the best place to put this, but I just don’t know who to talk to about it anymore. Any advice helps, thank you again.