u/chankittikun

I used to be a pretty healthy adult guy.

Then I started working in a place with a lot of elderly coworkers, and for some reason a lot of them love talking about their GI issues like it’s normal small talk.

Not weather, not family, not work.

Just stomach problems.

What gave them diarrhea, what food betrayed them, what made them run to the toilet, all that.

One day one of them came up to me and started telling me about how his GI issues affected his life. I didn’t really know what to say, so I just nodded, said “yes sir,” and asked a few questions back so it wouldn’t be awkward.

Then boom, my stomach started acting up.

It kept going for like a week, and later I found out I actually had typhoid. I’ve mostly recovered from that now, but ever since then it feels like my stomach has never been the same. I think it left me with IBS or at least something really similar, because now my gut gets triggered so easily.

I managed to get it a lot better with probiotics and some meds, so I’m not having diarrhea everyday anymore.

But the weirdest part is this:

Whenever someone tells me they had diarrhea, somehow I end up getting diarrhea soon after too.

Like one time my friend ate mango. Mango is usually fine for her, but this time it made her throw up and have diarrhea so bad she had to crawl to the toilet.

And then suddenly my daily vitamin C, which used to be completely fine for me, started giving me diarrhea too.

Another time my gym friend told me he couldn’t perform well that day because he recently had diarrhea.

And then the next day, somehow I got diarrhea too and had to skip gym.

Like what the hell is this.

Why is my stomach so influenceable.

I swear my gut has Bluetooth or something.

At this point it honestly feels like my digestive system hears somebody else’s stomach horror story and goes, “damn that’s crazy... anyway let’s do that tomorrow.”

Has anyone else had this happen, where just hearing about someone else’s stomach issues seems to trigger your own?

I’m a man in my mid-20s, Asian, and an only child. I do not do drugs, I have no criminal record, and I think I did fairly well in school. I graduated from high school with a B+ and later graduated from university with an honors certificate. My dad died when I was 10, and I currently live with my mom.

When I was young, my dad used to hit me with a stick a lot. My mom was also verbally abusive when she got angry, usually when she thought I was being silly or not studying hard enough. She would say things like, “I can do whatever I want to you, even kill you,” and, “If I had known better, I would have killed you when you were a baby.”

Back then, I was terrified because I knew I could not protect myself. Even now, as an adult man, I still think about those words whenever she gets angry and starts blaming me. She blames me a lot, even over small things.

For a long time, I stayed quiet because I thought maybe she was just stressed from work and housework and needed someone to take her frustration out on. I also help with chores and sometimes use my salary to help with groceries. Even when she blamed me for things that were not my fault, I usually said nothing.

That changed one day when she started blaming me for forgetting to bring a laundry basket upstairs. I told her that I had rushed upstairs to take my stomach medicine and was not paying attention. I said I could go bring it upstairs again, but I needed her to stop yelling at me. She froze and looked surprised when I spoke up.

I go to therapy because of all this. I get anxiety and panic attacks at bedtime, and it has also caused GI problems. I also go to the gym and try meditation to relieve my anxiety, but honestly they do not help much when the root of the problem still feels unresolved. My mom does not like that I go to therapy because she does not want people to know about our family problems.

One day after a therapy session, she started scolding me again and said that my phone was the only reason for my anxiety and sleeping problems. I told her it was not just about my phone. I said there were deeper reasons, including family problems and childhood trauma. I brought up the things she used to say to me when I was young, and she started scolding me again.

She said things like, “Why do you think of me that way? I spent so much money raising you and sending you to school,” and acted like I was destroying everything just because I remembered that one sentence. This morning, she brought it up again and said I had “the brain of a dog” for thinking that way.

I know she loves me in her own way, but I wish she had expressed her feelings in a healthier and less damaging way.