IBS Isn’t Just in Your Gut — It’s in Your Nervous System

Summary

Building Resilience Podcast – Episode 249

IBS Isn’t Just in Your Gut — It’s in Your Nervous System

Host: Leah Davidson
Date: September 24, 2025

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Brief Overview

In this episode, host Leah Davidson explores Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) from a fresh perspective, emphasizing the critical—and often overlooked—role of the nervous system. She discusses why IBS is not merely a gut issue but also deeply tied to how our brain and nervous system manage stress, safety, and survival. Integrating practical tools, personal experience, and compassionate guidance, Leah offers listeners both validation and actionable strategies for navigating IBS with resilience and self-kindness.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. IBS: More than a Gut Issue

[00:00–02:50]

• Leah opens the episode addressing the discomfort, embarrassment, and unpredictability of IBS, stressing that it affects millions and is difficult to discuss.
• She emphasizes that IBS is not “just in your head” and that standard advice to “fix it” with diet or symptom tracking can feel invalidating.
• IBS is a functional disorder: There’s no structural damage, but the gut isn’t working as it should due to dysregulation.

Notable Quote:

“Your gut may look fine, but it’s not functioning the way it should. The signals, the speed, the rhythm—they're dysregulated. And a lot of that comes from your nervous system.” – Leah Davidson [03:10]

2. The Gut-Brain Connection: The Role of the Nervous System

[03:00–05:20]

• The gut has its own nervous system—the enteric nervous system—sometimes called the “second brain.”
• There is constant, bi-directional communication between the brain and the gut via the vagus nerve.
• If the brain perceives a threat, the gut feels it; and if the gut is distressed, the brain interprets this as danger.
• This loop underlines why stress isn’t just felt emotionally, but physically—in the gut.

Notable Quote:

“If your brain is perceiving a threat, your gut is going to feel it. And if your gut is inflamed or overstimulated, your brain is going to interpret that as danger. So this loop is very real.” – Leah Davidson [04:08]

3. Stress, IBS, and the Protection Loop

[05:20–07:50]

• Stress alters gut motility, secretion, absorption, inflammation, and the gut microbiome.
• The phenomenon of “visceral hypersensitivity” means the same meal can affect people differently depending on their stress state.
• IBS sufferers often have a low threshold for stress—small triggers can switch the system into “hyper,” “hypo,” or “freeze” states, disrupting digestion.
• Leah outlines the “protection loop”: symptom ➔ fear ➔ tension ➔ hypervigilance ➔ more symptoms ➔ reinforced alarm.
• Reference to Dr. Howard Schubiner’s “six Fs” that keep people stuck: Fear, Focusing, Frustration, Fighting through, Fixing, Figuring it out.

Notable Quote:

“This loop feels like proof that something is broken. But it’s really your nervous system predicting danger and reacting, just in case.” – Leah Davidson [07:10]

4. Why Standard Mind-Body Tools Don’t Always Fit IBS

[07:50–09:50]

• While tools like somatic tracking can help with other chronic pain (by paying gentle, nonjudgmental attention to sensations), IBS involves more physiological factors.
• For IBS, Leah recommends tracking not the pain itself, but the anticipatory stress, anxiety, and patterns before a flare.
• The goal is to “expand your zone of resilience” and support your nervous system—not to control every gut reaction.

Notable Quote:

“What we want to do, instead of tracking the pain directly when we have symptoms, we want to start tracking the anticipation, the stress, the anxiety levels, the pattern that comes before the full-on flare.” – Leah Davidson [09:12]

5. Expanding Safety and Building Trust in Your Body

[09:50–11:00]

• Feeling safe isn’t about symptom-free perfection or “fixing everything”—it’s about teaching the brain and body to believe you’re not in danger, even with symptoms.
• Neuroplasticity—the brain’s ability to learn and unlearn patterns—gives hope for healing.
• Leah shares her new resource, the “IBS Nervous System Reset,” designed to move beyond food lists and symptom trackers and focus on trust, regulation, and empowerment.

Notable Quote:

“Once the brain believes that you’re not in danger, it’s going to turn the volume down. That’s how neuroplasticity works. What’s been learned can be unlearned.” – Leah Davidson [10:33]

6. Encouragement and Resources

[11:00–12:10]

• Leah encourages listeners: “Your gut isn’t broken and you’re not making this up. Your symptoms are real, your body is brilliant, but your nervous system is talking to you and it wants you to listen.”
• She invites listeners to check out her guide, IBS Nervous System Reset, and highlights the community in her Nervous System Journaling Club.

Notable Quote:

“Healing is very possible, but it’s not going to be through perfection or pressure.” – Leah Davidson [11:56]

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Most Memorable Moments & Quotes

• “IBS is not just about digestion. It’s about discomfort, embarrassment, unpredictability, and sometimes shame.” [00:12]
• “Your nervous system is always setting the stage. It is even behind whether your meal is going to give you the poops or not.” [05:05]
• “These are survival strategies. And they all make sense… but they keep your nervous system revved up.” [07:39]
• “It’s not about food rules or symptom tracking. It’s about building trust… and shifting from fixing everything to feeling it.” [10:00]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:00 — Introduction: The real impact of IBS
• 03:00 — IBS as a functional disorder; gut-brain bi-directional loop
• 05:20 — Effects of stress; visceral hypersensitivity and “team resilient” state
• 07:10 — The symptom-protection loop; Dr. Schubiner’s “six Fs”
• 09:12 — Adapting mind-body tools for IBS; tracking anticipation and stress
• 10:33 — The role of safety and neuroplasticity in healing
• 11:50 — Final encouragement and resources

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Conclusion & Takeaways

Leah Davidson offers a compassionate, scientifically grounded perspective on IBS, reframing it as an interplay between gut and nervous system—not a problem you can simply “fix” with diet. She urges listeners to move away from perfectionism and toward supporting their own nervous system, reinforcing that healing is possible and your body is not broken. Listeners are encouraged to check out further resources and to focus on building trust and resilience from within.

Transcript

[A]

Let's talk about poop. Yep, I'm going there. And if you've ever dealt with IBS or honestly any gut issues at all, you know, it's not just about digestion. It's about discomfort and embarrassment and fear and unpredictability and sometimes shame. It can be so hard to talk about it and yet it affects millions of people. For me, gut issues have been a very personal thing. I've lived with them. And while I haven't worked exclusively with gut specific clients, I've worked with hundreds of people navigating stress related symptoms, or mind body symptoms as they're called. Chronic pain, fatigue, headaches, nervous system dysregulation. And many of the same patterns show up with ibs. It's not just in your head and it's not something you have to fix with food lists and symptom trackers alone. Welcome to the Building resilience podcast. Episode 249. IBS isn't just in your gut, it's in your nervous system.

[B]

Welcome to Building Resilience, a podcast where theory, practical strategies and inspiring stories show you how to unlock your best life. I'm your host, Leah Davidson. As a certified life coach, speech language pathologist, and nervous system resilience expert, it is my mission to teach you how to be more resilient to life's adversities. I will show you how to manage your mind, befriend your nervous system, process your emotions, and even eliminate stress. Time to do more than just survive. It's time to thrive.

[A]

Let's get started. Hello. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. I am happy to have you here. Now, today we're diving into IBS from a nervous system perspective. We are going to talk about what's actually going on between your brain and your gut, why it gets stuck, and what you can do to actually start feeling safer in your body. And if this hits home for you, I want to share with you something that I have created. It's called the IBS Nervous System Reset. It's a resource I am very excited to share with you. It breaks it all down in a guide. 20 short chapters, lots of worksheets, journal prompts, even doodle prompts, and a video to walk you through these. So it's creative and hopeful and body based and there are somatic tools in there too. So let's jump in. Let's start with saying, first of all, IBS, as it's referred to, it's irritable bowel syndrome and it is real. Now that may sound really obvious. But for so many people, the experience of having normal tests and being told it's just IBS or being handed a food list with zero explanation as to why they're feeling this way, it's invalidating and it's really exhausting. So just to go over some basics, IBS is currently classified as a functional disorder, which doesn't mean that nothing's wrong. It means nothing is structurally damaged. Your gut may look fine, but it's not functioning the way it should. So the signals, the speed, the rhythm, they're dysregulated. And a lot of that comes from your nervous system. Now, the GI tract has its own nervous system, the enteric nervous system, with over 100 million neurons. That's why you might have heard it referred to as the second brain. It is in constant conversation with your actual brain via the vagus nerve. Remember, that is the largest collection of fibers that connects the brain and the body. It's how the brain and the body communicate with each other. It is also bi directional. And there are, of course, other gut brain pathways. So if your brain is perceiving a threat, your gut is going to feel it. And if your gut is inflamed or overstimulated, your brain is going to interpret that as danger. So this loop is very real. And your symptoms are not in your head, but they are in your nervous system. That's a very different conversation entirely. Now, the next thing we know is that stress changes how the gut works. Stress alters motility, how fast or how slow things move. It impacts secretion and absorption and inflammation and even the gut microbiome. And it affects how your brain interprets gut signals, which is a concept called visceral hypersensitivity. And that is why the same meal might be totally fine one day and then send you into a spiral the next. Because it's not just about the food. It's the state that you're in when you eat the food. Your nervous system is always setting the stage. Remember how I always say your nervous system is behind everything that you do. It is even behind whether your meal is going to give you the poops or not. So people with IBS often have what we call a low threshold for stress. So this means that their system may flip into team hyper or team hypo, or go into freeze faster than others. And because digestion only works well when your system is in that safe and social state, or that team resilient state, as I call it, anything that knocks you off, even a subtle worry or a lingering emotion, can trigger a these symptoms. So this isn't about being dramatic or sensitive. I don't want you getting all judgy about yourself. This is how your brilliant self, your brilliant nervous system has learned to scan for danger. And now it reads your calendar, it reads your thoughts, it reads your relationships, but with a bit more of an edge of danger than we would like. Now the next thing to consider is a loop that keeps so many people stuck. We feel a symptom that leads to fear. Why is the symptom there? What is wrong? What does it mean? I can't deal with it now. Which then leads to more muscle tension and bracing. And then there's a hypervigilance where we're always on the lookout, which then likely leads to more symptoms and then a confirmation to your brain that something must be wrong. So it's what we call the protection loop. And your brain is doing it because it cares, because it wants to keep you safe. But in doing so, it's keeping an alarm on long after the fire is already out. And this loop feels like proof that something is broken. But it's really your nervous system predicting danger and reacting just in case. And of course you want to try to fix it. In fact, that's one of the things that can keep this loop going. This is what Dr. Howard Schubiner, he's a leading expert in the world of neuroplastic pain. You can go back and watch or listen to the episode that I did with him a while back called unlearn your pain. It was episode 219. So this is what he calls the six Fs that will keep you stuck. And these Fs are fear, focusing on the symptoms, frustration, fighting through, fixing, figuring it out, everything. Too much. All of these are survival strategies. And they all make sense. We try to do these things. I got to figure it out, I gotta fix, I'm gonna fight through it. But they keep your nervous system revved up and then that keeps the gut on high alert. Now let's talk about IBS versus other mind body symptoms. And this part is important because not all mind body or neuroplastic conditions, as they're also called, work the same things. With things like chronic back pain or migraines, we can often use somatic tracking directly on the symptom itself. Now, somatic tracking is really, it's a gentle practice, a way of paying very curious, non judgmental attention to the sensations in your body, especially those connected to the pain or the symptoms. So instead of fighting and fixing or fearing the Sensations, you kind of just notice them and allow them to be there and you have some openness with them. I like to use the analogy of ocean waves. You kind of just watch the waves rise and fall when the ocean is calm. Now what this does is it helps the brain relearn that sensations themselves are not dangerous. And that can help reduce the fear and break the cycle that often keeps chronic pain and symptoms alive. But with IBS there is also a more physiological involvement. We're not just retraining the brain's perception, perception of the pain. We're also trying to work with digestion and hormones and microbiome shifts and inflammation. So the strategy is going to be a little bit different. What we want to do, instead of tracking the pain directly, when we have symptoms, we want to start tracking the anticipation, the stress, the anxiety levels, the pattern that comes before the full on flare. So it's like we're working upstream to try to shift the system before the system starts to spiral. Essentially, we're trying to expand our capacity, expand our safety, expand our zone of resilience, because you're trying to raise the threshold before your symptoms can get triggered. And we're doing this not by trying to completely control your gut, but by trying to support your nervous system. So I want to talk a little bit more about what safety means when we refer to it in relation to ibs. Because it's not about having like a clean scope or eating the perfect meal, but it is about how your system feels because you can objectively be fine and still feel danger, or you can get the medical all clear and still have the flares. You can be in a calm environment and still be stuck in survival mode. That's why a lot of the work that we do is to focus on helping ourselves feel safe in our bodies again, even when symptoms are present. Because once the brain believes that you're not in danger, it's going to turn the volume down. That's how neuroplasticity works. What's been learned can be unlearned. What is protective can actually be softened. Now I do want to share with you a bit more about the IBS nervous system reset that I created. I wanted a resource that could bring all these things together. And it's not about food rules or symptom tracking. It's about building trust. It's about understanding your patterns. It's about shifting from fixing everything to feeling it. And it includes nervous system education. It includes doodle prompts and journaling and regulation tools and somatic tools. And that three step safety sequence that I teach in all my programs and it gives you a way to start feeling empowered even in the middle of a flare. I know for myself it has made the world of difference. Now if that sounds helpful you can check the link out in the show notes. So if you take nothing else from today, let it be that your gut isn't broken and you're not making this up. Your symptoms are real, your body is brilliant, but your nervous system is talking to you and it wants you to listen. Healing is very possible, but it's not going to be through perfection or pressure. And again, if you want some more guidance, some more explanations, some worksheets that come with a video to guide you through, then check out my other video IBS Nervous System Reset. Or you can come join my Nervous System Journaling Club because as a member you get the guide for free. I hope that you found this helpful and I will see you next time.

[C]

Thank you for listening to the Building Resilience Podcast. If you're interested in learning a little bit more about managing stress, building resilience, and leading a more purposeful life, then make sure we're connected on Instagram and Facebook. Leah DavidsonLife Coaching. You can also subscribe to my Weekly newsletter at www.leahdavidsonlifecoaching.com Newsletter Looking forward to connect.