#48 Haemorrhoids: What the Body Reveals About Control and Authenticity

In this episode of The Healing Point Podcast, Tracey sits down with a guest navigating the painful and confusing journey of haemorrhoids and their deeper emotional roots. What begins as a conversation about food, digestion, and physical discomfort unfolds into a powerful exploration of childhood programming, control, shame, and the longing for freedom.

Together, they uncover how early family dynamics around food, love, and body image continue to shape adult patterns of nourishment, restriction, and self-judgment. Themes of hyper-vigilance, fear of chaos, and the struggle to let go weave through the discussion, revealing how physical symptoms mirror emotional stagnation.

This dialogue shines a light on the ways our bodies hold unspoken stories and invites reflection on what it means to move from control into authentic freedom.

Please note: the sound quality in this episode isn’t as clear as usual, but the conversation is powerful and worth listening through.

Thanks for listening, if you'd like more moments of insight like this you can find me on:

Instagram @thehealingpoint._

YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@Traceystevens-rcp
Or my website www.traceystevens.org

Inside you’ll find courses, and workshops as well as the Emotional Anatomy Library - with many unpublished podcasts, all designed to help you understand the way the mind body connection.

https://www.rootcausepractice.com/

And if you'd like to have a podcast conversation with me please email me info@traceystevens.org I'd be happy to connect with you.

With Love
Tracey x

Credits: This podcast is edited by Rhiannon Walsh

Transcript

0:00

Welcome. My name is Tracey Stevens, and this is the healing point podcast. So thank you so much for being with me today, and I'm going to hand straight over to you to ask you what it is that you'd like to explore with me today. So I in 2023 towards the end of 2023 my haemorrhoids flared up. I think it was something I had for a while, but I was managing it like there would be blood in my stools I'd have sometimes as in, my digestion wasn't very regulated, and it really I also had sort of identified what foods suited me and what it didn't to meat wasn't agreeing with me. Born into a meat eating family, so I've eaten it since I was a child without really questioning but over the years, I've also intuitively wanted to turn vegetarian. There'd be phases when I wouldn't eat, and then I'd get tempted, or, you know, given to peer pressure, or familiar pressure, and lots of different things around it anyway. So what happened is I was going to travel to Germany on work on the end of November in 2023 and just a couple of days before I was going to travel, I was constipated for three days. There was a lot of pain in my anal area and a lot of and I'd never experienced that kind of pain before, and and it was, it was just like nothing else I'd known in terms of discomfort, like pain and fear and all of that. And I was also contemplating cancelling my trip because, because I just didn't know how to deal with it. And then I went to see one doctor who was really nice, and then someone else, because another doctor had gotten me another appointment with this other doctor, bigger hospital, and that experience also was very, very, I would say, borderline abusive, because of the way he examined me. He wanted to operate. He told me that there was no way out of this, that I had to go into surgery immediately, and also caused so much pain during the examination process. But fortunately, I had had another I'd had a much nicer experience with another doctor who just gave me some medicines and asked me to follow her diet anyway. So since then, it hasn't fled up. I've learned how to manage it when I'm mindful with my eating and my movement and all of that, my eating is also directly related to my emotional state and to my menstrual cycle. So that sort of fluctuates depending on where I am in my cycle or what is going on in my life. And yeah, so, so it is actually depends on on what I'm eating, how I'm feeling. And yeah, that's where I am and I'm, I'm curious to find out what the root of this may be. Yes, okay, well, thank you for sharing that, and it sounds like you have, you've managed the physical side of this, and or are managing this. You know, it sounds like it's a constant awareness, but the root of the problem maybe has not shifted for you. You know, as in, if you were just to relax for a moment and eat whatever you wanted, then you would you're likely to have some sort of symptom. Is that right? That is, that is right. And there's also a lot of fear associated with food. So even when I'm eating something, whatever it is, I don't eat it, which is the sense of freedom and abandon. There is fear attached, and there's also judgement attached, because I'm also there's, there's an internal voice which is, which is also shaming me for for eating a particular thing, or for how much I'm eating. There's a lot of food noise in my mind. And yeah, so that's something I really struggle with. Okay? And that inner voice that you that you hear? Are you aware of where it sits in your body? I'm sensing. I definitely hear it in my head, yeah, but, but also in my stomach, yeah, when you hear that voice, and I don't know if you. Tap into this. Now, are you aware of any reaction in your body or response to the voice this, this tension around my shoulders, okay, and and it also has an impact on my heart rate. There's a there's an increase, yeah, in my heart beat your stress, tension around my chest and shoulder area immediately, and there's a tightening. It was like shaking feeling throughout my body, and that that makes sense to me, because these harsh words and harsh voices that focus is around food, and by thinking that that voice may have been there a lot longer and associated with other things in your life as well, but it may have just the focus may have just narrowed in on this particular aspect of your life. It may not. I'm just making that suggestion really, because very often these voices that we hear have been with us such a long time, and we can explore that a little bit, that voice of shame and judgement doesn't have to be there, and related to food and digestion and elimination, but it is there for you. I'm feeling like you have to maintain a certain level of control around your food in order to manage your whole body as it lives and moves in this world. Yes, yes, yeah. Also, it's as in, a part of me just wants to freely eat and not think and just, you know, just see food as something that nourishes me. And I feel like there's a it's a very imbalanced my relationship with food, because there's a part of me that is also rejecting diet culture, but then my eating is also not balanced, because I'm listening to what my head is telling me and not what my body needs, because my body is giving me very clear signs of what is even harmful to me When I eat a certain thing at a certain point. Yeah, it may not be a permanent thing, but it's what my body is going through at this point and what feels what doesn't feel nourishing, what it's rejecting. So the signs are very clear and also very grateful to be able to sense it. But sometimes I listen to my body, and often I don't, yes, yeah, I think that's very common. I think we, I think we all do that at times. You know, it's we feel what we really, really need in our body, and yet we override it with our head. So what's interesting here is this relationship that you mentioned with nourishment and nurture and food. And if we were to look back at your life when you were small, when you were a child, what was the relationship like with food? There was always a sense of, I think, fear around not having enough. Okay, not because there wasn't enough. There was always enough food, and it continues to be there. I always fear, and not just for myself. If there are people, I'm always worried that there won't be enough for everyone and including myself. So I think because of that, I also end up eating more than I want to and more than I need, and I'm also constantly ensuring that there's enough for everybody. Interesting because there I'm there, what I'm hearing there is this imbalance between giving and receiving and so what makes me wonder about that is, what was it like as a child in your household? So what was your pair? What were your parents relationship to food? Because sometimes these sorts of ideas come from a generational issue with with lack and lack of food, or poverty or, you know, and I'm just wondering if that resonates with you or not. There is, there wasn't really a lack of food, there was definitely, as in, there were financial challenges when I was growing up, but, but there was always enough food. There was an abundance, actually. Also, yeah, it was always there, but that was not my experience. Also, my mom passed away about 11 years ago, and she also shaped my relationship with food she loved. So she was a fantastic. Cook, and she loved to feed, but also my the shame I feel around food, my mother is responsible for that because it was she would as much as she loved to feed. She also tried to control even when I was younger. She made me very conscious at a very young age that I should always ensure, even when I was a child, that I should always ensure that I don't eat too much, so that there's enough for everyone else, and I also don't eat too much. It was also body shaming, and, you know, and I became very self conscious at a very young age about all of these things. And this was, yeah, this is what I was told, yes. So, so this is what has been programmed into your system, really, from a from a young age, there, there's it's not so much about the lack or abundance. It's more about what you do with it. And I suppose what the image I've got is like, here's an abundance, here's a banquet, but you have to control yourself. You are not allowed to. You can only eat this much from that banquet, and you, and you have to be self controlling with that so that there, because if you ate too much, there would be a judgement. If you are too little, there would be a judgement, absolutely, yeah, and it's really confusing, yes, because there's somebody who who's cooking for you with so much love. And also my mom is constantly asking me what I want to eat and what what she should make. And then when I'm allowing myself to enjoy it, there is judgement. Yes, yes. So you can, you can feel the confusion. And you spoke to the confusion. Because Absolutely, when we're when we're children, it is very confusing, the messages we're getting. It's like a mixed message there. So was feeding you a part of how your mum showed her love for you, or she very loving. In other ways, feeding me was definitely one of the ways in which she would love but that was also something that she weaponized, I think, against me, because it was also because there was so much strife in general and even between my parents so she was, she was quite unhappy and quite there was An atmosphere of fear that I grew up in, because there was conflict between my parents and my mother was more stable parent. My father was lighter, he was happier, but he was also very inconsistent. So so I I depended on my mother because she was the only stable parent, and I guess she also didn't know any better, but she that made her over protective about to me, so it was very stifling. I wasn't allowed to have any emotions, really, because whatever emotions I had, whether it was fear, whether it was anger, I I couldn't express any of it freely to her because, because there was always, she always got very offended, and then because, yeah, nothing was justified. And it always came back to, I do so much for you, and but, but you don't appreciate me. Yes, and those words are really aggressive, actually, when somebody's taking everything that you say is personally and they're not really hearing you, yeah, then it's it. It's quite hard and quite confusing. So this feels like it's so emotionally, it feels like it's mirroring the food, the control over the food. Yeah, yeah. That makes sense. This picture that you're painting of of of your childhood leaves me wondering. As a child, you're in a place of chaos. You to a certain extent it doesn't. May not seem like chaos on the outside, but on the inside, there's a certain amount of chaos, like, what am I allowed to say? What am I not allowed to say? How? How can I express this without someone taking offence? How can I eat this and be and be grateful? But but not eat too much or not eat too little as well. And how can I show my gratitude to my mother? This is all sort of it means that the the child in that situation is having to constantly work out how to. Be and how to communicate, yeah, and how not to cause more trouble to an already troubled parent so as to be the cause of as less Yeah, to be the cause of conflict. Yes, yes. So you were left with trying to work all this out by yourself, I'm assuming. So how did you cope? What was the coping mechanisms that you think you learned in in your in your childhood world, to to walk this path of not creating too much conflict, not being this and not being that, and trying to fit in. Or did you try to fit in? Or did you, did you not rebel? Or, you know, how was how? How was it living in that environment? I didn't rebel. I just, I just tried to be the best at everything. I just wanted everyone to like me. I did really well in studies. I did edit well in everything that I could so so I also learned that that's the way, that's the only way I could, I could be, I would be accepted, and I would go in my keep in some way, yes. So you were valued for your intellectual skills, for being good, yes, and finding this path to walk down, that sort of was in the middle, and also I was as an everyone around me always complimented me, either directly, or they would talk about what a mature kid and what a grown up kid I was. And it took me, of course, I thought it was a compliment today. I was very flattered, but it took me a long time, and, yeah, a few years of therapy to recognise how that wasn't a gift. But, you know, I was, I didn't have the space to be a child. Yes, and there's your there's your coping mechanism, really, isn't it? It's learning to be sensitive to the unsaid as well as this what was spoken. So this leaves me with a feeling that there was just a lot of control, and you had to hold quite a lot of control within yourself. Yeah, I did, yes. Where did nurture and nourishment come from in your young life, or was it not present for you? It did come from my mother on good days, but I also couldn't enjoy it fully because of fear of you know, I don't know what could upset her and what could make her angry, and how it would be taken away. It was very fragile. There was that. I think it also came from. It came from my grandmom, from my mother's mother, who I lived with for a few years. When I was between nine and 11, yeah, so it did come from her, and I think I learned to give it to myself, yeah, not to depend on anyone for it. I learned to give it to myself by just at that point I thought I could also earn it by being this good kitten and not causing any disturbance in any way to anyone. Yeah, yeah. So I'm still, so there's still this sense of, apart from maybe with your grandmother, you know, there's this, there's an adaptation to how I feel good. And if I can ask you this, were there any moments, or have there been moments for you of complete abandon, as in letting go, of being yourself, of being wild? Not at all, actually. Yeah, it's something that I'm still waiting to discover, and I have fooled myself into believing that I've had those moments, but it's only been under the influence of some substance. It's not a wholesome letting go. It's influenced by a substance, and that's and how does the idea of that because you mentioned freedom before when you spoke about food, and you know, I don't have that freedom. How does that idea of freedom sit within you? Is it something that you think about, or is it? Does it not really come into. World, this idea of just being completely authentic and free, it's something that I think about all the time, right? Yeah, it's something I've been preoccupied with for a while, and it's something that I've been looking for in in different spaces, and, yeah, it's, it's an ongoing work in progress project, and that's why I was wondering. Because often there is part of us that is, is craving some form of freedom, yeah, some form of release. And just to be, you know, instead of the the working, the striving, the having to be focused or on it, or thinking about this and that, and planning, and, you know, all of that stuff. Yeah, yeah. If we come back to the haemorrhoids, the idea of blood stagnating, this is basically what, what it is, isn't it? It's like, it's this stagnation of blood in the vessels, yes, and also pressure, and I always equate, probably heard me say this before, but the blood to your vitality, you know, it's all about the flow of life and everything flowing. So when we bring that idea in, and then look at this relationship you have with food. Can you see a connection there? I deeply resonate with that parallel. Also. I was reminded of something my first experience, and this is not something I've thought about or been reminded of in a very, very long time, the first time I saw blood in my stools, and the first time I remember feeling a sense of, you know, pressure and pain and a kind of protrusion in my anal area, which, which, of course, has I've lived with for years and ignored it, or just, I don't know, told myself that that's how it is, that it's not That's not normal, that it's not that, you know, it's not supposed to be there. I remember the first time I noticed. It was when I was around 10 years old. That's the first time I was living away from my parents. I was living with my grandmother and my uncle's family. It was, it was tough, because apart from my grandmother, I didn't feel I felt very unwanted in that house. I think that the first time I experienced to be trapped. But also, as a child, I didn't have a choice. I didn't have the freedom anyway. But also being trapped there, because, yeah, my parents were going through a sort of a transition, so I was living there before they came, and then I began staying with them again for about two years I was there and, yeah, yeah, that idea and feeling of being trapped, not feeling very welcome, sort of gives me that sense that you've got to keep everything holding in even more. Yeah, and I had no one to share this with. I didn't even tell my parents, because I didn't want to burden them further, because they already were dealing with so much. Yeah, I learned at a very young age to not express and to just suppress. And looking back on that time, and you think of yourself as 10, and if you just, you know, watch that as a picture that 10 year old, what do you think she was feeling? What did? What do you think her body and her life felt like, the crippling sense of fear and helplessness and desperation to be to be seen and to be accepted. Yeah, because, because I just wanted to be loved also by the others. And it was, it was, again, very confusing. Again, that's a little bit like my mother, because they'd be really nice to me sometimes, and would absolutely ignore me sometimes. Yeah, so as an I didn't have the vocabulary for it. Now, I didn't even, as a child, I didn't even. Have the have the space to feel because I was just waiting for the moment when they would see me, yes and yeah and like me, so I was, I was desperately trying to get the attention, not not actively, but constantly making sure that I didn't do anything wrong, not that I was doing anything wrong anyway. I was just being a child, and, you know, being around, yeah, yeah. So that was that, was that there's a lot in that, an absolute feeling of of fear and helplessness. You said, this is that survival mode, isn't it? Yes, looking out okay, for what's going to happen next. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I learned to be hyper vigilant at a very Yeah, yes, and it and I'm just wondering how hyper vigilant you still are. You know how much you're still avoiding that feeling of fear and helplessness by managing everything, or a fear of, what if everything it turns into chaos? I don't know. How does that sit with you in your current life? No, it is a fear I'm I live with, and it is a fear I am sometimes aware of, because it keeps me from from doing a lot of things I would have allowed myself to do otherwise. Yeah, there's, there's always, it's better now I think, but there's always, I'd rather avoid doing something because I fear the worst. Yes, so there's also the fear of not doing it perfectly. Yeah, yeah. So that keeps me back from so I'd rather not do something. So I'm like, oh, but that's going to be mediocre. It's not going to be great. And I'm my harshest critic. I have already my inner critic has already rejected whatever it is I was going to do, and that really suppresses my creative expression, yes, and you used your hand there, like with that grip and that, that claw there that's holding, that's holding in so here You are. You've made it. You've made another you've made a move in your life. You're in in a in a place which presumably offers more to you than where you were before. I'm wondering, in what ways do you find yourself holding back now you're in this new place, or if you do, but you know, are there things that you see, that you want to do, or things you want to express, but you're you pull back from those things I'm learning to let go, because also this transition is, is is very new for me, yeah, and, and it's been much smoother than I expected it to be. There was so much fear leading up, because it also means big changes in the way I'm living, in my relationship and all of that. But it's been so harmonious and smooth and and I been sensing a fear around how smooth and harmonious it's been, because that's unfamiliar. So I'm constantly waiting for something to go wrong and expecting something to not work out, because I'm like this, this can't be real. How can it be so smooth? Because in my mind, I I think there's also something around deservability. If something is easy, then I haven't worked hard enough for it, so I don't deserve it. There is that. So my mind is also constantly trying to trick me and tell me that you haven't worked for this so you don't deserve it. But I'm noticing. I'm witnessing and observing this and, yeah, trying to build a healthier relationship with deservability. Yes, I'm receiving and receiving. Yes, absolutely. So here you are now with your banquet around you. And there's a hesitancy, but it's but it's there in front of you with all these, you know, with this in this new experience, in this transition. So there's a couple of things I. I just wanted to draw your attention to the first the first is on the physical side of things is, firstly the control in terms of letting go, and when we think about the haemorrhoids, how that manifests in the physical as this, as this obstacle to letting go of the the stagnancy of holding on and whether or not I can let go. Can I can I be me? Can I let go of this old stuff, or should I hold on to it? There's a confusion. It's almost like that isn't there. So there's a there's a mirror there in the physical but tied into that is, I just wanted to draw your attention to the beliefs that you're that you're holding, even now as you're in this new transition, that the judgement that's coming in for you. You know, do I? Do I deserve this? Is this real? Something's probably going to go wrong. There's a belief there that things can go wrong. So I can't quite relax a belief that, you know, I I still have to be wary and I have to control things, just in case. It's a bit like when you when you see something wild that has been caged, and the cage door opens, and it takes a while for that for for that creature, to be able to step out and fly or run or and it feels, it feels like that's sort of the picture that I'm looking at here. I don't know how that resonates with you. That resonates so much. That's exactly where I am, and that's exactly how it feels. I can see, I can see what's out there. I can see the possibilities, but stepping into something new, it's it comes with a lot of fear and caution. Yes, exactly, because there's the belief there that is has been programmed into you from a very young age, is that I can't have too much. Everything comes with a cost. I'm not allowed to receive too much. I'm allowed to receive a little bit, but not too much. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So as we draw, as we draw, to this, to the end here of this session has, have, have you been able to connect those dots between the haemorrhoids and the reason for them being there is that is that sort of come together for you? Yeah, I was aware of the physical aspects of it, as in what, what was causing it, on a on a physiological level, yeah, so that I was able to identify, and I'd been working with that, yeah, but, but it's also pretty literal, actually, though, the stagnation and the pressure, yeah, because there is so much, because what I eat, and it's true for all of us, what we eat is also who we are. It's so much a part of our identity. So for me, also being unable to eat certain foods which I have enjoyed and liked at a very young age, but my body is energetically not responding well to so there is, there is a paradox there that I struggle with, and also the pressure of, you know, who am I if I don't eat this particular food? Yeah, yeah. So there's that, but no, there's been deep, deep resonance and a recognition that I didn't have before, of of how the stagnation that I have really, really been struggling with in in various areas of my life, and the movement that I've been longing for, how that had also manifested. Haemorrhoids and how that has impacted my life and my choices and my decisions. I because I am in this phase of transition now, and I have made some fruit, and this couldn't have come at a better time for me to also be able to see it in this in this way, because of where I am at this point. Timing is always perfect, isn't it? Yes, and this is multi layered, so they're always there, always these, you know, very many layers. But part of this process is this transition that you're in, that you've literally, you've literally moved, and that hopefully will manifest as well into your body, that you can literally move in so many other Ways, in a more expansive way now as you can release the past, you're becoming a new person. Yeah, yeah, a new a new person, and also the person I am, well, becoming more of the person that you are. You know your authentic, your authenticity starting to shine through, which may be that you become more expansive in the world. Yeah, yeah. So it will be interesting to see how those changes start to grow and develop. Thank you so much for this conversation today. I'm sure I can find the words as the days go by and yeah, I'm very moved by this conversation and by the process, thank you. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this, you'll find a lot more content on my Instagram account at the healing point. Dot underscore if you have a question you'd like to explore and are willing to take part in the podcast, you'll find all the information you need on my website, which is www dot Tracey stevens.org/podcast, thanks and see you soon. You.