Plop plop, fizz fizz, oh what a relief it is.

When I was younger I was afraid of a lot of things. The dark, tornadoes (I would sleep with my parents until middle school during thunder storms), the basement (specifically walking up the stairs from the basement because who knows what’s behind you!), and the little bat with the peg leg from Disney’s The Great Mouse Detective (Disney movies are NOT made the way they used to be!). I wouldn’t say that I was more afraid of things than other kids were but I was definitely afraid of a lot of little things. In my opinion some weird and different things too.

I hated throwing up. Hated it. In fact, it got to the point where I was scared of throwing up. I didn’t like the feeling, I couldn’t stand the thought of throwing up at school (how embarrassing!), I hated the feeling like I couldn’t breathe (dry heaving), and I hated the pain and the sore throat after. I think a lot of you can agree with me that it just overall isn’t a pleasant experience.

When I was in elementary school I started having stomachaches often, mostly at night before I had to go to bed. I remember both my parents laying in bed, scratching my back, and just being with me until I was asleep trying to make me feel better. I know it doesn’t sound uncommon but this was happening almost every night (especially during the school week). It happened almost every night for weeks, maybe even months (I was a little kid and didn’t know the concept of time)!

During that time my parents had to try so many things to help me and I challenged their creativity. I started taking tums every night. It worked for a bit but the stomachaches came back. My dad started giving me “Alka Seltzer”. It tasted horrible, like some crappy unsweetened soda. But I believed that it would work so I drank it. It worked for almost a whole week! One night I asked if I could watch the tablet dissolve and my dad said that he couldn’t lie anymore and fessed up that it was LaCroix. I give him so much credit for that genius idea but once I knew the truth…it didn’t work anymore. That should have been one red flag right there.

After dealing with this for a while my parents decided it was time to get to the bottom of it. They booked me an appointment at the doctor to get a scan to see what was causing the issue (they thought it was going to be an ulcer). I remember waking up before the butt crack of dawn to ride with my mom to Green Bay. It was cold out and I was scared but I had my awesome Savage Garden tape cassette playing in my Walkman (as I’m typing this I’m now listening to it again and I remember all of the words to almost every song…) preparing myself to drink a disgusting concoction.

My mom told me I would need to drink a chalk like drink with the consistency of Elmer’s Glue with the taste of pure corn starch in order for them to see my insides. I feel it was honestly the worst thing I’ve ever drank in my entire life. Laying on that table thinking that I couldn’t possibly drink any more without yaking all over myself, they made me drink just a little more. I didn’t know what a stomachache WAS until I drank that stuff….GROSS….I digress.

A week later we got the results back.

*INSERT DRUM ROLL*…… I was diagnosed with fictional abdominal pain.

You read that right. FICTIONAL abdominal pain. I was literally having made up stomachaches. I was so worried and scared of throwing up that my body actually created stomachaches that had no real cause to stem back to. No ulcer, no tumor, and no tear in my stomach lining. Isn’t that nuts that my brain could do that?!

It’s a fascinating thing the brain is. I’m not a doctor or a scientist but I know it’s a complex beautiful organ. It can work for you (give you confidence, help you remember a question on a test, generate will power) or it can work against you (forget where you put your keys, talk negativity to yourself, create fictional stomach pain). It does SO much more for you than that but what I’m fascinated about is that you can choose what you want to listen to. You can choose your thoughts because they’re yours. And there is something so powerful in that that I’ve realized. So powerful that I believed that LaCroix was a cure all to my incurable disease. So powerful that my stomachaches stopped once I believed (given proof) that there was nothing actually wrong with me.

I still catch myself in choosing what I listen to in my head some days. I still fear things that may not be serving me, like if I leave my bedroom windows cracked open at night that someone is going to break in through them and kill me. But I’ve learned to confront my beliefs. Analyze them and really ask myself “is this really my reality?”. That one simple question that I’ve got into the habit of asking my beliefs has changed my life more than you probably know. And I’m happy to say that I haven’t had a stomachache in who knows how long, and I can now sleep with my bedroom windows open from time to time.

What are you choosing to listen to in your brain?