In Your Pants with Dr. Susie G - Purge Your Urge with Dr. Sara Smith

Episode Date: July 26, 2018

When your bladder calls the shots, your social calendar starts to look barren. Never mind sitting through a movie, your fear of peeing in your pants keeps you plenty occupied. Urgency doesn't have to rule your life and neither does your bladder. In today's In Your Pants episode, Dr. Sara Smith and I talk about the "push that old sweet lady out of the way NOW syndrome" and how urgency bleeds into everything we do, not just our bladders. Sitting through a movie without peeing your pants is possible just hit play to purge that urge.

You're listening to In Your Pants with Dr. Susie G, the physiotherapist for your private, helping you get in the know down below. Hey guys, it's Dr. Susie G here, excited to bring you another episode of In Your Pants, where we let go of sexual stigmas and cultural taboos so that you can have a happy dance in your pants and live a healthy and freeing life. On today's show, I'm chatting with superwoman Dr. Sarah Smith. Dr. Sarah is a certified wellness and life coach with a professional background as a doctor of physical therapy and certified yoga instructor. As a physical therapist, Dr. Sarah focused her studies in women and men's

pelvic health, as well as chronic pelvic pain management. In addition, she has led numerous mind, body, and spirit conscious workshops. She combines these modalities in ways that create easy habit change. She has found that when we are not connected physically and mentally to our pelvis and core, when we lack physical strength and healthy core habits, we also tend to falter emotionally and spiritually. Sometimes the most obvious solutions are buried beneath layers of resistance. And today we're talking about urgency. And I don't just mean the pee-pee-in-your-pants urgency. We're talking more of the push-that-old-sweet-later-man-out-of-the-way-now syndrome. And guys, this concept of urgency applies to you too, so don't be so quick to

skip this episode. It's time to slow down, understand why urgently pushing into the future and wanting everything right now is not necessarily the best way to live. So I know you're urgently waiting to hear this conversation, so let's get to it. Dr. Sarah, welcome so much to the show. I am happy you're here to talk to us about such an important concept that's really applicable to anyone nowadays. Oh, thank you for having me, Susie. And yes, it really is.

I don't think there are too many of us out there in the world that are not busy, that are not overdoing and just waiting to push some old lady or man out of the way, you know? Right, right. Hopefully on a soft, soft grass. Right, right. Oh, I love it. I love it. So let's start off right off the bat. We're going to get a little personal and I hope you don't mind, but I'm curious to, to know how did urgency impact your life and what sparked the passion to share this message. Yeah, you know, you're definitely starting on a personal note there. You know, urgency is something that I think I just started coming by naturally, you know, I mean, deciding to go get a doctorate or a master's in anything, you know, going to school and going to college

and probably shoot, even just as a little girl, you know, we learned so quickly, just to go, go, go, you know? And so it just kind of came to me really naturally. Like it was, it just made so much sense. Um, go, go hard or go home, you know, like again, who, who hasn't heard that, that before? And I would say even as a little girl, probably, and you know, I think many people can relate to this, you know, even just with going to the bathroom, you know, it's like, you better go now or else you're not going to have the time later. So that I think was the start of it. And then definitely over the last few years since having children and just my life being busier, professionally being busier, really trying to branch out on my own, you know, to get real, like there's always something to be done. Um, and if I'm not careful, um, urgency really, it's, it just, it's, it's, I start turning

things into, you know, me, me, me, I've got to do this right now. I've got 20 things to do. Oh gosh, I, you know, there, there's not enough time today. And, uh, so I think it's a concept that's easy for me to teach because as much as I don't want to admit it, I've lived it. Um, right. You know, and it's nice to be able to kind of share with others what's worked for me and what I've seen work for my clients and just to inspire yourself to be better.

Exactly. And definitely helps with the healing process, no doubt. Yeah, definitely. Awesome. So what are some symptoms of urgency for pelvic health and also in our everyday life? Well, I think, you know, the title of like, you know, when you get to the point where you're not afraid to push somebody over to get yourself to the bathroom, that's the only symptom you need to know. I say that a lot to people because sometimes at first people think urgency is they've been doing it for so long, you know, or experiencing it for so long that they think that's that's normal. you know it's normal to have to rush to the bathroom it's normal to not be able to wait

like that's what they start start thinking so I mean the the symptoms of it you know when I joke and I say that a lot of people instantly kind of get this look of like oh snap yeah I've been doing that like that's not that's not normal um but the you know the the symptoms really go this, this sudden and intense really need an urge to, to, to urinate. Um, and it actually can happen of course, with, with bowel movements as well. Um, and it's not necessarily as so associated with incontinence, but for some people it can be like, for some people they'll have leaky, like they, they get that intense urge and then they are trying to get to the bathroom and they lose it. You know, they might lose it just a little bit, or they might lose it, you know,

all the way and everything comes out before they get to the bathroom. Um, it can also be associated, you know, with frequency of urination, just like feeling like you got to go all the time. Um, for some people it happens more at night. Uh, and it's also common. It's a really common symptom with, with interstitial cystitis. So it's just this deep, intense need to, to urinate or habit bowel movement. And a lot of times, not all the time, but some of the cases there really isn't much there once you actually get to where you're going. Right. And I see this in a lot of my patients too, that these are, you mentioned these habit forming or behavioral patterns and the bladder and the bowel are both very behaviorally neurologically based ingrained

patterns that they can develop right over time and so just by teaching them how to breathe and be conscious and acknowledge that they have the urge without really freaking out and like you're saying having this rush to push everyone out of the way to get to the bathroom they actually are more successful if they just calm down you know maybe distract themselves breathe and then walk to the bathroom calmly they do really really well absolutely yeah i mean you know um it's said to come with age too. And as I tell a lot of people, you know, age and obesity are really easy things to kind of pinpoint and be like, oh yeah, let's blame it on age or let's, you know, let's blame something on obesity. But the truth is, like I was saying, even in my own life,

you know, from a very young age when we are potty trained and as children, we were already kind of taught to train our bladder in a way that might not be so fantastic. And that's go to the bathroom now and kind of force it out. Um, and then you think about a lot of people, like I've noticed a trend with people with professions. So like nurses, people that work on the line, um, like I live in an area where there's, um, a few different plants, like poultry plants that are around and you know, they're, they, they have a schedule of when they can go and when they can't go teachers, healthcare providers, you know, they have schedules, and they can't always go. And so it's like, over the years, you're exactly right, we we kind of train it, we train our

bladder, and kind of put it into this box that it really is not necessarily the natural rhythm of our body in our life. And then you tack on top of that, you know, poor food choices, the more that we're going, going, going, you know, we just kind of we're not really necessarily paying attention as much or we don't care as much for our body care about what we eat what we're drinking we're just getting stuff that's fast um so we just kind of are living this this really urgent lifestyle and yes as you said it's like it's so wild and so simple but the main way to work with it is to do the exact opposite of running and rushing it's actually to stop and slow down right and you you said this before, and you said it beautifully, where these habitual patterns bleed into our

life, you know, all other aspects of our life that we're choosing to live from, right? So it's not just, you know, your bladder and bowel habits, but it's, you know, how are you choosing to live in your everyday life? Are you rushing through things? And before you know it, you know, years have gone by and you're like, where the hell did that all go, right? And what's that doing to my mental and physical health. And so that brings me to my next question for you is, so how does this urgency affect us both physically and mentally, combining the two? Because I think what you're doing is wonderful and you're bringing these two concepts, which you ultimately cannot be separated in my opinion. No, I don't think so. I haven't been able to personally figure out how to

separate them. Yeah. You know, one thing that I learned that drastically made a difference in my life and has made a difference in how I work with clients. And that's the phrase of learning, you know, how we do one thing is how we do everything. And, you know, in my opinion, there's no absolute, but in general, I think that's very important, right? Because typically people that I find in the clinic that had, you know, I'm just working with pelvic floor physical therapy. that have urgency or urge incontinence, they tend to be pretty type A. Uh, they tend to have some major stressors or some traumas in their life. And majority of times they are either, you know, with, with high stress levels, they're either not taking care of their body. They're not eating the

way they're supposed to. They're just living an inflamed, really busy life. And how we do one thing is how we do everything. So it typically, it's like when I find somebody with urgency or urgent continence, they're also, it does bleed into every aspect of their life. You know, they're busy. They're overdoing. And so, you know, it affects us, I think, physically by when we're go, go, go, go, go. We're, we're in that fight or flight response, you know? So it's like a, I, again, I kind of joke with people about it and I'm like, it's like a bear chasing you, you know? And that's fantastic. But like, are you going to stop and say, Oh dude, like I need a, I need a juicy burger right now while this bear is chasing me. No, you know, let's have sex on, you know,

like it's not gonna happen like and so but but you know typically like we're getting hyped up we're getting stressed about something like we're yelling at somebody you know beside us on the highway or like we're ticked off because you know somebody said something to us that we don't like and we're getting triggered and like our body is responding to that it's creating an inflammatory process it's setting off a whole hormonal response and a chemical response that that sends our body into fight or flight. And so we don't digest our food. Well, we are not sleeping well. I mean, you know, sleep disturbances and poor digestion are just are huge right now. And then it bleeds over into communication and relationships. Um, Oh, absolutely. You know? And so, yes,

it affects physically and mentally everything. The other thing I've noticed with, with urgency, And I even thought about this in preparing for our talk today was like, in my opinion, urgency is like the what I call like the big giant ego, like the the me issue in pelvic floor therapy, meaning that it's kind of like, what's going to happen to me? Where's the bathroom? I need to get there quickly. I like it's all about, you know, we're just kind of we're feeling stressed out. out. And we really feel alone. Most people feel alone when they're dealing with urgency. But the reason why I say it's kind of the big giant ego is that the answer is relaxation. And the answer is actually reaching out for support. Whereas for like stress incontinence, where there's more of like a weakness issue that that in a global sense is kind of like somebody is just feeling their powers gone, they've kind of lost their their power, and they really need to

connect with their core strength in order to mentally and physically and spiritually like get, get kind of empowered again. Um, so, you know, with urgency that I think that starts affecting people mentally too. You know, like I've had, um, people that, that like I had one woman that I've been working with recently who's had cancer and she's like, I wish I had come to see you earlier. You know, I've been suffering with this for several years after my cancer treatments. And she's like, but to be honest, I didn't really want to reach out to anybody. We think we can do it alone. We think we can live life alone. And so urgency really not just affects us physically with the poor digestion and the difficulty with sleep.

It affects those relationships and mentally because we start like kind of blocking ourselves off from the world. I mean, even you think about Susie, like if somebody is dealing with urgency, they're going to always want to know where the bathroom is so they might they might stop doing things with their friends because they're they they don't want to run the risk of not you know like having an accident or not you know it's terrifying so it becomes very very isolating me me me you know very very isolating overdue overdue right no and I hear you on that and and what I think you know the message that you're driving home with me and the listeners is that you might be coming in to see one of us for a physical issue that's happening. But in order

to really navigate out of some of these symptoms that one experiences, you have to look at the whole you and you have to look at your whole life. And sometimes it's exploring avenues of your life that perhaps maybe someone hasn't even asked you the right questions to even think about those things. Cause at the end of the day, it's, you know, not just, you know, taking care of a diagnosis or, you know, fixing what's underneath the hood. Right. Because that's a concept of, you know, that you're broken to begin with, which I don't, in my opinion, I don't believe that that even exists, you know? Right. So it's like, it's like understanding that to get, to get quality care is to look at comprehensive and integrative care

that is going to look at you as a whole and all of your health domains, including the mind, body, and spirit that is so important for that support aspect and wellness and well-being. So I love the message that you're driving home with with your clients and your patients and to the rest of the world.

I think that's phenomenal. So thank you for that. It's very eye-opening. Yeah, you're welcome. You're welcome. Yeah, like I said, I just I have a hard time distinguishing between the two. And I've just always looked at people, you know, as the whole and, you know, several people have kind of influenced my life of learning that, you know, we've got to a lot of our physical symptoms kind of can come, you know, I know that you had just been talking to Lorraine about this, you know, but a lot of our physical symptoms can come from some of these just deep rooted habits and belief systems. that we have and just, you know, things that have kind of tripped us up in our life and, uh, they don't, they don't need to, we just need to be able to be shown a different, simple way to look at it and move on. You know, like we don't, we don't need to have that urgency does not, uh, need to

be a part of our life in a, in a bigger way. Um, we just have to be able to kind of sit with it long enough to learn, understand what it's trying to tell us. Right. Absolutely. And, and the fact that, you know, we, you know, we're living in a society where everything is instant gratification. I mean, I'm not speaking for everyone on this planet, but things are more readily available to us in the palm of our hand. I mean, Google is available to us at any time and we have answers in the palm of our hand, literally. But when, when we're physically going through or not physically, but experiencing a lived experience, right. Whether that be pain, whether that be incontinence, whether that be digestive issues, you know, you fill in the blank anxiety, which we all,

experience. I think it's understanding that we all share this human condition, right? And you mentioned this before that we are not, you are not alone. This is nothing to be ashamed of. There's many others that are going through struggles in their life and they might present with different a presentation of what their lived experience is, but essentially we're all in this human experience together. And so asking for help and getting that support is essentially going to help with your recovery process if anything and the more that we resist that the more that we feel that this urgency of just like i want it to just be gone but without putting in the elbow grease um that can be quite um a reality check for some people when they're looking for that find it fix

it and find it fix and find it i'm broke you know find it and broken that sort of thing and they're not finding it and so i love what you're saying about you looking again looking at the whole picture and taking a step back and maybe not pushing so much into the future, which is bringing me to my next question with you is, you know, why is urgently, I mean, what do you think, why is urgently pushing into the future and wanting everything now not exactly the best way to live our life? Yeah, you know, I think it's not the best way to live our life because it's actually cutting us off from our source. Um, and what I mean by source is it's cutting us off from like our gut instinct, you know, like a lot of us have that. Um, I think everybody has it actually,

but some of us are more aware of it than others. Um, and it, it, it's just, it, it's taking us away from really fun and joy. I mean, like you think about just even socially, you know, just on the physical sense of urgency, you know, people, they're just having to reduce or feeling like they need to reduce, you know, how often they're out because, you know, they, they just constantly don't know what's going to happen. They feel very out of control. And when we feel out of control, we, we don't have as much joy. We don't have as much fun and happiness. Uh, when we feel out of control, we don't really feel like we're living very abundantly, you know, and that we can get, get what we want. And so, you know, it's costing us kind of,

you know, our own personal happiness and the relationships that we have with others. So I would say that, that that's kind of the, you know, the, the biggest, biggest one. That's good. And I'd like, you know, and I like to add and tie it back into what you already said is that stress fight or flight response, right? That sympathetic upregulation. And when we feel out of control, right? It's a sense of loss of control, which is going to perpetuate the stress cycle. That's beautiful. That's part of, that's part of a stressor, right? So, you know, again, just tying it back to what you were saying with all of that, it's, it's, you know, you're feeding the fuel that keeps perpetuating the cycle that you're in and without recognizing that you're

doing all of these things and perhaps, you know, taking a step back and being able to like, let's with a clear mind, you know, some clarity, some calmness, how can I solve the situation? Cause who's ever solved the situation? Frantic, frustrated, angry, pissed, right. Screaming at the top of their lungs. I mean, what, when has that ever solved an issue? Never. No, I, it brings me to something like I, it's such a good point. Yeah. The way I describe that with people is it's like, you know, we wouldn't do that to someone else. Like if we had a child in front of us or like a dog, you know, or a cat, depending on what type of animal lover you are, you know, it's exactly right. It's like, we would not yell at that child or that dog or that cat to

do what we want them to do and expect a great result, especially if it keeps happening over and over again. Yet for some reason we keep pushing and pushing our bodies, you know, do what I say, do what I say, stop right now, go, you know, and expecting it to go well. No, with a child or with an animal we would you know get a little bit loving yet we don't really get loving with ourselves and so for me you know I think that urgency is a it's an opportunity to take actually like it does not have to be some like big woo-woo like self-discovery cool thing like right like I'm totally into that but like not many people are and you know but just a quick like 90 seconds to three minutes of just like what's what are we running from like what what is potentially

causing this right now is it because I'm stressed out you know and I've been like rushing all day is it because I just chugged like two big gulps because I was actually really thirsty I'm saying you know like we sometimes we don't even know we're going so much we are not present enough to even know what we're putting in our bodies you know like is it the fact that I just had, you know, some, some irritants that, you know, like some acidic foods or something, some tomatoes that could have irritated, or is it the fact that, you know, that something triggered me and I am now kind of sad, but I don't know how to express that I'm sad. So I just need to keep going, going, going by either stuffing my face or by drinking,

you know, or by whatever, whatever that thing is, maybe I think a lot of times we avoid because there's something that we're feeling that we, that we don't know how to deal with. That's beautiful. Beautifully said. Exactly. That's great. And we would typically nothing else to say. Yeah. And like, we typically would like, like if we had a friend or like I said, a dog or cat or a child in front of us, we would be typically kind and gentle, you know, even if we would be kind and gentle, but with ourselves, we don't, nobody teaches us that, you know, Like, did you learn that seriously? I didn't. I mean, I learned some, but not much. No, it was always like, nope, you can do everything and anything and you need to do more and it's not

enough. You know, that was usually like, no, you can do more and look what everyone else is doing, but you're not doing it. And that's just a bunch of bullshit because we're all struggling in some form, fashion. There's not one person without a struggle. I don't care who you ask. We all have our own personal struggles with the world. Again, we're sharing in the same experience, the intensities and the levels and they wax and wane for all of us, right? It's not always a shit storm, but it's recognizing that we're all in this together. And I like how you say, like, how would you treat someone else? Like, what would you, what advice would you give to someone else who's also experiencing perhaps something similar to you? Would, how would you talk them down the

cliff, off the cliff, right? You wouldn't necessarily be angry at them. You wouldn't be telling them, Oh, you're such a terrible person. And you know, you, you shouldn't be acting this way and your body's messed up and all this sort of thing. Well, if you wouldn't tell that to one of your good friends or family members who are ready to jump, why would you do the same thing to yourself? I mean, exactly what you said is just beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like the hardest thing, but it's, you know, but it's really important to stop and think about that. Right, right. So what is the first step in your opinion to gaining core confidence to be empowered and energized for success when dealing with, you know, urgency and urgency type issues? The first step to me is for someone to just to be present when you when you catch yourself, you know, specifically, let's start with, you know, urgency of bowel or bladder when you go, oh, shoot, here it comes again.

it's coming on, the first step is being present and being aware of that. You know, you can expand that out to like that bird's eye view of if you're even acting urgently, you know, I've got to get 20 things done in the next 10 minutes before I leave. You can also have some presence and awareness now. That's the first step. And then, you know, because I just, I can't stop at the first step. The other thing would then be just to once you have that presence with it, Susie, to like, somebody can then choose to instead of continue to rush to actually stop. And to, you know, either. Well, I'm going to back up for one second, you know, when I work with somebody, I like to find the path of least resistance. And so for somebody that's like a, you know, physical

form, for somebody that's in a mental form and for other people that might be in a spiritual form, but you know, that the stopping might need to be actually relaxing your muscles or that stopping might need to be, you know, mentally speaking kind of to yourself, you know, like, okay, let's relax right now and take a breath and ask yourself those questions and really kind of get curious of like, okay, why is this happening right now? What is this urgency coming from? You know, is it that I didn't go to the bathroom earlier when I should have? Is it that I didn't, you know, maybe I ate something that was irritating. Maybe I had too much to drink or not enough to drink. Is it a stressor in like a relationship or something going on with my career right now?

You know, is there, are we missing our inner compass? Like what's having that inquiry with yourself. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's that inner transformation, what you're getting at. I mean, you have to do someone who's, who's trying to transform their life and change any type of change is difficult. And like you said, having support and having someone to help you along the way is, is priceless in my opinion. But I think doing that inner work, because we can't literally go into your brain or your mind and take, take away thoughts or put new thoughts in, right. Or make you feel a certain way. You know, we might think that external conditions change the way we feel, but ultimately the external problems are endless. You know, they're endless. They're just,

you know, you take care of one, the next one's waiting for you behind the door, you know? And so they're always going to be there. But what changes is that independent virile, which was you, you know, how you react to the situation, how, what is your perspective? Like you said earlier, that mindset that you're bringing to the table. And that will certainly change the, change the, name of the game or how you feel from you know am I a victim am I suffering to how can I make this suffering meaningful right yeah yeah it's that's yeah you said it I couldn't have said it any better myself probably would have said it worse but um it's just going from it's going from out of control it's all from you girl it goes from like out of control to gaining back

some of our control and you're right like um that that inner transformation I think just just hits the nail on the head. But I also want to add that, like, there's a lot of stuff out there, like a lot of people go like, Oh, yeah, I don't want to, I don't want to go there. I don't want to look on the inside. Or that just sounds really like messy and not fun. And what I actually would say is it's like, au contraire, because it can be extremely simple. I mean, we can change things with the right accountability and the right support. We can change things within the drop of a hat. Um, I've, I've helped people do it and it's, it does not have to be a big drawn out process, you know? And so, um, going from a state of, you know, feeling out of control

to feeling more empowered and inspired and courageous and assertive and, you know, grounded in our bodies can happen simply in one session. I've seen it happen countless times and it's beautiful to watch because we all deserve that. We deserve it. We don't have to suffer. We don't. And we all deserve it. Just like you said, Dr. Sarah, I love it. Like I said, what you're doing is just fantastic. We need more practitioners and healthcare providers thinking like you and helping change people's lives is what you're doing you know you're not fixing them you're changing their lives you know so it's amazing and i and i thank you and you're such an inspiration for me and i'm sure to a bunch of our listeners as well so thank you so

much thank you for sharing your wisdom your wisdom your superwoman powers and um how can our listeners connect with you. I know you're a busy lady these days. I would, I would love, I love connection. Yeah. So, um, they can find me on, uh, Facebook is typically the easiest. It's where I go a lot of times, uh, at Sarah S A R A Smith wellness on Facebook. That's my business page. And then also my website is just simply Sarah Smith wellness.com. Nice. I love it. Well, we're going to have all this on the show notes for our listeners to get easy access and um i think again thank you so much dr sarah it was so fun having you on the show and once again thank you for all your wisdom and helping us realize that the tortoise wins the race yes absolutely yeah be kind to the people

that are walking around you and the tortoise does win i love it and guys thank you so much for listening to the show and as always in loving wellness for your pelvis this is dr suzy g until next time my friends i'll catch you later thanks for listening to today's episode be sure to head on over to drsuzyg.com where you can get more information show notes and related articles on today's topic also if you like what you're hearing head on over to itunes subscribe to the podcast and leave us a rating and review we'd love to hear feedback thanks again Oh, dude, like I need a I need a juicy burger right now.