Interstitial Cystitis

What is Interstitial Cystitis?

Interstitial Cystitis or Painful Bladder Syndrome is a diagnosis applied to pressure or pain in the bladder usually accompanied by the need to urinate more frequently. The bladder is a hollow, muscular organ at the lower end of the abdomen that holds urine. Pain can be variable in severity and location and in its relationship to the menstrual cycle, pregnancy, sexual intercourse, defecating, body movement and the presence of pain or illness elsewhere in the body. Emptying the bladder usually relieves the discomfort temporarily.

When medical evaluation finds no infection, disease, or injury, or when treatment measures fail to achieve expected improvement, then it is likely that the brain is involved in generating or contributing to the symptoms. 

Why would the brain do this? Nearly always, one or more types of stress is involved even if this is not fully recognized at first.  These include:

1. Adverse Childhood Experiences and their long-term impact including:

   a. Stressful personality traits such as focusing too much on the needs of others, excessive self-criticism, perfectionism, lack of assertiveness and many others.

   b. Unrecognized negative emotions such as anger, fear, shame, grief, or guilt.

   c. Triggers including people, situations or events that remind you of stressful situations.

2. Current life stresses

3. Depression, Anxiety or Post-Traumatic Stress

The good news is that all these sources of stress can be successfully diagnosed and treated.

To learn more about whether you might have these issues, try taking the self-diagnostic quiz below. It has 12 ‘Yes or No’ questions. The more questions to which you answer ‘Yes’, the more likely it is that the resources on this website will help you.