Symptoms of Candida Overgrowth
If you do an internet search for “symptoms of candida”, you will see a few or maybe many symptoms match what you are experiencing, such as digestive problems, food sensitivities, cravings, bloating, chronic fatigue, brain fog, yeast infections, UTIs, skin issues like eczema, psoriasis, hives, rashes, itchiness, or autoimmune issues and allergies.
After I stopped going to the doctor to treat my yeast infections, BV, and UTIs, I started to search for the cause. I saw many of my other symptoms were related to candida. So naturally, I thought that candida cleanses that included a restrictive diet and many supplements to kill the candida, support the detox process, and rebuild the immune system would make all of my symptoms go away.
After dabbling with the candida diet and candida cleanses for 10 years, I decided it was time to fully commit to the strict candida diet, supplements, and many other healing modalities for 2 years, and I thought I was finally healed.
But then my symptoms came back and I continued to cleanse and restrict my diet. Some candida experts, such as Donna Gates, say you have to eat the candida diet for life, which didn’t feel right to me. It seemed to me that she didn’t actually heal the true cause of her candida and needed to keep managing it with diet and cultured cabbage. Who wants to do that for the rest of their life!?!? So I stayed pretty close to the candida diet, and continued to do cleanses when my symptoms would flare up.
8 years ago was the last time this happened, so I went back on the candida diet to feel better. That is when I began learning that the restriction is often motivated by unconscious guilt and shame, along with a false sense of control when feeling out of control.
During that time, I was in an on-and-off relationship with a narcissist. When I was with him my bloating was at an all time high. One night he shamed my feelings and my needs and I went into a deep emotional trigger. I left his place extremely hurt and I couldn’t stop crying. When I got home my stomach was so bloated I looked like I was 5 months pregnant and yeast was literally pouring out of me.
It was at that moment I knew my symptoms were emotional, because I wasn’t eating anything that would have fed the candida.
If I had eaten something off the diet earlier that night, I may have blamed my symptoms on the food, and missed the true healing opportunity.
Emotional Trauma
Symptoms flare-up not because of what you are eating but because of what you aren’t feeling.
If you keep blaming food, you will get caught in the guilt and shame cycle, and never heal.
For example, you may have an emotional trigger, you feel rejected and you eat some chocolate, and then your skin breaks out. It’s common to think the chocolate made you break out, but actually a core wound from childhood was triggered and it expressed itself through your skin. When I realized my symptoms were emotional, I stopped focusing on food, and started focusing on my feelings, including from childhood and healing my inner child. Once I did, and continued to do so, my physical symptoms, food sensitivities, emotional eating, and dysfunctional relationship patterns all went away.
My inner child was already feeling depleted from the lack of safety, love, acceptance, and emotional support. Whenever I would restrict my food, it was motivated by the desire to feel better about myself and to cleanse the candida (shame) but it did the opposite. I would feel bad about myself and I felt more shame about it not working because I thought I wasn’t doing it right or good enough. I finally gave my inner child the safety, love, acceptance, and support that she always needed, and 3 months later, I met my husband who gave me the same. I never restricted my food again. And yes, I can eat pizza and drink wine whenever I want!
If you stop focusing so much on food as the problem and more on your feelings as the source and solution, then you can also experience true healing, freedom, and fulfillment.
Next time your symptoms flare-up, instead of thinking you did something wrong, listen to them, just as you would listen to a child, and ask:
How do I feel?
What do I need?
For more information about your symptoms and how it relates to your inner child, see the excerpts below from Michael J. Lincoln, Ph.D.’s “Messages from the Body – Their Psychological Meaning.”
Your inner child needs your help expressing and taking care of your feelings.
Emotional Cause of Candida
Messages from the Body – Candida
CANDIDA (Systemic yeast infection) They are feeling very scattered and discombobulated. They just can’t seem to get it together to run their life effectively. They come from a chaotic dysfunctional family who undermined their capacity to cope.
They have a lot of unresolved negative feelings floating throughout their system, and they have a pronounced propensity to be blame-throwing regarding all this at the unconscious level. There may be sexual guilt and deep conflict with an intimate. They have been systematically prevented from manifesting any creativity, sexuality, capacity for generating for the future, or bonding in intimacy. They are the product of an engulfing, enmeshed and untrustworthy relationship with their mother.”
Emotional Cause of Yeast Infections
Messages from the Body – Yeast Infection
YEAST INFECTION (In the female sexual organs) “Me last!” They are a “serve-aholic” co-dependent who is denying of their own needs and who is not supporting themselves. They feel that they don’t deserve love, that they have to “earn” it, and they therefore lack self-love. They were put on highly conditional and demanding love by their enmeshed and possessive but ambivalent mother.
“Self-rejection.” They feel that there is something “bad, wrong and evil” about them. They are therefore incapable of accepting or providing support for themselves, and they are unable to own or manifest their personal power. They are the product of a denigrating family who undermined their competence and confidence.
“Tripod-rage.” There is a considerable amount of the irresistible urge to kick anything with three legs, and of patriarchy-paranoia, which they carefully repress and suppress. They come from a highly exploitative, patriarchal and oppressive/suppressive family.
Emotional Cause of Urinary Tract Infections
Messages from the Body – Urinary Tract Infections
URINARY TRACT INFECTION(S); URETHRITIS “Downloading time.” There is a need to get rid of something in their life — they are desperately trying to clear the toxic things, situations and people out of their life. They feel the necessity for the release of pressure. However, their lack of self-love makes this a quite difficult undertaking. They come from a severely dysfunctional family who held them accountable for all their misery.
They have a fearful orientation towards the world, along with a cautionary conservative approach which results in their hanging on to old ideas and in their being afraid of letting go. They are lacking in adaptability, and they have a fear of change, because they don’t believe that anything new would work on their behalf.
They have a certain difficulty with inner direction arising from the fear that if they have any hopes, they will prove to be false and they “will blow up in their face.” They are the product of a demoralizingly dysfunctional family in which any efforts to improve the situation only made things far worse.
“Abandonment-anticipation.” They have a strong underlying abandonment-anxiety and a resulting tendency to dependent attachment and to vulnerability-avoidance at the same time their experience has to suppress resentment over vulnerability and abandonment-anticipation. They also have the feeling that their need for love is unfulfilled and unfulfillable, with the result that they are prone to depression. They have a fair amount of guilt and grief, arising from a severely suppressive and non-supportive childhood.
“Ethical problems.” They are having deep conflicts about their ability to manifest their values and priorities. It arises from a non-comprehending, dysfunctional, incompetencing, belittling and/or accusatory family.
“Royally pissed off.” They are thoroughly enraged at their life, and they don’t trust the Universe one iota. They are full of resentment, blame and angry emotions, and they feel betrayed. They are looking for who is responsible for all their troubles, trials and tribulations.
“Much of their venom is directed at their intimates, especially those of the other gender. They feel that the parent of the other gender is the cause of all their problems. This whole pattern came about as a result of their being sexualized and sex-ploitated in a seductive-destructive — “seduce-slap” and accusatory manner.”
Emotional Cause of Digestive System Problems
Messages from the Body – Digestive System Problems
DIGESTIVE SYSTEM PROBLEMS “I can’t take that in.” There are difficulties with assimilation of experiences and inputs, due to generalized dread, repressed rage and/or despairing depression. They are the product of a family who in effect placed their needs last, and who were up to their eyebrows in continuous stress.”
Emotional Cause of Allergies
Messages from the Body – Allergies
ALLERGIES “Inner crying.” They are experiencing the effects of suppressed grief, and they are in effect operating under the domination of a severe chronic cold. They are seeking to elicit love in an indirect manner, since they found that they did not get the love they needed as a child. They are longing for mother’s love or that of a mother stand-in.
They are experiencing the effects of unexpressed grief over felt rejection by an extremely “smother-loving” but cold mother.”
Emotional Cause of Bloating (Abdominal Distention)
Messages from the Body – Bloated (Abdominal Distention)
BLOATED (Abdominal distention) Something in their current situation is generating a gripping fear and as yet undigested ideas, along with a sense of responsibility-overload and the associated resentment.
There is a considerable amount of anxiety and agitated anticipation of aggravating developments. It came from an unpredictable family experience in which they could never tell when and what piece of excrement would come off the wall at them just that it would.”
Emotional Cause of Bloating (Body-wide water-retention)
Messages from the Body – Bloated (Body-wide water-retention)
BLOATED (Body-wide water-retention) “Holding on.” They are not letting go of something or someone, out of resistance to changes. They are hanging on to the past for fear that if they let go, something awful will happen.
They feel like they are carrying a heavy load on their shoulders, an overload of responsibility. They want to share the load, but they are afraid to ask for fear of alienating and losing what support they do have.
It’s a “Cinderella” pattern in which they were held accountable and responsible for the needs and situations of everyone and everything in their family. Their only support came from just that “unsung hero(ine)” role, in a “serve-aholic” situation.
They are therefore desperate for love and afraid of the loss of love, with an associated intense underlying chronic grief. (Water retention is stored grief from this whole situation and life history.) It comes from a fear that any change will result in the loss of even more in their life.”
Emotional Cause of Fatigue
Messages from the Body – Fatigue
FATIGUE “Why bother?” They are dealing with resistance, boredom and lack of love for what they are doing with their life. They have opted for disengagement, accountability-avoidance and responsibility-deflection, in a kind of burnout reaction. It arose from a family system in which they received a “Don’t be you!” injunction, and in which anything they did led nowhere.
“Struggle-addict.” They are constantly over-extending, over-exerting, and putting themselves through deprivation, prolonged worry, tension and stress and strain. This pattern got its start in a similar household.”
Emotional Cause of Brain Fog
Messages from the Body – Brain Fog
BRAIN FOG (Clouded thinking, memory problems, confusion, disorientation, fatigue, etc.) “Self-worth issues.” They are experiencing excessive guilt, self-doubt and self-image problems. They feel unappreciated, and they are also unsure of their capability and value. They need appreciation, love, and understanding of the kind they never got as a child in their accusatorially invalidating family.
“Assimilation problems.” They are having absorption difficulties and problems in separating the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. They are having problems with analysis and with processing things. They are being hampered by distorted discrimination and disturbing distrust generated by a dysfunctional family and being subjected to systematic invalidation then and ever since.
“What am I doing here!” They are manifesting a dismayed discombobulation about the world and the way their life is going. It is the result of growing up in a vaguely overwhelmed family, of being the product of a severely enmeshed and incompetencing family, or of being a “visitor” from another soul pool who came here to learn and/or teach.”
Emotional Cause of Itching
Messages from the Body – Itching
ITCHING “Scratch attacks.” They are having desires that “go against the grain,” in the form of guilt and shame over their wants, needs and desires. There is something “getting under their skin,” and they are greatly irritated by it. They want to get away from it, to “scratch it out of their life,” and they are most unhappy with where they are in life. There is an intense dissatisfaction with their situation, along with numerous unfulfilled needs, wants and desires.
This is an old, familiar feeling for them, as they come from a severely dysfunctional family in which nothing ever really worked or worked out for them.
They are experiencing steadily mounting emotional problems in intimacy, or they are deeply troubled by their intimacy-inability. They are “itching” to get out or to get away. Yet they feel they don’t have the right to do so. They are resenting having the need for stroking and having to do it for themselves. They are the product of a withholding and untrustworthy family.
“Chronic remorse.” They have a lot of sorrow and regret over past intended interventions, actions and/or events. There is a torturing sense of “evilness” for having needs, wants and desires, and over their particular wishes and requirements. They are systematically joy- and positivity-avoidant, out of a deeply ingrained sense of somber morality towards themselves.
They have a pronounced feeling of non-deservingness of having their needs met, and an intense fear of and shame for their own desires. Their creative nature seems to be all dried up, because of sudden self-disgust and self-distrust and they are heavily into self-punishment and guilt. It is the result of severe wrong-making, accusation and rejection, starting in infancy.”
Emotional Cause of Auto-Immune Disorder
Messages from the Body – Auto-Immune Disorder
AUTO-IMMUNE DISORDER (Immune system attacks their own body in an over-reactive manner) “What am I doing here?” They are manifesting a dismayed discombobulation about the world and the way their life is going. It is the result of growing up in a vaguely overwhelmed and enmeshed family or out of being here as a “visitor” from another soul pool for soul experience and destiny-manifestation purposes.
“Hapless, helpless, hopeless.” They have a great deal of sorrow, deep-seated grief, and despair, and they are chronically crying on the inside. They feel overwhelmed and unable to handle the requirements of life. They have in effect “thrown in the towel” on even trying to make it in life. They come from a massively dysfunctional and demoralizing family.
“Allergic reaction to themselves.” They feel somehow responsible for all the ills of the world, which they are the cause, and they are having a “get rid of the problem” response. They have ended up with little or no ability to receive or to request or to require a return in kind.
“It is a result of having “carried the world on their shoulders” all their life, starting with their dysfunctional family. They were told in effect that they were the source of all the family’s problems, while they were actually the only one who was deflecting some of the disasters.”
Emotional Cause of Skin Issues
Learn about skin issues such as eczema, psoriasis, hives, and rashes.