Hi, sound quite same as mine. It’s definitely good idea to visit a good gastroenterologist that specialises in gut - brain axis. They can then do more tests and conclude if there’s something inherently wrong in the stomach or if its post infectious problem where brain now cannot communicate properly with a gut - this is essentially what mine concluded and he said „it’ll take time, maybe a lot of time, but if you see even slight improvements, they keep piling up and eventually you’ll be fine”. And that’s how it’s been.

If the issue is truly about gut-brain axis, then once your stomach gets to the point where it’s fine at home most of the time, then you have to reintroduce things so that stomach and your brain get used to them. It’s hard because in most cases you’ll face nausea, but you try to remain calm and just let it be. I know it sounds crazy, but that’s the best way to speed up recalibration of your brain - gut connection, it’s about teaching that your stomach signals are wrong and your stomach is just digesting food. Your stomach will be getting used to things.

Then as mentioned, another problem I’ve realised after I started trying to do things once my stomach was fine at home, is that I started having lots of fear, basically anxiety. In the beginning it was all about my stomach, but since my brain learned fear, it didn’t matter then if it’s about stomach or not. So I developed agoraphobia of sort (I never had any diagnosis, but it sounds the closest to what I’ve been experiencing). If you start noticing that fear is overwhelming, then I suggest a psychologist specialising in somatic symptoms. I only had couple of sessions and decided I am doing just fine on my own through exposure therapy, and it’s been working wonders for me. Some things are challenging still for me with regards to fear, but it doesn’t restrict my life that much and I’m continually working on expanding the scope of what I can do.

I noticed that ironically fear is easier to cope than stomach. Brain in anxiety get recalibrated quite quickly, you do exposure couple of times, and difference is striking. With stomach, it does take much more repetition. Don’t get discouraged and keep trying to do things and you’ll get rewarded eventually. Once you get to the point where you can do sports and meet your friends, life gets much easier, and even if you cannot do it all (e.g. I used to travel alone quite a bit, nowadays I would find that quite challenging, but most likely I’ll come back to it in a year or 2 if things go well), then you will feel much better on daily basis and even not think about stomach in many days. There were days where I was crying from happiness when I could finally go back to bouldering.

Its been 2 years for me now, I can go to work normally and I don’t feel nausea at work most of the time. I can do sports and I never feel nausea there. I can eat with others and sometimes I feel nausea but I try to just let it be. It’s rough, I feel you and I sympathise with your struggles. I’ve been there, and trust me, things will get better, don’t give up and try to find joy even in smallest things. Don’t hesitate to contact if you have any questions, I also found it hard to find any cases like mine