Therapy Helped Free Me from the Mental Toll of IBD

The shame and depression I felt was sometimes overwhelming. Therapy helped me embrace my diagnosis.

When we’re in the throes of a flare of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), it’s easy to get lost in the haze and neglect our mental well-being until we get a handle on our symptoms.

Sometimes, we feel so ashamed that we hide our symptoms and mumble our diagnoses so people don’t know the dreaded, poopy truth.

But prioritizing our mental health can make managing IBD so much easier. Going to therapy has helped me come to terms with my IBD diagnosis and all the roller coaster rides that accompany it.

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My private shame

When my symptoms reared their head in my mid-teens, I kept my mouth shut. Between the pain and the need to escape to the toilet five times a day, I felt overwhelmed.

The idea of sharing these embarrassing symptoms with anyone, let alone my peers, terrified me. I dealt with my health issues in private, balancing countless rounds of hospital appointments and medication trials with school exams and socializing.

I even struggled to open up about my symptoms to my doctors. The shame of my “toilet-related” illness felt suffocating. It felt undignified to speak openly about how my body was betraying me, but I needed to. Eventually, I divulged the details to a doctor and, a few years later, received a diagnosis of IBD.

However, outside the doctor’s office, I kept hiding my pain. I mastered the art of masking, constantly hiding behind an easy smile, even during the most horrendous flare-ups.

The energy it took to maintain a relaxed demeanor was monumental. It felt like balancing a 10-ton brick on my head while my intestines danced a vigorous tango.

As I withdrew further and further inside my head, depression started invading my psyche. Self-isolation felt like the answer to my situation, and depression came running in to bolt the door behind me.

Thinking about therapy

I’ve had previous therapy to manage complex PTSD and to unravel childhood traumas I didn’t want looming over the rest of my life, but when it came to taking up therapy to manage my IBD, I balked.

A family member suggested I use my sessions to explore the stress and trauma associated with being chronically ill. Despite being a strong advocate for therapy for everyone, I laughed off the idea that a therapist could help me get over my stomach-related depression.

But therapy absolutely can play a significant role in managing our well-being when chronically ill.

Sure, we want to focus on our physical well-being, but I’ve learned that we can only do that by also looking after our brains. The rest of the body can’t function if the mind is drowning in darkness.

So, I threw away my doubts and began to use my therapy sessions to confront the shame and depression associated with my IBD and my other chronic illnesses, like endometriosis and fibromyalgia.

Overcoming the shame

I felt so “othered” from my healthy and nondisabled peers that I would hide my symptoms, force myself to be social even when my body cried out for rest, and constantly underplay the severity of the condition.

My therapist began by encouraging me to tell just one person outside of my family the whole truth about my health. I initially laughed at the idea. It felt too vulnerable to consider.

However, I faced my fears and opened up to one of my closest friends, telling her all the ups and downs of treatments and symptoms. Eventually, our talk devolved into giggles as I told her about the sudden toilet urgency and my regular fear of having an accident. Somehow, telling someone else made it all feel less scary and much sillier.

Letting the “secret” out helped me see the humor in the situation. Yes, IBD sucks, but toilet humor is always funny. So, now I use jokes to shatter the stigma around IBD because comedy is one of our greatest methods of communication.

Uncovering depression

Next, I identified the link between my chronic health issues and depression. I’d long thought it was just an accident of brain chemistry. Still, through talking to my therapist, I realized that my depression started after my first diagnosis of localized scleroderma at age 14.

My depression multiplied with each new diagnosis. At the heart of it was an overwhelming sense of grief for the life I would’ve lived without illness. I yearned for the life of a healthy person and resisted accepting my reality, stoking my depression with embers of hope for an impossible future.

With the help of my therapist, we linked my mental health and disabilities. Embracing this mini (albeit obvious) epiphany allowed me to see the wide-ranging impact my illnesses have on my mental well-being. It’s a lot easier to acknowledge the link than to heal it, though.

Moving toward acceptance

I’m still learning to fully accept that I have multiple disabling and incurable chronic illnesses. Most days, I embrace my body and the strength it uses to cope with the hardships ill health has inflicted. And then, on other days, I want to exchange my body for a brand-new one with a lifetime warranty.

My therapist taught me that it’s OK to yearn for a different future as long as we don’t allow the yearning to consume us. So, if I feel the urge to imagine a different life for myself, I literally set a time on my phone for 5 to 10 minutes.

I allow the daydream to run its course, and then I remind myself of the truth: I am chronically ill, but I’m capable of thriving alongside my conditions.

Acceptance isn’t a linear path, but I work really hard to at least stay within sight of it. The idea of happily accepting our ill-health can feel counterintuitive, but there is no point in investing energy in wishing for an alternative. My body is sick, and it’s a beautiful, complicated thing.

The bottom line

Like all the treatments we’ve tried for our different conditions, therapy isn’t an instant cure for IBD. It doesn’t make the symptoms disappear or the societal stigma dissipate, but it does equip us with a toolbox to tackle the impact of chronic illness.

Therapy enhances my life in so many ways, and I’m grateful I found a therapist who responds well to my specific needs. Above all, though, I’m relieved that therapy gave me an outlet to deal with the mental impact of chronic illnesses.

Understandably, our doctors focus on medicine, but it’s our job to look after our minds so that we can thrive.