Stress and flare-ups: what actually helps me day to day
Anyone with ulcerative colitis or Crohn's will tell you: stress and the gut are wired together. A frustration, a deadline, an anxious evening, and the gut answers back. For a long time I just endured it, with no way to do anything about it.
What changed wasn't a miracle method. It was understanding two things.
1. The worst-case is almost always in my head
Catastrophic scenarios are far scarier in your skull than in reality. I've verified this in genuinely embarrassing situations — I tell one in detail in the book — where I was convinced everyone was staring, judging, smelling something. Nobody had noticed a thing.
Now, when the spiral starts, I ask myself a dumb question: "what's actually happening, right now?" The answer is almost always: nothing unmanageable. It doesn't erase the anxiety, but it brings it back down to its real size.
2. Breathing is the most underrated tool there is
For years I breathed without thinking about it, often through my mouth, never noticing what a slower breath could do to my state. We're told endlessly to eat well, move, sleep. Far less often that slowing your breath down can bring the pressure down too.
I tried a lot of approaches, some too ambitious. I kept two, because they're easy to sustain: breathing through my nose more during the day, and practicing, sitting or lying down, a few cycles of deep breathing when I need it. No stopwatch, no personal record — the day I tried to "optimize" it, everything got worse.
The point isn't to become unshakeable. It's to have an anchor: a slow inhale to hold onto while things are wobbling, instead of spiralling into panic.
Looking back…
You don't choose what stresses you, but you can work on how you react to it. A small shift in how you handle stress turns big ordeals into simple obstacles. And it starts with something free, always available: your breath.
Important: this is my personal experience, not medical advice. Deep-breathing exercises can cause dizziness or even fainting: practice sitting or lying down, in a safe place, never while driving or in water. If you have a health condition, ask a professional first.
How I found these tools, and the mistakes I made along the way, is on my journey page and in the book UC: Living Without Medication.