Chronic Illness & Identity: How Crohn’s Impacted My Relationship With Myself

As much as we know that physical health can impact mental health and vice versa – I don’t think I ever really believed it. Until, after coming out the other side of a particularly bad flare-up of my Crohn’s Disease, I realized I had completely changed my personality over the last six months.

Crohn’s Disease is an autoimmune condition whereby your immune system attacks healthy tissue in your digestive tract. This causes inflammation, which causes abdominal pain, diarrhea and constipation, blood in your stools, urgency, weight loss, and fatigue. There isn’t a cure, but you can achieve periods of health where the condition is in remission. When you’re not in remission this is often called a ‘flare up’. 

This particular flare-up had lasted over 6 months, and although I was acutely aware of the physical side effects my body was dealing with, I started to convince myself that my daily routine and social plans had changed, not because I wasn’t able to join in and attend things, but because I chose not to. 

It started gradually. I went on nights out with friends who knew about my Crohn’s and why I wasn’t having a glass of wine (or 4) and completely accepted me for it…but I found myself telling them “Actually, I don’t really want to go heavy anymore” or “I just can’t hack the pre-drinking anymore”. I stopped going for nights out and just went out for food, where I continued to say things like “I’m thinking of giving drinking up completely”. 

Then I stopped going out for food. I stopped making any weekend plans. All the time thinking that I was actually just an introvert and didn’t really enjoy socializing. I stopped going to my exercise classes saying that “I’m just not that into it – I think I’ll try a new hobby”. I fiercely took up knitting and launched into about six different series and movie boxsets so I had something different to watch every night. I was utterly convinced this was just me getting older (at 23!?) and realizing what I liked and didn’t like doing. I was living in a big city surrounded by people and invitations out but all I wanted was movie nights in – that’s what made me happy.

Looking back – I can tell you what was actually happening. 

I had just moved to a new city and was meeting new people. I desperately wanted to join in and have some drinks and go out dancing, but alcohol would make my abdominal pain worse and trigger my nausea. I had also started some medication that gave me insomnia and my fatigue meant I couldn’t stay up as long as everyone else. 

I wanted to go to the meals out to have a good catch up with friends, but my nausea was getting steadily worse and so after one very lovely evening, I had to get a taxi home in considerable amounts of pain and spent the next 4 hours curled up on the bathroom floor having wasted a very (very) nice pizza. Another time, I almost didn’t make it to a toilet on the way home and imagined how that scenario would have panned out if I was in a queue to get into a busy bar. 

I loved my yoga classes but I was so bloated and uncomfortable that I was too nervous to go, again wondering if I would have to run to a toilet. My appearance had also changed due to gaining weight from my medication so I felt more self-conscious in pretty much all social situations…but I wouldn’t accept that reality. 

It wasn’t my Crohn’s causing these changes to my daily life – it was me. If I made the decisions to avoid these things, I was in control. 

When I came out the other side of this flare up and began to feel better, I realized just how much chronic illness can affect your sense of identity. We often talk about how it can have a huge impact on your relationships with people but what about your relationship with yourself?

We often talk about how it can have a huge impact on your relationships with people but what about your relationship with yourself?

– Imogen Stonebanks

We define ourselves by our likes and dislikes, our hobbies, our appearance, who we spend time with. Irritable Bowel Disease is something that I now see can affect all of these things. For me, I’ve found that being honest with others around me is often the easy part – being honest about myself when I was struggling with my mental health as a result of my Crohn’s? That’s the hard part!