Wellbeing as a Person with IBD

• At one point or another, people with IBD felt the need to hide their disease in ‘fear of judgment’ or to protect the ones they loved from the painful realities of their experience.

​

• Whether diagnosed a decade ago or within the last year, people with IBD felt an immense amount of ‘uncertainty’, often in relationship with medical professionals before arriving at their diagnosis and during.

​

• From diagnosis onwards, in one form or another, people with IBD chose to engage in ‘self-inquiry’ and consequently developed closer and more compassionate relationships with themselves. Through this inward reflection, they were able to make meaning of their IBD experience as part of their greater life experience.

​

• What seemed to also manifest for people with IBD was a journey of ‘growth and development’. Visible in setting boundaries that they believed conducive to keeping them well or through learning to self-advocate in all areas of their lives.

​

• As part of their journey with IBD, well-being became a conscious consideration and part of that manifested as what I have titled the IBD tool kit. People with IBD pursued ‘treatments’ and took ‘actions’ uniquely effective for them. Whether it was salt baths, dietary changes, nature walks, meditation, therapy or clinical treatments, they effectively sought resources in consideration of their whole-self.

​

• When ‘limited or challenged’ by acute flare, well-being meant acceptance, rest and doing less. For example, when trialling restricted diets, people with IBD spoke of sitting in salt baths for hours a day and eliminating all senses, especially the sight, taste and smell of food. They found that it was during these times of limitation that self-inquiry, personal development and resourcing were born.

​

• ‘Social connection’ was present both as a resource to the well-being of people with IBD, for example through the intentional investment of energy and selective sharing of disease experience with friends, and as a hindrance, for example in a felt lack of support, empathy or responsiveness from their treating physicians and healers.

​

How can I help you as a person with IBD?

From speaking to people with IBD and as a person who has also experienced it, I understand that balanced well-being is a journey rather than a destination. One that involves a person's physical body as well as their mental, emotional, spiritual and social experience. It is a journey of which IBD is a part, not the whole and one with unique challenges requiring unique resources.

​

So, I am here to be part of your resource toolkit. I am here to listen, to hold space and to curiously and courageously explore together how, as a person with IBD, you can live in balanced well-being!

​