Stress Measurement
Disclaimer: If you are reading this and dealing with ANY health related problems I am NOT recommending you take the same unconventional approach as I have in my battle with Crohn’s disease. Any changes you wish to make in your care plans should be done in partnership with the team of qualified healthcare providers who treat you.
What helps me deal with the stress of an incurable disease?
Having a chronic and incurable disease is not easy. In looking back over my journals from the second half of 2018 into the first part of 2019 it seemed as if I was always frustrated. It almost felt as if nothing could go my way… I was in the midst of a flare, I wasn’t having the success I wanted with my health changes, and people were against me in everything I did both in work and in life.
Thankfully God began to turn things around for me early 2019 - I started a new role at work getting out of the toxic environment I had been in, I revisited my priorities to focus on what was most important in life (such as family, friends, and fun), and I was finally beginning to see success with my elimination diet and food journaling.
In the first four months of 2019 I had 15 journal entries mentioning how frustrated I was with life but as circumstances began to change so did my outlook - from May onward I didn’t journal a single negative entry for the rest of 2019!
Now I would love to say that life has been perfect ever since but 2019 was an exception. I am blessed beyond belief but I will be the first to admit that life is hard. We all go through periods of grace and periods of trial - thankfully 2019 was largely a year of grace after a challenging 2018. Grateful that God gave me a period of rest and joy after my hospitalization and other trials of 2018.
But even with an improved outlook on life in 2019 I still lived with a persistent low level of anxiety.
So what do I do when I feel overwhelmed with stress?
First, I surround myself with people I care about and who care about me - I can’t tell you how much life it brings when you hear the simple words “It will be ok” from someone you know cares about you.
Quick story here: My parents have lived in Albuquerque for more than a decade but in January 2021 they moved back to Nashville. When it finally sunk in that they were moving back I got emotional but I wasn’t even sure why. I’m over 40 years old now and I’m super independent in life but in that moment I realized that years later there was a comfort in knowing that Mom and Dad were going to be near - as if everything in life was going to be “ok” again just as it had been when I was a kid.
Secondly, I pray about things that are stressing me out. Essentially what I’m saying here is that there are things outside of my control that I at times can’t do anything about. I choose to believe that things happen in life for a reason and all things work out as they should in the end. I choose to believe that God exists and He wants what is best for me - even if it doesn’t feel like it in the moment. Is it hard thinking that way? Absolutely!! But if I can’t control the outcome of a situation, even if I want to, then all I can do is hope/pray for the best.
The third thing that I’ve found incredibly helpful is measuring my emotions. I don’t do this often because it is time consuming but it is always an enlightening experience.
Here is how I do this:
For a full day I keep a record of every positive and negative emotion I feel. Every time I smile, laugh, or think happy thoughts I keep a tally of it. Every time I feel even the slightest bit anxiety in my chest or sadness about something in life I write it down. I tally the number of times I experience either the positive or negative emotion and I associate it to a category. These categories can be anything that you attribute to the emotion.
My positive emotions normally fall into one of these categories: my wife; my kids; my friends; telling silly dad jokes; working out; being nice to others; and thankfulness to God.
My negative emotions normally fall into one of these categories: broken relationships; health concerns; and work.
It should be noted that something that gives me a positive emotion also can give me a negative one too. This is common. It was also important for me to do this exercise more than once so I could watch for trends over time instead of focusing any insights gained just from one day of tracking my emotions.
Here is an example:
Wife - ||||| ||||| ||||
Kids - ||||| ||||| ||
Work - ||||| ||
Health - ||||| |||
Friends - ||||| ||||
Negative - 25
Wife - |||
Kids - ||||
Work - ||||| |||
Health - |||||
Friends - |||||
Things I learned from this exercise:
Even on days where I felt overcome with stress I somehow always ended up with more positive tallies than negative ones. The first time I did this thought I was having the “worst day” but I was surprised when I totaled up my tallies and 74% were positive! I always knew that I tend to dwell on negative emotions and ignore the positive ones but this exercise proved it to me! I found that I had much more to be happy about in life than to be worried about - even when life seemed hard.
The other important thing this did for me was it forced me to be real with myself and acknowledge why I truly felt the way I did. It was hard to admit that I needed a change at work when I thought I would let everyone else around me down by moving into a new role - but the truth was it was beneficial for everyone when I did.
Update: October 2023
I still deal with anxiety - in fact, anxiety is one of my biggest symptoms right now. My GI is great! My acne is gone! Even my hair loss might be improving... but.. anxiety is stronger than ever. The weird thing is that this anxiety I feel isn't always caused by an event - it is persistent. If something stressful happens at work then I'm anxious. But if I'm relaxing and happy at home then I'm still anxious. It's just there - always!
This fall as ragweed pollen peaked I had two panic attacks. Small and insignificant moments of conflict literally left me energy depleted - I was unable to function. As ragweed began to taper my anxiety levels improved but never went away fully. There could be other factors in addition to ragweed - something I will continue to test as time goes on.
Original note:
According to the ~4,000 Crohn's Disease contributors on the popular crowdsourcing platform www.stuffthatworks.health here are the top five comorbidities of Crohn's disease - some of which are directly impacted by stress:
- Clinical Depression
- Anxiety
- Asthma
- Fibromyalgia
- High Blood Pressure
In addition stress is the MOST reported trigger for a Crohn's disease flare.
