Crohn’s Disease Helped Me Become the Healthiest I’ve Ever Been
Listen here: https://anchor.fm/emily-beck1
Crohn’s Disease Helped Me Become the Healthiest I’ve Ever Been Podcast Show Notes
Hello lovelies and welcome back to the podcast. March is a heavy month for me and is the month I was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease now three years ago. This month I want to focus on chronic illness and healing to celebrate this usually sad month. In 2017, someone near and dear to me passed away suddenly soon after his birthday, which is tomorrow when this episode airs. Three years later I was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease. I struggled with heavy grief and depression and anxiety following his passing, and still occasionally do. This puts a lot of stress on my system and contributed to the severity of my flares when I was first diagnosed. This is the first year I feel truly prepared as we head into March, and I’ve consciously made time to grieve and hold space for sad feelings and emotions that might come up. Preparing these episodes for you has been a joy and knowing they’re going out is helping me immensely. So, without further ado, let’s dive into the episode.
Part One
I used to think I was a healthy person, but when I got sick with Crohn’s Disease I realized I was treating my body like a machine. I signed up for a Health Coaching program to reinvent my diet and lifestyle and help others learn from my mistakes. Most importantly, I graduated with a newfound zest for life and an immense gratitude for my home here on earth: my body.
If you don’t know what Crohn’s Disease is, the Mayo Clinic explains it as: Crohn’s disease is a type of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). It causes swelling of the tissues (inflammation) in your digestive tract, which can lead to abdominal pain, severe diarrhea, fatigue, weight loss and malnutrition.
Inflammation caused by Crohn’s disease can involve different areas of the digestive tract in different people, most commonly the small intestine. This inflammation often spreads into the deeper layers of the bowel.
Crohn’s disease can be both painful and debilitating, and sometimes may lead to life-threatening complications.
There’s no known cure for Crohn’s disease, but therapies can greatly reduce its signs and symptoms and even bring about long-term remission and healing of inflammation. With treatment, many people with Crohn’s disease are able to function well.
When I first read this description three years ago, I panicked. I remember looking at my mom and saying, “I don’t have that, how do I have that?? What is it??”
Getting Crohn’s Disease didn’t instantaneously turn my life into a better one, but it did upend my life. I couldn’t work for almost a year, I hit rock bottom physically, emotionally, and mentally. I relied on my parents again completely. That Emily wouldn’t tell you Crohn’s made her life better.
Today, however, I can say that while Crohn’s ruined my life in the short term, in the long term, it changed my life for the better. The disease might be forever, but the pain isn’t. It turned me into the most resilient version of myself. I found the courage to start my own business, take a health coaching course to support myself in my life change, move out, commit fully to my relationship, reconnect with God, and face my fears. Things I had stagnated in or just let fall away pre-Crohn’s.
Part Two
In March 2015 a study was done on the relationship between Crohn’s Disease patients’ happiness and gratitude. The abstract of the study explains: Happiness is one of the most desired of all human emotional states (Lyubomirsky, Sheldon and Schkade, 2005) which research suggests is attained by experiencing greater pleasure than pain and living a purposeful and meaningful life (Keyes and Annas, 2009). Historically the focus for psychological research has been on correcting negative behaviours, rather than emulating positive behaviours which lead to increased happiness, such as the experience of gratitude and frequent positive affect (Fredrickson, 2001). However, since the relatively recent development of Positive Psychology, studies increasingly support an acceptance of the benefits of positive behavioural interventions, particularly when applied to Health Psychology (Seligman, 2000). Utilising a self-selecting sample of 160 participants over the age of 18, with a confirmed diagnosis of Crohn’s Disease, a remitting and relapsing chronic illness categorised under the heading of Inflammatory Bowel Disease, this study controlled for multiple factors previously considered influential to happiness, proposing that despite living with chronic illness, gratitude and positive affect would be the strongest predictors of happiness in Crohn’s patients.
When I was first diagnosed, and for much of the first year of navigating Crohn’s, I was wrapped up in learning about the disease, wondering, and trying to calculate exactly how I got it and how I could stop it. When I came to terms with the fact that I couldn’t get rid of it, I began the process of acceptance. I initially felt like it was my fault for getting Crohn’s and beat on myself for all the things I could have done to change the outcome. I eventually learned that taking responsibility for my actions and shaming myself were not mutually exclusive. It’s important to acknowledge past behavior, but it’s not important or beneficial to shame yourself. You didn’t know better, and/or didn’t have the strength to be different at that time. If I had known I was on the path to getting Crohn’s, which I didn’t considering no one in my family has it, I might have behaved differently, but I can’t change that now. What I can change is my relationship to the disease I have. My first steps to doing this was cultivating gratitude.
This didn’t start out immediately as me being thankful for getting Crohn’s. I don’t think anyone is grateful for being diagnosed with a lifelong chronic illness. I did practice gratitude for small things – being able to get out of bed, a sunny day, my family, the comfort of my pets. As I became familiar with my new practice, I started seeing more and more things to be grateful for. This helped to bring me out of despair and I started seeing good in the world again as I healed.
Even when I started the health coaching program I’ve since graduated from, I hadn’t been able to see the good Crohn’s did for me. But now, looking back almost three years after being diagnosed, I can see the path that it led me down. I changed my eating habits, I discovered meditation and mindfulness, I became a health coach, developed a passion for biohacking and kickstarted my spiritual practice up again. I became the healthiest version of myself.
Assignment
For today’s assignment, I want you to think of three little things you’re grateful for and write them on a post it note and put it on your fridge or computer so you see it every day. I hope it sparks your curiosity to start finding more good in the world and gets you thinking about how some of those bad things that happened to you created so much good in your life. Trust me, everything has a purpose and is a lesson. There is always good in the worst of experiences.
Links:
- Summary: I used to think I was a healthy person, but when I got sick with Crohn’s Disease I realized I was treating my body like a machine. I signed up for a Health Coaching program to reinvent my diet and lifestyle and help others learn from my mistakes. Most importantly, I graduated with a newfound zest for life and an immense gratitude for my home here on earth: my body.
- Source for giving information on what Crohn’s Disease is: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/crohns-disease/symptoms-causes/syc-20353304
- Sources for the connection between gratitude and healing Crohn’s Disease:
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