IBD and other chronic illnesses come with many physical challenges and pain. But, the mental and emotional battle can be one of the most challenging aspects of this disease by far because it feels like there is never a reprieve. I had reprieves from the physical symptoms in between the bloody bowel movements, but I could never escape my own mind. I felt like a broken vessel when I was sick, especially during flares, and that feeling permeated throughout my entire being. I watched enviously as my friends ate whatever they wanted with impunity knowing that if I so much as touched a pizza I would pay dearly for it the next day. Wallowing in self pity is never a good thing, but I did it often while I was sick. All I could think about was how I used to be healthy and how much I wanted to be healthy again. I wanted to be able to go out in public without having to immediately know where the nearest toilet was. Without fear of soiling myself. I truly felt at times that I was just living bowel movement to bowel movement. It was a miserable experience. And then when I finally began trying to improve my health with nutrition, I was met with failure after failure. I would read articles and watch videos about someone having success with this herb or this supplement, or this diet. I was desperate, so I decided to try anything that I saw someone else having success with, hoping that this would finally be what brought me relief from the physical and mental pain. Nothing seemed to work. It was exhausting and depressing. So, I understand the mental and physical fatigue that sets in after months or years of trying everything under the sun without success. I remember all too well, what it’s like to be sick, depressed, and desperate for anything that will help. I get it. I know, or can at the very least, imagine what many of you have gone through or are going through.
Battling a health issue like this is mentally and emotionally overwhelming. And so, I want to emphasize the importance of having the proper mentality in this battle. The idea of being mentally tough can be perfectly summarized by this quote from Rocky VI where Rocky says to his son, “Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done!”
This is extremely applicable in regards to battling IBD. You’re gonna take hits from IBD, big ones. But, winning this fight is all about moving forward. It’s not about having the perfect plan, or figuratively hitting back at IBD necessarily. It’s about resilience, it’s about weathering the storm. Winning looks different for each individual person. For some of us, winning might be decreasing the number of daily BMs from 20 to 10. It might be undergoing surgery, having the entire colon removed, and learning to live the healthiest life you can with a J-pouch. For some, winning might be complete and long term remission. The point is, winning is improvement. Everyone is dealt a different set of cards due to their individual circumstances. Not everyone is going to be able to achieve complete remission, but everyone can always find a way to take steps to improve their health. Whatever your situation is, keep moving forward.
Resilience and positive thinking can take you a long way, while self pity and a defeatist attitude pretty much guarantees that you will be defeated. When I was sick, I would often envision my future healthy self enjoying my favorite foods. I told myself that the future healthy version of me was out there, I just had to find a way to get to him. I think a common pitfall for many of us who experience a health crisis is that we don’t believe a healthy version of ourselves exists in the future, and thus our journey to that version of ourselves is doomed to fail because it's difficult to arrive at a place we don’t believe exists. This may be a little too conceptual, but it’s a tactic I used with great success to bolster my mental toughness and resilience. I encourage you to set health goals for yourself, envision yourself achieving them, and then chase hard after them. Will you succeed? I don’t know. But, I personally think that it’s better to continuously try and fail to improve one’s health than to surrender. If you continuously try to improve your health, at least you always have a chance of succeeding. If you surrender, your state of health will likely stay where it is, or perhaps even regress further.
I encourage you to be mentally tough, to be resilient, to envision a healthier version of yourself, and to chase after that person.
© Copyright Good Health Hunting 2026 - All Rights Reserved