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Difficulty with car travel

Hi all,

I feel like I need to vent my heart for a moment.

I am a young man in my 20s.
About a year ago they diagnosed me with ulcerative colitis. When it started I was suffering a lot of bleeding and difficult bowel movements. After starting medication this lessened and eventually went away for some time. A while ago I had my first flare-up.

I do now know what the condition means and have already kind of made peace with it (I don't fret about it anymore). However, there is something that bothers me a lot.

During flare-ups, bowel movements are faster, this is of course normal given the effect the inflammation has on the bowel (I suppose). Because of this, I have already been in a very uncomfortable situation twice where I couldn't hold it up; once at work and once at a client's office. Hugely annoying in other words.
Since then I try to be at home as often as possible when I have a flare-up, to avoid such situations.

The problem I have now is that I have this even when I am off my flare-up.
I had no idea this would happen, in a normal situation I always had enough response time to make my way to a toilet. Recently I have found that even now I cannot control this. When I was on the road by car the other day I got such a distress and had to stop along the road. I was shaking.

Since then I often have the feeling when I am on the road with the car that I urgently need to go to the toilet. Always afraid of not being able to hold it up. Now that I have a job where I often have to go to customers this is really terrible.

This morning while driving to a client I could barely hold it in on the way.

Somehow I think I am causing this myself by thinking about this, thinking about the possibility that it would go wrong and that I am facing such an uncomfortable situation again.

My question is, have any of you also suffered from this and can anyone give me tips / advice? (if that is even possible)

Thanks for your response!

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