Chronic Illness Talk is Boring!

Do you ever feel like when you are at the worst of things with your inflammatory bowel disease, all you have to talk about is what is happening to your body?

I do and it sucks!

When I'm are dealing with flare ups, hospitalizations, fistulas, abscesses, constant pain, blockages/obstructions, surgery, recovery from procedures, I could go on and on… there is not much else to talk about. Realistically, what else could be going on that is exciting when someone is going through some of the above things I just mentioned?!

It makes it hard to have a real conversation with someone because most people don’t want to hear about all the difficult things a person is going through with their body. And most chronic illness patients don’t want to complain, or come off like a complainer to others.

So many of us isolate…

Hopefully we are able to connect with others in the IBD or chronic illness world via social media in some way, but for a lot of us, because we don’t want to come off like all we are doing is complaining about our aches and pains, we retreat into our own worlds. Our own world usually only allows very few people, if any, to join. It is really difficult to balance not wanting to lose friendships with also not wanting to bore your friends and family members to death or saddle them with negative emotions and other issues.

I wanted to quickly bring this up because if you are someone who feels this way a lot, I hope you know you are not alone. It is really hard to live with a chronic illness like inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) for so many reasons, but this is definitely a terrible part of this disease. The impact on many patients social lives, not to mention relationship and familial, doesn’t get talked about enough. That often leads to people feeling like they are the only ones who go through this.

If you are someone who can relate to this article, please know that you are NOT the only one who goes through this.

It is a vicious cycle that so many of us are all too familiar with. We are here and hope you will join our community so we can talk about these very important issues that impact the Crohn’s Disease and ulcerative colitis (IBD) community enormously.

Do you have any additional thoughts? Do you find it hard to continue friendships and/or other relationships when things are difficult? Do you tend to isolate or have you managed to balance it in order to maintain your friendships/relationships? Have any tips for other chronic illness warriors who may be going through this?

We always welcome your thoughts and suggestions in the comment section below!