Rebuilding a life when you're told to stress less.

Lol. Is this even possible?

I’ve been told that I have an incredibly high tolerance for pain. Maybe it was all the cavities that I got filled as a child without novocaine, or the hard plastic brace I used to call my medieval torture corset that I wore for five years as a teen to fix my crooked spine.

During labor for the birth of my second child (no epidural for various reasons), I faked not having contractions, just so that I wouldn’t have to push every five minutes.

The nurse would look at the TOCO Monitor, give me side eye, and shake her head. “I know you’re having a contraction.”

“I’ve been pushing for two hours,” I pleaded with a wave of my hand. “Just let me sit this one out.”

I’ve spent the last week in a battle with my body. While it’s still premature to claim victory, I’m feeling downright triumphant like I ran a goddamn marathon because I’ve managed to stay one step ahead of the pain before it escalates to a nine. That’s not hyperbole either. Sometimes I want to die from the pain.

Sometimes I draw my feelings.

While I’ve only vaguely referenced my chronic illness in the past, I’ve decided to share some details in hopes that it might help someone out there. This will probably result in a bunch of unsubscribes because who wants to read about someone else’s health issues? But when your disease has no known cause or cure and traditional medical systems fail you, other people’s stories can be a lifeline. It has seriously saved me from despair. If it helps any reader who might be suffering from the same condition or is absolutely flummoxed by similar mysterious symptoms, then it’s worth the bit of personal exposure.

Besides, this post isn’t really about the illness. It’s about understanding how to manage stress, which is my biggest trigger. You don’t have to suffer from a chronic illness to understand how chronic stress can wreck our physical and mental health. From an overactive amygdala to hypertension, to increased cortisol levels, gut issues, and poor sleep, stress is the root cause of so much evil.

My angry bladder is out to get me

This is me in a meme. I suffer from interstitial cystitis (IC for short).

When I have a major flare, which I’m riding out now, it feels exactly like a raging urinary tract infection, except that it’s not a UTI. If you’ve ever had a UTI, you understand how debilitating the pain can be.

IC is a diagnosis of elimination. Most people with this disease will start suspecting that something is off when they get chronic UTIs but discover that their cultures come back clean and symptoms don’t completely resolve after taking a course of antibiotics. Since there’s no bacterial infection, antibiotics aren’t appropriate. Imagine a maddening circle of misdiagnosis that results in an endless cycle of running to urgent care and getting prescribed antibiotics because most general doctors don’t understand how to treat this disease.

This is why collective discourse is important. The internet can be a toxic cesspool of misinformation and contagious rage, but sharing life experiences to make others feel less alone is where social media shines. Think of all the perimenopause symptoms you’ve pieced together from conversations with your girlfriends or posts from strangers on the internet. It normalizes and validates our fears and concerns. Having a chronic illness can be lonely. Not even people in my life understand, but subreddits and forums have saved me from feeling like I’m going insane.

We don’t have to be islands suffering alone, and strangers on the internet can be the best sources of empathy. Your loved ones can sympathize and doctors can give you clinical explanations, but it’s only through the collective wisdom of others living through the same struggles that your feelings can feel validated. This is critical when you suffer from a condition so misunderstood, even by the medical community.

I’ve had to radically change my lifestyle through behavioral modifications, dietary elimination (I still miss you, coffee), and limiting physical activity (no running, dancing, or jumping. This disease is a jerk, truly.). Treatment is a matter of trial and error and largely involves avoiding triggers and learning how to cope with pain. Managing stress remains the most challenging puzzle to solve.

Shifting my relationship to stress

“Try to reduce your stress as much as possible,” doctors advise me.

I respond with a nervous laugh. “How??” Easier said than done.

How do you go from being an anxious worrier to someone who strives to live as stress-free as possible? Some of my lifestyle changes have been extreme, like accepting that I can no longer work full time. I acknowledge that this isn’t a financial option for many and it’s not ideal for our household either, but as a former workaholic, choosing my health over a paycheck has been a necessary, if slow-burn, process of acceptance.

The biggest behavioral change that I’ve made is learning to say no. To jobs, opportunities, social obligations, and people—even family and friends. Saying no is a stress-reducing skill. It’s hard if you’re the type of person who has never been able to say no, especially if you’re a people pleaser, but learning to set boundaries and protecting your space from energy vampires is critical.

We can’t eliminate all stress though, and some stress called “eustress” is actually “good” stress because it helps with focus and motivation. I’ve since learned that managing stress isn’t about eliminating it, but completing the cycle when stressors arise by regulating the nervous system. This shifts our relationship to stress. We have to signal to our bodies that it’s safe to step out of “fight-or-flight” mode and return to a calm baseline.

Things that help:

• Deep breathing and learning to breathe correctly. I practice diaphragmatic breathing several times a day. Inhale slowly through the nose from the abdomen, then exhale through the mouth and visualize the breath relaxing core and pelvic muscles. This helps to regulate the nervous system.

• Turning off the news and staying off social media. This absolutely pains me. I don’t want to be that ignorant person who is not up on current events, but I had to stop following the news back in December when my anxiety was through the roof. This includes participation in marches or any other political action. I’ll occasionally skim headlines just so that I’m not completely under a rock, but I can’t let myself get consumed by the idiocy of our administration anymore. It boils my blood. Same with staying off most social media or at least tweaking the algorithm to show me only kittens and rainbows.

• Heat, ice, and distraction. I’m practically attached to my heating pads and use ice packs for daily pain. I also use a TENS unit that sends electrical currents for pain relief a few times a week. Warm showers are also great for calming the nervous system.

• Regular exercise and going for a walk first thing in the morning. Getting daylight early resets our cortisol levels.

• Cognitive reframing. Understand what you can and cannot control and acknowledge your stress without being controlled by it. It takes its power away. Also, learning to replace cognitive distorted thoughts and catastrophizing with realistic, grounded thinking. This often involves rationally working through the worst case scenario and asking yourself the probability of it happening with factual evidence. Writing it down in a journal often helps.

• Quality sleep. I still suck at sleep.

• Nature and art. Both proven to lower cortisol levels, especially viewing original works of art.

• Engaging deeply in a hobby. This is where my drawing practice comes in and the reason why I’ve been able to sustain it so consistently this time around. I’m finally using art as a de-stressing activity. And I’ve given up on fighting precision for a looser, more expressive style. Getting lost in rendering details is great distraction.

• Laugh and cry. Life is hard and beautiful. Just feel your feelings and release them.

I can enter into a pretty dark and fatalistic place when I get major flares every 3-4 months, but I try and focus on the beauty in the world otherwise. I see life a little differently, not better or worse, but different. Acceptance is a source of peace. We live in a timeline full of hate, political and religious extremism, and unchecked power, but you can find individual acts of kindness. Kindness and beauty is contagious too. Look at how beautiful our world is the minute I step outside my door.

Lastly, thank you for reading if you made it to the end. Sometimes writing this newsletter every week can be stressful, but the community we’ve built here in the comments has been one of my absolute joys.

To that end, I’m taking a week or two off. May is always an emotionally strange and shifty month. The anniversary of my brother’s birthday and death (he would have turned 50 this year) and the kids coming home on summer break. This year, my oldest is graduating college and then we immediately leave for a trip. Cars, planes, and sitting for long periods of time are serious triggers for my illness (seriously, this disease is such a jerk) so I’m trying to calm my anxiety about travel.

See you in a two weeks! -JP

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Thank you for reading.
Everything is Liminal is reader-supported publication. Posts are free, but some are paywalled at a later date. If you enjoy this newsletter, I’d be grateful for your support with a paid subscription. It keeps me writing and helps to support my family.

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Related reading

Stress can kill you. All the ways our body sends signals.

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A roundup of links

To read:

• Fashion's 20 Most Memorable Art World References From the Last Century (W Magazine)
  A historical survey of art-inspired fashion by W Mag. The Met Gala was this past Monday and sponsored by Jeff Bezos, of all people, which made the entire event feel, I don’t know, more spectacle than fashion and full of gross irony given Amazon’s many grievances. I just peeked at a slideshow of the red carpet and the theme, “Fashion Is Art”, was loosely interpreted. This should have been way more fun and creative.

• The Death of the Art School (Hyperallergic)
  Is the corporatization of colleges turning students into “consumers?” Colleges are businesses, yes, but “when success is evaluated by market metrics, every relationship collapses into a transaction. Students become customers, knowledge becomes a product, and faculty become service providers.” An interesting debate, but I’m trying to avoid cynicism when it comes to a college education.

• What Do We Lose When ‘The Late Show’ Goes Away? (NY Times)
  The Late Show will air its last episode on May 21. I have to believe that this won’t be the last of Colbert. He’ll turn up somewhere, right?

• That’s somebody’s son. Three mothers, one struggle: saving their children with schizophrenia. (Atavist)
  An absolutely heart wrenching and riveting read. Our capacity to endure so much pain when caring for loved one suffering from illnesses is a testament to human strength and will. While it was under different circumstances, it gave me a flashback of our own family’s struggle with my father’s Alzheimer's and drug-induced psychosis.

• Is Yoko Ono Still Our Most Radical Artist? (NYT Style Magazine)
  A revisit of Ono’s “Cut Piece” performance and other works of feminist art. Yoko Ono may be one of the most misunderstood artists of our time.

• Why Lego is our most powerful art medium (Salon)
  Lego’s modular visual language allows creators to express complex ideas and cultural relevant works. Instantly recognizable and timelessly irresistible. You want to just build stuff the minute you see a bunch of legos.

  
  Till next time – JP
  If this post resonated, please share or restack so more readers can find it. Thanks! 🫶