10 Things People Living with Ulcerative Colitis Want Others to Know
Sometimes, humor can help the pain
Some people suffering from inflammatory bowel use humor as a defense mechanism against the emotional pain that they endure. It's part of the normal five steps of grief when you suffer from a type of autoimmune disease. When you finally reach "acceptance", you're able to joke about your gastrointestinal symptoms that used to leave you paralyzed with humiliation just months before. Not everyone has reached this level of comfort yet, and that's important to understand too. Everyone's different, including their coping mechanisms, and we have to respect that.
