Greetings Readers,

This morning I find myself living the age-old adage that there is nothing more stressful in life than having nothing to be stressed about. I know it sounds oxymoronic, but the unexpected thing about living with stress as an accepted factor of your daily existence is the curious absence it leaves in your life when you begin to move beyond it. To explain further, I need to lead you through a potted history of my relationship with stress, and life as an IBS sufferer.

So, let’s take a trip down a historical rabbit hole…

It’s the late 1980’s, early 1990’s, and the Middle School system is nearing the end of its life in the UK, with only a few counties in England still offering a three-tier system. For those who aren’t familiar with the English setup, Middle School typically covered Years 5 to 8 (ages 9 to 13) and was a transitional link between Primary Schools (ages 5 to 9) and High Schools (ages 13 to 16). With the benefit of hindsight, this is the period of time in which the precursor symptoms to my IBS started to manifest and my first issues with stress start to arise.

Whilst I enjoyed my schooling and loved learning with a passion, my school years were a fraught time. I lived in a rural county where almost everyone was interrelated in some way, with lots of large, well-established families who knew one another. Unfortunately, my parents came from outside the county, which put us at an immediate social disadvantage. Throw in the fact that I was an awkward, gangly and bookish youth who hated sports and enjoyed learning, and my experience of school was, at best, that of a fringe outsider and, at worst, one of regular bullying and ostracising.

The precursor symptoms of my IBS manifested, at the time, by what was diagnosed as ‘Stomach Migraines’ (still referred to as ‘Abdominal Migraines’ in American medical circles). They were a nebulous feature of my adolescence and I have vivid memories of time spent in the school medical room being looked after by our headteacher. Support from our GP at the time mainly consisted of the reassurance that it was fairly common in children and that it would ease with time.

When I transitioned to High School at age 13, I was still suffering from these intermittent ‘Stomach Migraines’, but as puberty kicked off in earnest I also began to suffer true migraines, complete with crippling headache, visual aurora and blindness – In the years prior to my GCSE’s (taken at age 16) I was regularly missing 3-4 days of school a week due to their debilitating effects. Whilst stress was certainly a factor, given the social and academic pressures of High School, it’s also worth pointing out that ageing fluorescent lighting was another a big contributing factor.

My Migraines were treated with the liberal application of Migraleve which, those familiar with it will know, contains Codeine and in retrospect, it is clear that by the time of my A-Levels (ages 17-18) I was addicted to my little pink and yellow pills. Fortunately, this dependence was broken as my Migraines became more infrequent, doubtless due in part to leaving school…

When I left school at 18, the age for compulsory education was still only 16 so most of my peers had already been out at work for two years or, if they stayed on for A-Levels like me, went directly on to university – An option unavailable to me, as our family’s financial situation would not support the costs.

Thus the next few years were a strange time for me, people drifted away to pursue studies or burgeoning careers, some were even getting married and starting families, whereas I seemed directionless. Stress at this point consisted of an ever-present, background hum of restlessness and a rudderless sense of futility. The Internet was still in its infancy at this point, and for the most part, I turned to IRC (Internet Relayed Chat) to fill a social (and sometimes romantic) void, falling in with the roleplaying crowd and joining a community centred around White Wolf’s Vampire: the Masquerade. Normal, social interaction became challenging and I saw a resurgence of my issues with ‘stomach migraines’, which with hindsight we can see as the true beginnings of my problems with IBS and the fact that I am a classic, introverted personality.

In terms of career, I had become locked into a dead-end job in a small computer shop, which, whilst I formed strong bonds with the few colleagues I had, featured a sociopathic boss who was horrendously abusive towards her staff (and almost anyone else who crossed the threshold), all of which piled on the stress, anxiety and existential dread.

My escape came from an unexpected corner – The shop made use of a freelance accountant, who was a gentle and supportive soul. He recommended exploring the option of returning to university now that I was a little bit older. Fortunately, his advice proved exceedingly well-timed: Although I was still living at home, by this point I had been out at work for more than three years, so counted as an ‘independent’ for financial assessment. I knew I would be studying almost full-time and my income would be good as nil, so I was able to get my tuition fees (at that point only £1500pa – they’re now £9000pa) paid for by the government, and access to the full student loan amount of £4000pa.

With the generous support of my father, now ostensibly a single parent after a traumatic divorce, I was able to live at home rent- and food cost-free, and with the liberal use of personal loans and a credit card, I was able to put myself through University, and earn a degree in Primary Education.

Unfortunately, I have to offset this tale of positivity, by pointing out that this is the point in time at which my IBS really began to come to the fore. Despite the fact that I was in my first, real, long-term relationship, back into learning (which I loved) and well on the way to establishing the foundations of my career, I was being wracked by IBS.

I had always struggled with my weight, barely able to maintain a constant of 9st/51kg (I’m just over 6’2″ or 188cm tall). I spent most of my time at University as a social recluse, living off Imodium, and trying to overcome my introverted tendencies to present some kind of acceptable facade of (albeit, eccentric) normality, in-between bouts of chronic IBS-D.

By the time I completed my degree and took up my first teaching post, I was not a well man.

Within three weeks of starting my new career I was in hospital, my weight dropping perilously close to 8st (about 50kg). There I finally received a diagnosis of IBS (later refined to IBS-D). Despite having an amazing headteacher and supportive colleagues, I was terrified of losing my job, so returned to work the following week, spending the next 6 months on antibiotics and adrenaline foam (administered in the most unpleasant manner imaginable), liaising with my GP to seek long-term management of my symptoms, but relieved to finally have a tacit diagnosis to pin my troubles on.

The next ten years or so, could fill another blog post (or ten), but suffice it to say, the first few years of my career were a golden age, but one always overshadowed by my IBS: Due to lack of oversight from my GP(s) I got locked into taking Mebeverine Hydrochloride (which did nothing to alleviate the symptoms of my IBS) and Amitryptaline (at too-low-a-dose to be effective).

The skies over the education sector began to darken as, first the coalition government then the Conservative government, tore down 20+ years of national curriculum development, obliterated the national pay scale, forced academisation with heavy-handed tactics, pursued a program to actively undermine the unions and generally ran education into the ground: Alarm bells being rung by the profession went ignored, fierce rebellion transmuted into a desperate game of survival. The year-in, year-out pressures increased as league tables, performance management and OFSTED became the watchwords of an increasingly frightened and cowed profession. My first long-term relationship ended badly, I incurred a significant spinal injury, and I also suffered at the hands of a vicious clearing house campaign towards the end of my tenure at my first school, leaving my career in tatters, and my confidence severely mauled.

By the time we get to the recent past, palpable, debilitating, dread-waking-up-in-the-morning stress was a near-constant.

Just before moving to Germany, both my future wife and I were, like most British households, deep in credit card debt just to stay afloat, shifting it around between various 0% balance transfer deals, dreading unexpected expenditures, locked into a cycle of renting that would never allow us to save enough to put down a deposit on a house, our plans to just get out of debt forecast to span the best part of the next decade. I was in counselling to help with the emotional fallout of my professional ousting, to manage my anxiety, and to try and reduce the ravages of stress. In terms of career I was also faced with either remaining in a lower-paid, less-respected support role with notionally lower stress quotient or jumping back into full-time teaching at an ostensibly better pay grade, in a career that had become a ravening leviathan, chewing up teachers quicker than the government could recruit them in a nationally recognised crisis of retention.

IBS was an over-riding feature of my life by this point; I never travelled anywhere without Imodium (and still don’t), I’d applied for, and received, a ‘Radar Key’ so I could always guarantee access to a toilet, and any journeys were planned in meticulous detail to minimise potential stress and guarantee access to facilities. I tried to keep my social functions to an absolute minimum, always gave myself a guaranteed out, and generally only really socialised with people I absolutely trusted.

And then we moved.

Escaping England changed almost everything: Within just over two years I had cleared my debts (with my wife set to do so a few months after me). I’d also had a comprehensive review of my medical situation including batteries of tests covering almost every imaginable facet of my health. My medication was adjusted, stripping out the Mebeverine and upping my Amitryptiline to a dose that actually makes a difference: My German doctors also identified underlying issues with my spine that my English doctors had either missed or willfully ignored giving me access to orthopaedic treatment and allowing a proper dialogue with specialists at my gym. I’ve become a well-respected freelance trainer and lecturer, giving me a renewed sense of professional pride and a degree of control over my working life that I’ve never had before. I was able to build a dedicated hobby studio, retreating to which, has helped support my mental health and to manage the worst excesses of my introverted nature.

That being said by far and away the best indicator of my improved quality of life, for me at least, is that I am no longer governed by my IBS: Don’t get me wrong, I still carry Imodium with me and I still like to know where the toilets are, but I haven’t had a proper IBS attack in many, many months, and my weight is now a healthy 12½ st (79kg) and has been for quite a while – I’ve even had to buy new clothes to cope with the added girth…

…but stress leaves its mark.

Financially, although I earn well and have an account always comfortably in the black for the first time in almost my entire adult life, I still find it difficult to spend money, agonise over doing so, and get a near hysterical sense of doing wrong, when I do so.

And it’s the same story mentally.

Although there are obviously day-to-day concerns to worry about, I lack the big or ongoing stresses that have previously characterised my entire adult life, all of which gives way to a curious sense of apprehension; constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, something to go wrong, or life to find some way to screw you over. It’s a horrible sensation, and it’s the legacy of that stress, which really underscores to me the severity of it: You don’t realise just how all-consuming it is until it’s gone.

So what’s the take away from all this?

That stress is real. It has tangible, long-lasting effects be they mental or physical, and it is important to be aware of that, to recognise it, to appreciate that it is not just something that switches on or off, and that you can still feel the aftermath of it, even when you’re sat in your pyjamas on a Monday morning, drinking tea, with nothing to worry about…