I think that we as humans have this intuition that we should be afraid, in order to protect us from things, or be afraid in order to prepare us against things. In most emotional situations you cannot prepare, so it is really just a waste of energy. I just realised all of this - that being scared and putting my body into a serious stress situation - was actually hurting me more and wasn't making me feel healthier and was actually making me sicker when I was dealing with my disease.

I have written quite a lot of songs about dealing with my feelings surrounding the disease. I have written songs about the fear and anxiety I have around my disease, and the fear of it coming back. Some of my songs might seem like relationship songs, but are more about my relationship with that struggle.

I think that we as humans have this intuition that we should be afraid, in order to protect us from things, or be afraid in order to prepare us against things. In most emotional situations you cannot prepare, so it is really just a waste of energy. I just realised all of this - that being scared and putting my body into a serious stress situation - was actually hurting me more and wasn't making me feel healthier and was actually making me sicker when I was dealing with my disease.

I know where my heart is and I know that I can make people feel something with my music. I'm quite confident in what I am doing, so if I can also make a song that people want to put in ten times during a party and makes them happy, then I think that is also good. I feel that playfulness is something that has entered my life a lot more in the last couple of years. I'm not taking everything too seriously. I think that is something that comes with age - I hope. I feel that music is much more fun for me than it has ever been.

There is a lot of new research about how stress hormones affect your body and how you can work on giving your body as much of the good hormones as possible, because that heals your body. I am quite a rational person - so when someone could show me that there was a rational way of seeing fear in terms of stress hormones, it was easier for me to understand. I think all autoimmune diseases are very sensitive to stress. It is typical that the flares come after a period of emotional stress. The connection is quite clear.