 Thank you so much to Discord for sponsoring today's video. Hello there, my beautiful, lovely internet friends. Welcome back to my channel. Leo is also very glad to see you here. We're gonna comfy and sip some coffee for confidence as I talk about this subject because it's one that matters a whole awful lot to me. My job is putting things into words for other people. It is professional speaking. It is YouTube videos and short videos, taking a concept or an experience or an emotion and trying to convey that in a way that makes sense to other people. And to some extent, I have skill in that area. I don't struggle to do that. But with this topic in particular, my mind just goes blank because I am so overwhelmed with the emotion behind it that it becomes difficult to speak about. So back in September, the Daily Mail released this lovely article. You can see the link down below and the full title, but it's called Addicted to Being Sad and talks about teenage girls with invisible or undiagnosed illnesses, making videos on TikTok about their experiences with doctors, experiences with life, you know, the sadness and the pain and the difficulty of surviving in a body. The freaking sucks to exist in and that maybe you don't know what's going on or maybe there isn't a cure even if you do know what's going on. But the entire tone of the article is incredibly dismissive, makes the accusation that this is for clout, that they're doing this to garner thousands of likes and also insinuates that it's probably just anxiety in many of the cases. And that is a cultural societal mindset that I have seen since the day I started having medical issues. But what I wanna talk about is the long-term effects of growing up as a teenage girl with an invisible illness that was often accused of doing it for attention, of it just being anxiety, of nothing really being wrong, it's all in my head, I should just see a therapist, not by random people, but by people who mattered, like a lot of medical professionals. For the record, they were incorrect, there were things that were actually wrong. But when you spend years realizing that socially and also, you know, working with medical professionals, there is a baseline level of suspicion and the thought that you are lying and hysterical if someone can't see that something is wrong with you. It leads to some pretty unfortunate behaviors in life. And I wanna talk about a few of those to kind of shed some light on the damage that this causes. It's extensive. But first, a quick word from our delightful sponsor Discord. I'm thrilled to be working with Discord today on today's video because this is a company that I love working with and I love being able to connect with you guys through. You know them, you love them. If you don't, check them out, the link down below and join our server. Discord is a place to connect, be it through text chat, voice channels, even video chat. For a long time, I was looking for a better way to kind of connect all of us, this little community here and Discord was the perfect answer for that. I've had my server up and running for about a couple of weeks now, first open to patrons and then to all of you and it's been absolutely lovely to have conversations. I've been in the channels chatting with you guys from everything, from just general topics, to life advice, to sharing adorable pictures of puppies because who doesn't love that? Now I am on there pretty much every day replying and kind of engaging the chats, but additionally, I also have one more scheduled time where I will be on chatting with you guys live, check out the date and time in the description down below and while you're there, click that link in the description to download Discord and join my server today. I think the first thing that I learned was not to trust my own experience or advocate for myself because even though things were wrong in my body, doctors were telling me I was just fine and anxious or maybe just a teenage girl, girls just have issues. And when you hear that enough from doctors and when you also get that reaction from friends, thankfully not family members in my case, it is really hard to continue trusting your own experience when you are developing as a person. When everyone tells you that what you are experiencing, the pain you are feeling is not real or it's not as severe as what you're saying, nothing's actually wrong with you, you're fine. You're just being dramatic. You learn to ignore what is going on in your body or question it or just assume that it's all in your head. That is one of the biggest things I have fought against my entire life, not only with my body, but in every aspect of life, I question myself and question myself because there's no way my experience could be valid. And when people minimize and ignore your symptoms or if you talk about them, you're just looking for attention, you stop talking about them, you stop paying attention to them. One example of this is last year, last summer, I got a bad kidney infection. By the time I went into the doctor, it should have turned septic, they told me. I was chastised by two nurses and a doctor for not coming in sooner because obviously something was wrong, why did I wait this long? And I wanted to scream and lose my mind because I was like, being in pain is my daily experience. This is barely outside the norm. I almost didn't come in because I am so used to being in pain and also because I am so used to the fact when I am seeking help for being in pain that it is minimized and I am told it is not real or not severe. So why would I want to come in to an emergency room, spend an obscene amount of money just to have people tell me everything's fine? And it's my fault. And that actually almost killed me. The other thing that happens pretty much immediately is you start developing really good skills at masking and hiding how you actually feel, what is actually going on because you think people don't wanna hear it and you don't want them to think poorly of you, think that you're a burden, think you're exaggerating things. So you learn to shut up, you learn to stuff things deep, deep down and that is probably the single most destructive tendency I have acquired in my life. It's one of these catch 22 things because the better you get at pretending like you're fine, everything's great, you know? You're smiling, your hair's done, your makeup's done, you're talking to your friends, everything's fine. The better you get at that, the more people and doctors do not believe you when you tell them the amount of pain or suffering that you are in because you look fine. But if you don't look fine, you lose people. You deal with that suspicion and that doubt and that fear of being labeled as attention seeking or dramatic, so you just hide it and as you hide it better and better, people believe you less and less. Another skill that I kind of mastered in that arena was learning how to not react to pain or not show pain in as many situations as possible so that when I really was in pain, people would believe me. I noticed this even recently. I went and got a piercing with a friend not that long ago and it was through like a couple layers of cartilage. It's not a super comfy piercing, like it hurts, right? It would be totally normal and understandable to like flinch and be like, oh, okay, all right, I'm good, ouch, you know? And I sat there without reacting at all because I have learned how to do that and I did not show a single bit of pain subconsciously so that I could gain credibility with the people around me that if I ever really am in pain, they can think back to that experience and be like, well, you know, she got that piercing. Well, we saw her in what should have been pain but she didn't react then, but she is reacting now. This was recently brought to my attention by a friend of mine who was genuinely concerned by the lack of reaction that I had to pain. I had a bad cut and it had to be cleaned and the stuff that was being used to clean it, it stings, it burns, it feels awful, right? And I sat there without having a single reaction to any of it because I have learned how to do that. And they told me days later that it was genuinely a little bit disturbing, that there was like no reaction but that was normal for me and in a weird way, I was kind of like, good, all right. So if I ever actually am in pain, I've gained enough credibility points with this person that they will believe me and that is something that I take into every aspect of my life. I think if I mask the pain, if I hide it, if people think, oh, that should have hurt her but she seems fine, then when something is wrong and it rises to a level that I actually need help, maybe they'll believe me. But the thing is, I shouldn't have to do that. And with most people, I probably don't have to do that but it just becomes second nature to preemptively make sure that people are gonna believe you when something's actually wrong. It's this constant mind game because I'm so tired and so scared of people thinking that I'm faking something or being over-dramatic or doing it for attention when I am not. Back when I first started experiencing chronic pain when I fell off the horse, when I started having chronic severe migraines when I was dealing with other internal things going on, all of that was real and should have been believed but it wasn't and it left me as someone who has a very difficult time thinking anyone is gonna trust them. It's also made communication with doctors insanely difficult because when you have enough experiences of people downplaying, talking down to you, thinking you're doing it for attention or there's no way you could possibly know your own body, nothing's actually wrong, when you have enough of those experiences, it becomes really challenging to approach any doctor as if they're actually gonna help you. It kinda starts to feel like doctors are the enemy which I know they are not. I've had incredible doctors that have helped me in so many ways that have listened to me that have actually taken the time to figure out what the hell was going on but it is hard not to carry this prejudice towards every doctor I ever meet and when you go into a situation thinking this person's not gonna trust me, they're not gonna believe me, they're gonna suspect me of just being anxious or doing it for attention, you come in defensive and almost angry and sometimes that shows and that's not good and that's not fair but it is so difficult to do when you have been conditioned for over a decade that you have to fight and even if you fight, you're still not gonna be helped. This is a very conscious mental thing that I go through every single time I meet with a doctor. I have to take a moment to be like, all right, leave your previous experiences with other professionals at the door, this person is a new person, don't blame them, don't hold other people's mistakes against them, speak to your doctor honestly like they're gonna help you and I feel like a crazy person doing that because I'm like, no, so many things have told me this is not the case. Why would I do that? Why would I trust this person? Why would I talk to them like they actually wanna help? But then if you don't do that, A, it's just bad, but B, you come in upset and angry at them which doesn't promote good communication, it does not promote understanding or someone wanting to help you even though they still will. It promotes unhealthy relationships with your doctors but it's so hard to avoid. Like when you think everyone's gonna suspect you of being over dramatic, you'll learn how to be under dramatic but being under dramatic means that you're not actually sharing the reality of your situation with people which leads to feeling insanely isolated and that's the other thing. It is so isolating to be in pain and when you read articles like teenage girls, you know, sharing, crying videos on TikTok for thousands of likes which is very clearly implying it is for attention and while I can't speak for all of these videos, perhaps not everyone is being honest, that's always a possibility, a pretty small one but a possibility. I'm glad that they're talking about it. I'm glad that they're sharing their experiences and emotions because that helps people connect, that helps people feel less alone. I'm glad that these teenagers have found some kind of community on TikTok or Instagram or wherever it might be because I did not have that. In so many ways, what was going on with my ankle during my teenage years when I was having a lot of surgeries on it that eventually led to, you know, the leg chopping. In a way, there was relief in some of those experiences because someone could see on an x-ray that something was out of place. Someone could read on an MRI that something was going on and eventually someone could see that my leg was gone and so I wasn't gonna be questioned about it. Everything I went through with my ankle in particular, insanely painful, lots of time in hospitals and surgeries and all that jazz but I didn't really deal with people thinking that I was lying or suspecting me for things. People wanted to help because they could see that it was wrong and it was the least painful, like overall human being whole experience painful thing because I knew I could find help and having to lose my leg where now anyone can clearly see something as different people don't question that and I appreciate that but that shouldn't be so rare. Your experience of the world is very different than other peoples when every day of your life is marked by physical pain. Your peers are not having that same experience. They're not sick all the time. They don't have to leave school or work. They aren't seeing doctor after doctor and you just feel like an alien. You feel weird and I still struggle with that to some extent though. It's gotten significantly easier over the years because I have found community. I have found people to connect with and I've sat here for a long time and wondered why? Why don't we believe people when they say something is wrong when we can't see it with our own two eyes and when you're talking about this sort of thing when you're talking about someone with an invisible illness or something that is yet to be diagnosed. So if something's going on we just don't know what it is yet. Why is so often that questioned? I wonder if a lot of it doesn't come down to fear like it's a terrifying thought that you could have something really wrong and no one can know what it is. So it's just easier to think, well that wouldn't happen. That can't actually be the experience. So I'm sure they're not actually sick. I'm sure they're not actually hurting. I'm sure that could never happen to me. I don't know. That seems like potentially part of the reason. I also think a big part of it is that people don't wanna hear about it all the time understandably and frankly oftentimes people don't wanna hear about it all. A lot of healthy able-bodied people would kind of prefer just to not recognize or want society to take care of those who are sick and disabled. We see this ableism absolutely everywhere and also sitting with someone in pain or sickness whatever that is is uncomfortable. It's hard to meet someone where they are. It's beautiful and good and such an important part of our human experiences but it's not comfy. It's much easier to have a surface level conversation. It takes courage to believe and to sit with someone understanding that you can't fix it but you can be there. Genuinely I don't know the reason and when it comes to the medical community I am not a medical professional so I don't know but I also have to theorize that maybe some of it comes from frustration of not being able to find the solution. There were a lot of doctors that I met with. They're like, okay, yeah, let's take care of things. Let's run this test, this test. You know, I don't think you've had this done before. Let's get it checked out. And the second that all of that comes back is normal and it's not clear what the cause is but I am still not okay. The tone shifts and it's like, well, I mean, everything that I ran says that you're fine so I don't know, you're fine. And I'm guessing that a lot of these doctors genuinely want to help. Like they got into medicine for a reason. They wanted to find solutions for problems and frankly, if you can't find a solution for a problem maybe it's a little bit easier to just say that problem doesn't exist and that it's not your fault and taking the time to be like, wow, this is really a puzzle. I don't know, let's figure it out. It's easier to just be dismissive. It's less uncomfortable. It's less work. I don't know, again, that's just my guess. Like I said, I'll leave that article linked down below but it just made me so sad to read because it reflected so many of the things that I have had said to me over the years, so many of the perspectives that I have met. It reminded me why I got so good at hiding things in the first place to my detriment and I really hope that moving forward we can work on believing people a little bit better and understanding that not every medical issue is solvable, is immediately diagnosable. Sometimes things are really complicated. Our bodies are weird things. When I had a kidney infection last year that led to some other issues and lingering pain, I was told by a doctor that I knew for literally 30 minutes he had spoken to me for maybe five, you know that he reviewed my ultrasound results and nothing looked out of place so there was no way anything else could be wrong. Out of the plethora of things that can go wrong, in our human bodies, all of the weird diseases and illnesses and disorders that are out there, after running a single ultrasound, it was like, well, there's nothing wrong and there's no way anything could be wrong so you're fine, even though I was in a lot of pain still. It's not easy dealing with things that don't have answers or solutions. It's scary, I think, across the board and I hope that we can get better at this because it matters, because it has lasting, lifelong impact on the people who are suffering and in recent years, I'm happy to say that I've made some progress on some of these things. Started allowing people to know me a little bit better even if I'm like, I should be positive all the time but I'm not and just showing that, just showing up as who I am. I've certainly lost some people from my life but the relationships that I have gained and shared that with have gotten a lot deeper. It's a work in progress. Why do you think that many people have this kind of reaction? Why do you think there's this mindset in the medical community? I look forward to reading your comments and ideas down below. Thank you, again, to Discord for sponsoring today's video. That is a place for us to all honestly connect and I hope I get to see you there to my dear and darling patrons over on Patreon. Thank you for supporting what I do for believing me. I appreciate you and to you, my lovely viewer watching right now, thank you for spending a few minutes out of your day here with me today. You could be anywhere else in the world doing anything else. You chose to hang out with me here for a few minutes and I really appreciate that. I love you guys, I'm thinking about you and I will see you in the next video. Bye guys.