#Backlash

Many with chronic illnesses are masters of concealing their mood by laughing and showing off a happy exterior when they are among friends and colleagues. It is often a defense mechanism, you want to avoid questions about your health, partly because you don't want to be seen as someone seeking for empathy, and partly to try to forget about the health problems for a while and just feel like a normal person. But this can unfortunately hit back and cause even more pain, but then more as a mental battle.

By concealing illness, you are portraying yourself as being healthy and it may cause people to doubt whether you are really as ill as you claim, or if you might exaggerate or faking your inconveniences. There is nothing worse than people whispering behind your back, discussing you and spreading these misconceptions, it's extremely intrusive and degrading.

But some days are more challenging than others and demand a much bigger portion of strength and persistence than usual to just function, and you just don't bother to put on your happy mask. So you become this introverted, emotionally cold, easily irritable and unpleasant person or in some cases, a really big cry-baby....

One would wish people to think twice before drawing their conclusions, or why not ask a straight question to the person it concerns if you have any thoughts or questions. It would save an already tired and sad person very unnecessary sadness and negative stress.

I know you may think that we chronically ill place too high demands on people around us, and that's okay, but if you really want to understand and support us, knowledge and insight are the only way, and who is best suited as mentors if not the affected themselves....

xoxo