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Invisible Illness Quotes

Browse 38 quotes about Invisible Illness.

Invisible Illness Quotes

“Mental illness People assume you aren’t sick unless they see the sickness on your skin like scars forming a map of all the ways you’re hurting. My heart is a prison of Have you tried?s Have you tried exercising? Have you tried eating better? Have you tried not being sad, not being sick? Have you tried being more like me? Have you tried shutting up? Yes, I have tried. Yes, I am still trying, and yes, I am still sick. Sometimes monsters are invisible, and sometimes demons attack you from the inside. Just because you cannot see the claws and the teeth does not mean they aren’t ripping through me. Pain does not need to be seen to be felt. Telling me there is no problem won’t solve the problem. This is not how miracles are born. This is not how sickness works.”

PainPoemPrejudiceMental HealthMental IllnessMisunderstoodStigmaEmotional PainChronic IllnessChronic PainMental DisorderInvisible Illness
Book:The First Step
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“I am sitting next to a middle-aged Midwestern blonde from Shakopee, Minnesota. She is unremarkable; from the outside she looks less unkempt than some, a veneer of solidity that makes me wonder what she's doing here. Then she tells her story. Her thirty-year-old daughter, her best friend as she described her, had planned a big fiftieth birthday party for her. She had set up catering, had had a cake delivered to her mom's house. A few hours before the party, she had been with her mom setting up tables and making a playlist, and then left to go to her apartment to change clothes. She said to her mother what she said every time they parted, "I love loving you," and walked out the door. She never showed up for the party. She had gone home and hanged herself. This mother, that veneer I had misrecognized, was a husk, all that was left of a body destroyed by the unknown becoming known. "What had I missed?" she asked. What was lurking inside the body of her daughter that day? What was underneath the party planning and the love of loving her mother? What could that young woman not bear to know, not bear to feel?”

LoveLossGriefFamilySuicideInvisibleMental IllnessInvisible IllnessInvisible Self
Book:Becoming a Man: The Story of a Transition
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“He wasn’t dying—he was being harvested. Flayed alive by nerves that refused silence, each breath shredded like lungs packed with razors. A blink drew blood. A thought detonated fire. His studio became a mausoleum, and he, its invalid—crucified, disowned by his own biology. He had begged for the compound that once shackled the torment—denied. They called it withdrawal; he knew it as state-sanctioned mutilation. His fingers clawed through endless typos, desperate to name the unnamable. Even his phone collapsed mid-sentence, unable to carry one more fragment of his possession. He wasn’t sick. He was erased. Invalidated. A failed experiment rotting in plain view, too grotesque for rescue. And still he burned.”

Invisible IllnessInvalidationBenzo WithdrawalLiving DeathChronic TortureHuman ErasureMedical AbandonmentNeurological DecayPain Beyond LanguagePsychiatric Mutilation
Book:Sex, Drugs, and Schizophrenia
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“so much of it is invisible — the pain, the tension, the storm beneath the skin. it’s a trap made of body and mind and spirit all at once. stress becomes an echo chamber where even meaning itself hurts. but to name it, to see it clearly, is to begin freeing it. that’s the start of healing — turning survival into understanding.”

Mental HealthInner StrengthChronic PainHealing ProcessMind Body ConnectionAkathisiaInvisible IllnessEmotional ResilienceDystoniaSurvival Journey
Book:Living Colorful Beauty
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“EDS is a scary and challenging diagnosis, but the consequences of not knowing are far greater than that of a correct diagnosis. EDS symptoms can range from the very mild to the extremely severe. One thing is certain, though: If I had received a diagnosis back when my symptoms were mild, I would be living a very different life now. Every single day, in my struggle to actualize the person I still can be, I cannot help but mourn the person I could have been.”

DisabilityChronic IllnessDisability QuotesPatientsInvisible IllnessChronic Illness QuotesEhlers Danlos Syndrome
Author:Michael Bihovsky
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“Some days I survive by accident, not hope. The pain never stops—it just changes costume. And still, somewhere in the static, there’s a flicker of magic: not in healing, but in enduring. That’s the human condition—staying alive with no good reason, except that part of you refuses to vanish quietly.”

Human ConditionMental Health AwarenessGoodreads QuotesChronic PainTrauma RecoveryInvisible IllnessPoetic TruthEmotional ResilienceJonathan HarnischSurvival Quote
Book:Sex, Drugs, and Schizophrenia
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“Because doctors can’t name the illness, everyone—the patient's family, friends, health insurance, and in many cases the patient—comes to think of the patient as not really sick and not really suffering. What the patient comes to require in these circumstances, in the absence of help, are facts—tests and studies that show that they might “in fact” have something.”

Chronic IllnessChronic Fatigue SyndromeMyalgic EncephalomyelitisMedical ProfessionMedical ResearchInvisible IllnessM E CfsChronic Illness StigmaMedical ModelMedically Unexplained Symptoms
Author:Joseph Dumit
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“He has so little energy in his body that he can only walk to the bathroom on the other side of the hallway twice a day. After a few meters he is worn out, much worse than after the marathons he used to run. He was a triathlete, he earned a brown belt in judo, became Dutch champion in hockey, until he contracted pneumonia in 2005 and never recovered. Ever since, he has a headache, vertigo, and insomnia, but worst of all the fatigue: after minimal effort his muscles would lose all their strength and take days to recover. Only after a few years did he get a diagnosis: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS).”

WalkingExerciseMarathonCfsChronic Fatigue SyndromeMyalgic EncephalomyelitisMe CfsInvisible IllnessSevere Me
Author:Ellen de Visser
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“These reports from the IOM, AHRQ, and NIH demonstrate how much we have learned about ME/CFS and how much we still do not know. We do not understand its pathogenesis, and we do not have a diagnostic test or a cure. However, these recent reports, summarizing information from more than 9000 articles, should put the question of whether ME/CFS is a "real" illness to rest. When skeptical physicians, many of whom are unaware of this literature, tell patients with ME/CFS that "there is nothing wrong," they not only commit a diagnostic error: They also compound the patients' suffering.”

BiasStigmaChronic Fatigue SyndromeMyalgic EncephalomyelitisMe CfsInvisible Illness
Author:Anthony L. Komaroff
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“I am so fed up of having to explain to people that Danny is not just tired; if only that were the case. We have lost friends, good friends, when we ran out of patience with explaining that Danny was off school so much, not because he had friendship issues or didn’t like his classes, but because he had an illness that seemed to be eating him up from the inside, despite it not really being visible on the outside.”

Chronic Fatigue SyndromeMyalgic EncephalomyelitisMe CfsInvisible IllnessM E CfsM EInvisible Illness Stigma
Author:Sonya Chowdhury
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“It never occurred to me that somehow women did know about it. It just never occurred to me. Yes I am wearing sneakers too. You are in a suit, I am comfortable. So when she explained to me that this was the first event really of its kind, it floored me. So I called my daughter who is in her 30s now and I said “do you know what endometriosis is?” She said, “what? Have to pack the pack the busters.” I said “no man, you have never heard of it?” No she said. I do not know what it is, and it occurred to me that my 30-year-old daughter who I told about endometriosis and it didn’t stick. If she didn’t know, and she is one of the hippest people I know, and her daughter doesn’t know, she has 19-year-old and she is a 13-year-old. The boy, we don’t care much about if he knows about it so much. There is other stuff for him to learn. Like how to roll a condom, things like that. You know, and it occurred to me that if they didn’t know that there were hundreds of thousands girls out there that don’t know. It is not because their mothers don’t want to tell them, because it’s not religion, it’s pure ignorance. We don’t know, we don’t have the information, we have it now, and so now is why this very first gathering is happening. Now is why we’re all sitting here looking really fabulous as you are... [Whoopi Goldberg on endometriosis awareness from the 2009 Blossom Ball]”

FeminismHealthIllnessFeministHealthcareChronic IllnessInvisible IllnessEndometriosisEndoWomen S HealthcareGoldbergWhoopi Goldberg
Author:Whoopi Goldberg
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“We have a duty tonight. Everybody, and guys this for you as well because I know you know women. You have a duty tonight. You only have to tell one other person what you heard. Just tell them what you heard, or ask them have you ever heard of this? If the answer is no, share what you learn tonight. That’s all. You don’t have to do anything else. You just have to tell somebody else. You have to take whatever stigma people think that is there. You have to take it. It’s not male or female. It has nothing to do with that. It has to do with, here’s a disease you don’t know about and you need to know about it. It’s that simple. It’s not rocket science. [Whoopi Goldberg on endometriosis awareness from the 2009 Blossom Ball]”

AwarenessHealthIllnessHealthcareChronic IllnessInvisible IllnessEndometriosisEndoWomen S HealthcareGoldbergWhoopi Goldberg
Author:Whoopi Goldberg
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“Schizo. It didn't matter how many times Dr. Gill compared it to a disease or physical disability, it wasn't the same thing. It just wasn't. I had schizophrenia. If I saw two guys on the sidewalk, one in a wheelchair and one talking talking to himself, which would I rush to open a door for, and which would I cross the road to avoid?”

Mental IllnessSchizophreniaMental DisorderInvisible IllnessMental Illness StigmaMental Illness Discrimination
Book:The Summoning
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“What do we get out of people thinking we’re fine? I mean, I know I get threatening letters on our dashboard when we’re upstate and we park in a handicapped space. You get teachers who don’t believe you when you need a break, and people not giving up seats on the subway, and your dad thinking you’re fine. How would your life actually be harder if you looked sick?”

DisabilityInvisible IllnessInvisible Illness Stigma
Book:Sick Kids in Love
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