In the journey of invisible illnesses and mental health, we get assigned words. The words are diagnoses. Diagnoses can be powerful blessings. They are a pathway to understanding, to treatment, to community, to validation. But they may also hold devastations such as a life sentence, an end to comfortable denial, maybe stigma.
Mental health diagnoses catch a lot of undeserved stigma. Some cognitive disorders like attention deficit hyperativity disorder (ADHD) may have attached stigma. Physical conditions as well often have stigma. One of my diagnoses, fibromyalgia, has an unpleasant bit, such as people (including physicians) thinking it’s a “made up” disease or nicknaming it the “bored housewives’ disease.”
We need to remember to not perpetuate stereotypes, particularly negative stereotypes, of anyone. We need to catch ourselves when we start a thought with “people like that” or begin an assumption based on someone’s identity group or diagnosis. I can personally request that if you see a female comedian whom you don’t think is very funny, please do not assume the next female comedian you see will also not be funny. You get the idea.
As for having to feel the stigma imposed upon ourselves, whether by others or by our own preconceptions of a diagnosis? Here’s something I said during a virtual fireside chat last year….
Here’s the thing about words and stigma. Stigma is like what other folks have in their minds about something. It’s not that thing itself, and I just want to talk about dandelions. When I was a little girl, there’s these little yellow flowers in my yard, and they were really pretty, and I would pick them and give them to my mom, and I felt really proud of myself for giving my mom flowers, and then one day, somebody told me that dandelions are a weed and totally changed how I felt about giving my mom a bouquet of dandelions, and the dandelions were no different. They were still exactly the same in who they were, like they were still beautiful, they were still yellow and bright and happy, and I’m sure Mom would today love a bouquet of dandelions from me, so we have to understand that we are no different. We are no different. We are still us. We are still beautiful. We are still whole. We are still perfect in our way, and any kind of societal perception about us, that’s theirs, and it doesn’t change who we are.
I have a sort of recording of this (not a Zoom recording of the program but just my cell phone set up candidly recording me doing my thing, hence also my air conditioner doing its thing…). If you want to hear it, you can catch it here, queued up to the moment:
