Chronic Illness Memes
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The experience of living with an invisible illness is something that can be difficult to understand or relate to for people who do not have one. Chronic pain, financial challenges, health management, and the uncertainty of the future are just some of the issues that we face in our day-to-day lives. Even for those of us lucky enough to have a support system of caring friends, family, and medical team, many aspects of living with a chronic illness can be difficult to communicate to people who have never experienced chronic illness.
The symptoms of invisible illness are exactly that - invisible. Because of this, it can be challenging to explain to others that we’re experiencing pain that seems to go beyond the typical pain scale of 1-10. Or to explain that we’ve depleted our energy levels for the day, even though we might look ok on the outside. Or to explain that while we may be ok today, tomorrow might bring a flare that can interrupt the day or even week. Or to explain… most aspects of living with chronic illness.
What to do? How can our friends and family be truly compassionate and supportive if they can’t fully grasp what we’re going through?
Well, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. And if that’s the case, a meme must be worth ten thousand words. So we’ve collected a variety of our favorite invisible illness memes below from creators in the chronic illness community to help you more easily and effectively share what it is like to live with your condition.
Hopefully, some of these will bring a smile to your lips and brighten your day (or, at the very least, get you to nod your head vigorously in recognition…). We love chronic illness memes in part because they make us chuckle, but mostly because they reassure us that we aren’t the only ones going through the trials and travails of chronic illness. Laughter can be powerful medicine, but so too can the knowledge that we aren’t alone in our struggles.
The online chronic illness community from which we collected these memes is an essential outlet for people with invisible illnesses to vent, receive and provide advice, meet new friends, and come together to commiserate over shared challenges. By sharing these memes with your friends, family, and coworkers to educate them on your experience as a patient, you contribute to growing the chronic illness community and producing more allies.
If we’ve missed any memes that speak to you or speak to a part of the chronic illness patient experience that we haven’t highlighted, please don’t hesitate to share them with us. You can email info@chroniushealth.com, DM us on social media (@chroniushealth on Insta/TikTok), or share them here.
Not being believed
A common misconception is that because you can’t see our illnesses, we are somehow making up our symptoms. You’d think that the many doctor's appointments, medications, and bills that we must manage for our illnesses would make it clear that we’re not making anything up…
Spoon Theory
Christine Miserandino’s brilliant Spoon Theory provides the perfect metaphor to describe the experience of managing a chronic illness. This theory explains that every person with a chronic illness starts their day with a certain number of “spoons,” representing the number of daily tasks and social interactions we have the energy to complete that day. Every task or interaction depletes spoons and, once the spoons are gone, no energy for further tasks or interactions remain. So just know that once we’ve run out of spoons, we may have to call it quits for the day.
"You're too young to have that"
There’s a big misconception that some invisible illnesses only affect older adults. They don’t!
Labs come back normal, but I know something is amiss
Sometimes, the lab results don’t add up to what we’re feeling inside. As advocates for ourselves, we understand that when something feels off, we may need to fight to get the diagnosis we deserve. Even if that means switching healthcare providers.
Source
"But have you tried...?"
Raise your hand if you’ve been told at least once that you should try X, Y, and Z to cure your chronic illness. Unfortunately, everyone seems to assume that they know how to “fix” your health, but we all know there’s no magical way to CTRL + ALT + DEL our illnesses.
Fatigue
Simply going to the grocery store or doing laundry can tire us out. And chronic illness fatigue is fundamentally differently than normal tiredness. While some people can just take a nap to replenish their energy, we may have to crawl into bed and call it a day once our energy levels are depleted.
