I’ve spent the majority of my life disabled, but no one would ever know it. Except, maybe, if the way I twist and writhe around trying to soothe my pain has been a bother to you. Maybe my dead stares and sudden confusion about what is happening around me have been weird to you. But would these even be clocked as me being someone who is disabled, or just as someone who is a nuisance to those around me?
Read more: Hidden disabilities tend to stay hidden (TW!! mental health, issues with healthcare, descriptions of dissociation, family issues, brief mention of fatphobia)I had horrible back pain as a kid. Doctors eventually took me seriously and said that I, a 13-year-old, would have to undergo major surgery to correct a 50+ degree curvature of my spine. This is done so with metal rods and screws put into my back. Yes, I can usually feel them.
Did this help the pain though? Absolutely not. The amount of time I have suffered with debilitating chronic pain and all the doctors and specialists I’ve seen have had no success in relieving my pain.
Would people know it? Absolutely not. My parents raised me to shut my mouth and deal with it. To push on no matter how bad it hurt. So I did, and I did, and I did. Dear god, my body is so sad about that.
Years go by, each adding new things. Your insane muscle tension from your surgery is causing you severe migraines? Sorry hun, good luck, and take some Tylenol (that’s hilarious) You’ve had weird severe migraines your whole life too?? We aren’t really gonna look into that at all actually. Your retina is detached, and you need to have surgery to insert a scleral buckle in your eye to reattach it but we also have no clue what caused it so good luck. You’re autoimmune. You have fibromyalgia, you have rheumatoid arthritis. Oh, this medicine isn’t helping your pain??? Wow, that’s weird. Let’s raise your dose (spoiler alert: that won’t help either). It hurts, but it’s invisible. No one knows. But it brings me shame. I hate telling people I have physical limitations, especially as a fat person. People usually give me that once over, like yeah. sureeee. you’re just a lazy bitch. So guess what I do!!! Exactly what my parents raised me to do. Fuck it hurts.
Did I mention these are only the physical ones?
Plethora of mental illnesses I could list on and on, but I’ll focus on the most stigmatized one. I struggle so badly with dissociative identity disorder (DID). Yes. I am ACTUALLY diagnosed. TikTok has absolutely just taken DID and ran with it. So much fake-claiming etc etc etc. I hate telling people I’m a system, I always feel insane and stupid and like I’m lying!! Really though, I can’t make up how terrifying and debilitating it is. I can’t make up how it feels to wake up and realize we are driving and to not have a single clue where we’re going or that we even left the house. I can’t describe how hard it is to deal with the episodes of no escape. I stay trapped, only heavily emotional parts fronting. Scout is causing us to only feel like a vessel. Nothing is real, you’re not real, this is a dream. Max is angry and we need him to not lash out, Ace is hysterically crying, Remy is having insane sensory overload, and Shiloh and Sadie are scared and are having flashbacks, triggering Ace to be hysterical again. Others are desperately trying to help, but get so drained and dissociative. Minutes. Hours. Days. I don’t really ever know how much time passes. I never know who I am. My brain literally feels like it’s buzzing with how much we switch and how much people are opinionated and talking over one another. We have meltdowns picking out clothes, music, makeup, ANYTHING because it is so hard to satisfy everyone and if someone is upset, Max will front and be mean. We don’t want that. Anxiety. Who can front? No one. Everyone is so burnt out. The body is tired. What the fuck do we do?
I keep my mouth shut.
So how do I take care of myself if no one really tends to know the extent of the shit I deal with?
I don’t.
My parents raised me to shut my mouth and deal with it. To push on no matter how bad it hurt. So I did, and I did, and I did.
Dear god, my body, and my mind, is so fucked because of that.
Unruly Bodies 
I strongly empathize with the struggle of an invisible disability, and the loops we have to jump through to “prove it.”
The problem I think with invisible disabilities being tokenized or “fakeclaimed” is not that the people claiming them don’t actually have what they claim to have: Rather, the problem lies with our system’s failure to treat people’s problems with attention to their specific needs and create a society where resources for diagnosis and personal accommodation are provided to the people who, in their disability struggle, are forced to argue for their needs on behalf of a self diagnosis.
I agree so much with what you said here about “fakeclaiming” and how it’s representative of a larger problem, which is the fact that the mental healthcare system, much like the rest of US healthcare, is fundamentally broken. Just like the stated examples in the original post of medical neglect and being taught to “push through” your problems, seeking out unofficial mental health diagnoses and trying to find online communities through those diagnoses is in my opinion a further showing of how the healthcare system doesn’t prioritize mental health or the health of anyone who belongs to a marginalized community, and those online who don’t have official diagnoses of their conditions are often members of those marginalized communities who are chronically underdiagnosed in the medical field. This isn’t to say that harmful misinformation can’t be spread online about mental health by those who don’t do actual research, because it can and does happen, but I am wary of accusing others online of not actually having the conditions they claim they have, even undiagnosed, as a person who knew for YEARS the exact mental problems they were dealing with until I found a doctor competent enough to listen to me and give me an official diagnosis.