Talking about chronic illness, especially mental illness, is difficult. Even if you get past the roadblocks of shame and stigma, it’s just hard to talk about. How do you explain feeling *bleh*, or that *bleh* is different than *blerg*? That’s one reason we1 tend to use a lot of comparisons. No, not the type of comparisons that steal joy. The literary type of comparisons: similes, metaphors, and analogies. Sometimes we2 use them so often that we forget that not everyone uses these same comparisons. Some of these are specific to people in the chronic illness community (yes, it’s a real community), and some are more family specific.
It is helpful to have a shared vocabulary. Period. For any communication. It’s especially helpful to have a shared vocabulary when discussing things that are difficult to discuss.
These are a few examples of the types of metaphorical language that we3 commonly use:
Spoons4 n. mental and physical resources
Flushing yourself down the toilet v. engaging in a self-perpetuating downward spiral of thought; especially a downward spiral that increases in pace and intensity through each successive mental lap; most frequently experienced at night when you are all out of spoons and often requires the aid of an external party to extricate you from the flow; see also toileting
Toileting v. the act of flushing yourself down the toilet
Should-ing on yourself5 v. an act of self-castigation which involves comparing6 one’s subjective reality to an idealized world by way of “I should” statements; e.g. “I should know better”, “I should put away my laundry”, “I should recycle more”
Frequently, it is helpful to compare these chronic, often invisible illnesses, to more acute and visible physical conditions. I recently thought of an analogy in which I compared depression to diarrhea. The more I thought about it, the more I liked the analogy. I shall now begin to expound on this analogy.
Ways in which depression is like diarrhea:
- Often used as a joke in media
- Not socially acceptable dinner-time conversation topics
- Negative stigma
- It can happen to anyone
- Some people are more prone to extended or chronic bouts of illness
- Sometimes the cause is obvious, but sometimes it is beyond the scope of modern medicine to determine the cause
- Medication may help
- Also, medication may cause the condition
- Lifestyle changes may help with chronic conditions
- For those with this as a chronic condition, daily life must be planned around possible flare-ups
- Certain stressful environments may lead to a greater prevalence of the disease
- It is miserable to experience
- Can be comorbid7 with other related ailments or experienced on its own
- Can deplete a person of the resources necessary for survival, in which case it can become deadly
- Can feel embarrassing to tell others about the struggle
- Everyone has experienced symptoms of it at least once in their life
- Sometimes it clears up on its own, sometimes it doesn’t
- It can lead to crying in the bathroom
Footnotes
- “We”, in this instance, being both the royal “we” (Google defines this as “the use of ‘we’ instead of ‘I’ by an individual person, as traditionally used by a sovereign, and the vague reference to some collective ‘we’.) ↩︎
- This ‘we’ is mostly just the royal ‘we’. ↩︎
- This time I’m not really using the roya ‘we’. This ‘we’ refesr to my family and close friends. ↩︎
- This is not a family specific term, and deserves its own post. ↩︎
- The Internet says that psychologist Clayton Barbeau coined the term “shoulding yourself”. He may have done so, but my dad said it before it was cool. ↩︎
- This is the “thief of joy” type of comparing. ↩︎
- Fancy term meaning having more than one disease or medical condition at a time ↩︎
Emotional Support Sisters 
Leave a comment