Dear people who need proof,
By Izzy Teng
If I had a fever, you would tell me to stay home.
If I had a broken bone, you would excuse my absence without question.
But when my mind is the thing that isn’t working, you demand justification.
You ask me what’s wrong, but not in the way you would ask about a cold or a sprain. You ask for reasons. For something visible, for something measurable–something that proves to you it’s real. And when I can’t satisfy that, the expectation remains: show up, work hard, push through.
There are bruises on my brain that ache as the world pushes on them. The black and blue doesn’t bleed through my skin, but it stains the way I exist. It lingers in the weight that settles where motivation used to be, in the imprisoning silence that traps me in my thoughts, and in the debilitating exhaustion ten hours of sleep can’t fix. I’ve learned that some kinds of pain are easier to believe than others because some only need a bandaid and not a shift in perspective.
You wouldn’t ask someone in a cast to run a mile just to prove they’re trying hard enough, and you wouldn’t tell them their injury would heal fast if they simply “got over it”. So it seems, proof has become the gatekeeper of compassion.
This doubt is not harmless. When pain has to be proven, it’s often hidden instead. The American Psychiatric Association reports that minimization and skepticism of mental health doesn’t just hurt temporarily, but discourage people from speaking at all, turning uncertainty into silence, and silence into something much harder to articulate. That silence exists even as the problem grows: recent studies prove that rates of anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts have reached “devastating” crisis levels, yet the people suffering still carry the burden of suspicion.
It’d be wrong to say that mental health hasn’t been an increasingly prevalent conversation–it has. But conversation doesn’t mean care. Asking someone how they’re doing is not the same as offering someone a space to not be okay. Hoping for someone’s wellbeing is not the same as the willingness to see suffering that doesn’t leave a tangible mark. Mental illness begs for presence, not proof.
I can’t expect you to feel the gravity of my illness, but I want you to know the validity of it. I want you to understand that all the days I spend moving through fog as I force a smile, feel like screaming over a sore throat. My absence is not a choice and my pain is not optional. They are symptoms.
The stigma teaches us to question our own experiences, to wonder whether we are “sick enough” to deserve to be taken seriously. So this is what I am asking: stop treating visible pain as the standard for real pain.
Not everything that hurts can be measured.
And it shouldn’t have to be, to be believed.
Sincerely,
Izzy Teng
