When your body fails you, you want to conceal it. If your knees give out and you trip, if you slip on black ice you couldn't see, if your back gives out and leaves you incapable of lifting the lightest of objects, the last thing you want to do is admit to it, or, even worse, ask for help.
When your body fails you internally, that pride to pretend like nothing is wrong truly intensifies. Living in a society where invisible diseases are just beginning to be recognized as disabling, the last thing people want to do is draw attention to themselves.
I know I never want to ask for help... In part because I have always been fairly independent, but more because I HATE that gaze I always get if I ask for help - that elevator scrutiny where you know someone is wondering WHY you need the help.
I mean, any time I walk out of a store with my mother carrying the bags, I get dirty looks. The 'lazy daughter'. The 'able-bodied, younger, healthier person is making her own mother carry everything'.
And the more your body fails you, the more it disables you, the more scrutiny you receive - especially if there is no VISIBLE reason to have challenges. Your privacy is gone. Absolutely EVERYTHING you do is questioned, monitored, challenged. If you have a good day, you cannot simply say 'I feel better today', because people still automatically assume that you are better. That now you can do everything you haven't been able to do in years. You have to quantify what 'feeling better' actually means so as not to arouse suspicion. I have to say things like" "Yeah, I mean I feel a bit better today. I didn't puke this morning, I was able to sit outside in the afternoon, and I managed to get out of bed before noon... But I am still limping, my pain levels are no different, and if I do too much I won't have another day like this for at least a month...".
And then I feel like I am being negative or pessimistic, when all I am trying to do is be able to say that today - right now - the symptoms of some of my (many) diseases are less awful, and I want to bask in it.
Anyways - the point is that most people who have chronic pain and chronic illness spend 80% of their social interactive time pretending to feel better than they do, while trying to explain that it doesn't mean they ARE better.
I started reading a new novel:
Inside the O'Briens by Lisa Genova.
The story revolves around the horrific medical condition Huntington's.
Within the first couple of chapters, I found a quote that relates to the thought processes of refusing to ask for help - and our human instinct to avoid showing any weakness.
"Joe makes a point of walking evenly and at a rigorous clip while he can still see Donny's car, but when Donny reaches the top of the hill and then disappears, Joe stops the charade. He trudges along, each step now twisting some invisible screw deeper into his spine, and he wishes he'd taken the ride."
This is SO characteristic of people whose bodies fail them for no given reason. You immediately know that something is wrong, that something doesn't feel quite right, and your instinct is to deal with it completely alone and hide it from everyone else. You pretend nothing is wrong. You pretend that you aren't in any pain - to save face - but for what? Refusing help because of pride? Embarrassment? An inability to openly show weakness?
To avoid condescending speculation?
Or maybe because you want to deny that it is happening - and it is happening to you.
And you may have to spend the rest of your life explaining why you don't do certain things, why you need help sometimes, why you need to sleep so often and miss so much work or school, why you - sometimes VERY suddenly - seem to have only a fraction of the energy you have previously possessed.
But then, after the opportunity passes, you realize how utterly stupid you are to refuse help... especially when it is genuinely offered. You know you would have been better off just taking the ride, or letting someone else carry groceries to your car, or using your walker instead of just a cane, or parking in the Handicap stall (with proper documentation) even though you feel slightly better than the last time you used one of those stalls... but your anxiety kicked in and you automatically hid your need for help.
Chronic pain sufferers can absolutely be great actors... but they are acting being normal, not the other way around... which has, for so long, been the general stereotype.