“Have you tried yoga?” - A downward dog into medical dismissal

“Have you tried sleeping more?”
Yep.

“Sleeping less?”
Yes.

“Taking a break from work?”
Multiple times.

“Why?”
Because I’ve been unable to go due to pain and fatigue. Multiple times.

“Are you on your period?”
No.

“Ovulating?”
Nope.

“You’re not pregnant, are you?”
No?

“Are your friends and family nice to you? Do you have a good support system?”
Yeah?

“Have you tried eating more? Eating less? Walking between 7,000 and 10,000 steps a day?”
Uh-huh, and all of them have made the problem worse, so I was wondering if mayb-

“Okay, good to know! I recommend yoga. Yoga and paracetamol.”
Sorry, come again?

“Yoga and paracetamol. And maybe breathing exercises.”
But I can’t move or breathe properly.

“Yes you can.”

It’s all in your head, girlies. Sucker punch, isn’t it? You’ve spent weeks, months, years trying to get your point across, but still, the indescribable abdominal pain you’ve been experiencing is all in your head. And if you have migraines? Get ready to have them tell you that it’s all in your uterus.

If you’re crying? You’re overexaggerating. If you’re not? The pain really can’t be that bad. If you’re coming in looking for help without suspecting anything specific? You’re being lazy and helpless. If you’re telling them about your symptoms, what works, what doesn’t, and what you think might be wrong? You’re a hypochondriac.

Start a diet, strike a pose, wait for disaster

You’ve tried all the supplements out there. Gummies and pills from drugstores, pharmacies, on prescription. Over the counter, under the counter, around the counter. You’ve fasted. Meditated. Quit caffeine. Cut out gluten, carbs, calories, processed fats, joy and hexametaphosphate, just in case your pain was caused by a healthy body image and a rogue syllable hidden in your breakfast. The same breakfast that now consists of water and chia seeds because anything else would annoy your doctor stomach. The largest organ in your body is a fibrous mush of cruciferous veggies, and you’re still here writhing in pain, being told that a downward dog and a long exhale will save you. You would’ve gone back to the doctors, but you know that they would only blame your pain on your newfound vegetable intake. Next thing you know, you’ve been prescribed a yoga position for gas relief while your appendix is preparing to self-destruct.

 

The mathematics of pain

“You’re not in pain. You have never had to endure getting kicked in the balls,” people told me for years. “You cry over nothing. You’re embarrassing to be around.” So at 16, when I had my first tennis ball-sized ovarian cyst burst in public, fainted, and woke up screaming and spasming in agony shortly after, the paramedics asked me to rate the pain from 1–10. Still a girl in my mid-teens, I did what was expected from the woman I became that day — and reluctantly, I muttered 5 under my breath.

Why five? Because I had internalised the belief that women exaggerate. Because I’d heard men mock everything from period pain to the pain of childbirth. Because I didn’t want to seem dramatic and helpless in a situation where I was already helpless and dependent on being taken seriously. So I halved my pain — an automatic calculation designed to be believed, because if we’re lucky, a 5 might sound like a 10 when heard by professionally trained ears.

This is how it begins. Women calibrate their truth to sound digestible. And the tragic irony? That effort to be palatable often leads to further dismissal because the way we describe our pain doesn’t make it seem bad enough. Pain isn’t supposed to be palatable. It’s designed to be noticeable, intolerable. It’s our natural notification system, our almost robotic reminder to troubleshoot pathological issues before they get worse. And in this day and age, believe it or not, women are being socially engineered to deactivate that system.

But what can we do about this?

This isn’t a criticism of the individuals working in healthcare by any means - many are doing life-saving work with relentless compassion and commitment. But the problem is bigger than any one person. Bigger than the healthcare institutions. It’s systemic. And systemic level problems require systemic responses, such as:

• A medical education reform that includes comprehensive training on women’s health, pain bias, and how symptoms present differently across sexes.

• Standardised diagnostic protocols that account for gender bias and implicit assumptions (ugh) in symptom evaluation.

• More diversity in clinical trials and data collection, because most average patient models are still based on male physiology. How about we stop testing women’s treatment options on men only?

• Research funding that for once in history prioritises conditions disproportionately affecting women. Not just reproductive health, but autoimmune disorders, cardiovascular disease, and chronic pain and fatigue syndromes that have been historically under-studied. Women are far more than a uterus, and the conducted research needs to reflect that.

To those in healthcare: hormones, stress, and anxiety are frequently comorbid with the conditions women have been struggling to get diagnosed for years, and should never be used as excuses to not bother searching for the root cause of physical illness. It’s not your fault that medical education hasn’t kept up with the reality of women’s health - but it’s still our shared responsibility to challenge a system that gaslights women by default. 

We’re not asking for a lot. We’re not asking for a miracle. We’re just asking for women to receive the same medical care that men do, and that starts once the textbooks teach healthcare professionals about women’s somatic complexity. They say society has progressed, so how come we’re still living in the age of hysteria?

Unapologetically, on behalf of all the girls who grew up losing themselves to medical gaslighting:

Treat us better. Thank you.

 

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