If no one can see the pain, does it count?

“I broke myself down into symptoms, behaviours, and thoughts like I needed to build an airtight case just to be allowed to stop performing.” Permission To, Chapter 8

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One of the things that surprised me while writing my book was realizing how much proof I thought I needed before I believed I was truly unwell.

Before my doctor’s appointment, I sat in my car rereading pages of notes I had prepared the night before. I had carefully organized symptoms, behaviours and concrete examples into categories so I could explain, clearly enough, why I needed a medical leave.

At the time, I didn’t question why I felt the need to do that. 

But looking back now, I think part of me believed that burnout serious enough to justify a leave looked different than what I was experiencing. In my mind, needing a prescribed medical leave meant being completely unable to function. Unable to get out of bed. Unable to go to work. Unable to take care of your children.

But I was still doing those things. Not well and certainly not sustainably. But, technically, I was still functioning.

And because of that, I genuinely worried that simply saying “I’m exhausted” wouldn’t be enough. I felt like I had to make my pain measurable and tangible. I had to make my pain seem serious enough that a doctor would agree I had reached my limit.

What stays with me now is the realization that I had learned to distrust suffering that wasn’t visible.

If I had been hit by a car, if I had broken a bone, if my pain had existed in a form people could immediately recognize, I never would have questioned whether I deserved rest.

But burnout didn’t look like that.

And I think many of us carry this belief without fully realizing it. We compare our pain to more visible forms of suffering. We minimize what can’t easily be seen. We wait until functioning becomes impossible before we believe we’re allowed to stop.

As if visible suffering automatically carries more legitimacy.

What my doctor helped me see that day wasn’t just the severity of my exhaustion. She helped me recognize the belief underneath it: that my pain needed to reach a certain threshold before it deserved care.

And maybe that’s one of the most damaging things many of us have normalized: waiting for our pain to become undeniable before we treat it as real.

Does this resonate with you?

Your voice belongs here. This space is for listening, together.