"People with invisible disabilities, such as chronic pain or some sleep disorder, are often accused of faking or imagining their disabilities. These symptoms can occur due to chronic illness, chronic pain, injury, birth disorders, etc., and are not always obvious to the onlooker.
Invisible Disabilities are certain kinds of disabilities that are not immediately apparent to others. It is estimated that 10% of people in the U.S. have a medical condition that could be considered a type of invisible disability.
Nearly one in two people in the U.S. has a chronic medical condition of one kind or another. Still, most people are not considered disabled, as their medical conditions do not impair their normal activities. These people do not use an assistive device, and most look and act perfectly healthy.
Hundreds of conditions, illnesses, and injuries can result in a hidden disability - anemia, brain injuries and strokes, allergies, epilepsy, heart diseases, lung conditions, mental illnesses, and chronic pain are just a few examples. Yet, although we are all aware of these individual conditions, there is much to be learned about the shared needs and experiences of the hidden disability community as the unique group it is."
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Taken from the Invisible Disabilities: List and General Information by Disabled World (DW), 29/01/2026
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Link to Disabled World’s (DW) collection of articles, research papers, and documents focused on various aspects of invisible disabilities
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“Disability” is an umbrella term which encompasses physical disabilities, emotional/psychiatric disabilities, neurodivergence, intellectual/developmental disabilities, sensory disabilities, invisible disabilities, and more. You do not have to have an official diagnosis to consider yourself disabled.
Mask up, love one another, and stay alive for one more week.
It feels weird, being fat and disabled at the same time, doctors assume you’re disabled because you’re fat but you were fat before any disability fully manifested. It’s weird, very weird. I am afraid of doctors now despite the fact I have needed constant medical care until I developed an adult’s immune(o compromised) system, doctors scare me, so do teachers, in a nutshell any authority that can dictate if you’re worthy of living. Often you feel like you’re afloat out there, looking in at everything these able bodied people do, they earn their own money so they can eat their favourite food, their arms don’t shake when working with a frying pan so they can cook their favourite without anyone stopping them, their body has never betrayed them so they’re beautiful as dictated by our overlords, them and their beautiful peers talk about how they want a world in their image and that world seems to be the one that will come true, a world where you can’t fit in.
Even in cases where the disability is caused by obesity, they remain just as callous and cruel. Even in cases where reducing weight will lead to an improvement, modern weight-loss medicines aren’t properly distributed.
And methods of weight loss which can be sustained aren’t discussed only short term ones are like keto.
The statistics for sustained weight loss are just so abysmal. Our understanding of complex biological systems is horribly limited, and this is a big example.
This right here is one of the things that feels the hardest to get the able-bodied to understand; personal solutions and standardized metrics will never serve as a blanket answer for the unique experiences of those living with disabilities, and just because they can do it doesn’t mean you can do it too, even with accommodations.
Yes, for us our body won’t work. We can’t fit in a nice economic plan or market. Most of these people don’t know how it feels when your back stops supporting your arm suddenly and your writing speed suddenly drops in an exam, how it feels when your legs suddenly refuse to move, how it feels your brain can’t add two numbers.