When "Your Tests Are Normal" But You're Not Okay
When all the tests say you're “fine” but you know different
This week I saw a new doctor. She took one look at my bloodwork and said in almost instantly "no wonder you don't feel well!"
I started crying.
Right there in her office.
It only took a couple of decades for me to find a medical professional who actually saw me.
Nobody sent me to her. No referral. No one in my life said you should try this person. I found her myself and it took a lot of time, energy, and effort.
And it’s cost me. Not just the 4 hours round trip for a 40 minute visit. Its cost years of trying and being dismissed and going home and wondering if I was crazy. Its cost me the endless exhaustion of fighting for myself when I wasn’t even sure what I was asking for help with.
I want to talk about those costs. Because I don't think we talk about it enough.
I have known something wasn’t right with me for a VERY long time. But how to explain it or put it into words that others understood? Not so much. It’s not like a broken leg or cut finger that you can see and repair on site. And when all the tests and evaluations say you’re in “normal range” what can you do?
This is one of the hardest parts of being neurodivergent that nobody really talks about.
Interoception is your body's ability to sense what's happening inside itself.
Hunger. Pain. Fatigue. Stress. That internal signal system that most people take for granted. For a lot of neurodivergent people that signal is disrupted. Not broken. Disrupted. The information is there but it doesn't always translate clearly. You feel something but you can't locate it or name it or explain it in a way that sounds credible to someone who's never experienced that kind of disconnect.
So you sit in an appointment and you try to explain it anyway. With the words you have. Which very often fall on deaf ears.
And the doctor looks at your chart and says you're in “normal” range.
And you go home. And you start to wonder if maybe they're right. Maybe it is just stress. Maybe you are overthinking it. Maybe you just need to sleep more or eat better or manage yourself differently.
And the next time something feels off you second guess yourself before you even pick up the phone to make an appointment.
That's what years of being dismissed does. It doesn't just delay a diagnosis or keep you from getting the care you need and deserve. It also teaches you not to trust yourself.
And when you're neurodivergent you’re already wired to question whether your experience of the world is valid.
I also want to say something about gaslighting because it's important. It doesn't only come from medical professionals. It comes from people who love you too. People who mean well and genuinely care but are neurotypical so even when they’re sympathetic that you don’t feel well they can easily dismiss you as too sensitive, or dramatic.
If you’re like me after a while you stop trying to explain. You just say you're fine and mask to save your energy.
So you carry it alone. And you get even more tired. And you retreat even more.
I’ve retreated.. A LOT. In many different ways over many years.
What’s interesting though…
is that if I was fighting for someone else? Someone I love? I would never retreat. I would keep going no matter what until they found answers. But for myself? There were real stretches where I just didn't feel worth the effort. Where I put my truth of knowing I wasn’t well down and walked away. Sometimes for months, sometimes for years.
And then I couldn’t take feeling this way any more and I'd pick the fight back up. Try a different doctor, or supplement. Do more research. Start over.
We need to make this part of the neurodivergent conversation
The real experience of navigating healthcare as a neurodivergent person in a system that was not built with us in mind. Normal ranges weren't built for us. What a 'typical' patient looks and sounds like was never built around how we actually show up.
And a lot of us don't have access to the kind of care that could actually help even when we know what to look for.
Yoga is medicine.
Not the Western kind that comes with a clipboard and a 20 minute check-up. The kind that keeps bringing you back to yourself.
And the part of this practice that kept showing up for me through all of it was Svadhyaya. It's a practice from yoga philosophy, one of the niyamas, and it translates as self-study.
For me what it means, the way I've come to understand it after 30 + years of practice, is taking your own experience seriously enough to keep paying attention to it.
Not waiting for someone else to validate it. Not shrinking it down to fit someone else’s preconceived ideas or beliefs.
Just. Noticing. And coming back to what you notice. Again and again even when you've been told there's nothing there.
That practice is what’s kept me going back again and again for answers. Even when I wanted to let it go. Even when it would have been easier to just accept "normal range" and move on.
It's what got me to that office this week. To that doctor. To that moment of finally being seen.
Look, the healthcare system in this country is a mess. Most of us know that. And I genuinely believe a lot of medical professionals are doing their best inside a system that doesn't give them the time or the tools to actually see us. But doing their best inside a broken system still leaves a lot of us without answers. Without access. Without care that fits how our brains and bodies actually work.
So if you're going through something too and you’re tired, I see you. If you're frustrated and angry, I see you.
Just don't give up on yourself.
If something feels wrong, you’re worth fighting for.
Rest when you have to. Retreat when you need to. Come back when you can.
You're worth coming back for again and again as many times as it takes. 💙
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