“You Just Need to Try Harder”: When Illness Becomes Moralised
One of the hardest parts of Lipoedema is that eventually you stop fighting just the condition itself and start fighting what everybody thinks the condition says about you.
People see our bigger legs and assume you don’t exercise. Or they see weight that won’t shift and assume you’re eating too much. They hear you talk about pain, fatigue, swelling, or mobility issues and assume you’re making excuses.
And after enough years of hearing those messages, whether directly or indirectly, it can start to get under your skin.
And thats where the self talk starts to get ugly. “What if I am not doing enough? Am I just a sook? Am I really in that much pain? Am I just lazy?
But come on, us women with Lipoedema have spent years doing exactly what every “professional” told us to do. Every damn diet. All the gyms, training, compression bla bla. We push through pain. We feel guilty when we cant. But we keep trying. Then try harder again.
I remember thinking that if I could just find enough motivation, enough discipline, enough willpower, then eventually everything would click into place. That one day I would finally become one of those women who loved exercise, who bounced out of bed for a morning run, who didn’t have to think so much about her body.
But no amount of self criticism ever made my legs hurt less, and guilt ever reduced the swelling. No amount of trying harder ever made me wake up in a different body. And that’s where so much of the grief can sit. Not only in the condition itself, but in the years spent believing the problem was your character.
There is a big difference between struggling because you’re not trying, and struggling because you’re carrying a chronic illness!
Unfortunately, a lot of us spend years confusing the two. And that’s a heavy thing to carry.
When Health Becomes a Measure of Morality
One of the reasons Lipoedema can create so much shame is because we live in a world that treats health like a measure of character.
If you are lucky enough to be born without a chronic illness and happen to fit society’s idea of an “attractive body”, people often assume all sorts of positive things about you. You must be healthy. Disciplined. Motivated. Successful. In control.
But if you don’t fit the “Instagram body” criteria, the opposite assumptions often start showing up. People assume you don’t exercise, or that you eat badly, or that you lack discipline and motivation. But the frustrating part is that most of those assumptions are being made without knowing a single thing about what is actually happening inside your body.
Most women with Lipoedema could probably write a book about all the diets they’ve attempted, the exercise programs they’ve started, the money they’ve spent, the supplements they’ve bought, the compression garments they’ve worn, and the endless promises that this next thing would finally be the answer. But, when the symptoms don’t improve, compassion often starts to disappear and instead of curiosity, people offer advice and instead of understanding, people offer judgement.
Eventually the struggle can stop feeling like something you’re experiencing and start feeling like something you’re responsible for. And that’s where shame starts taking root. Not because you’ve done anything wrong, but because you’ve spent years being treated as though your body is evidence of your character.
The Exhaustion of Constantly Proving Yourself
The funny thing is, most women with Lipoedema are probably more aware of their health than the average person.
How could we not be?
We’ve spent years researching treatments, going to appointments, trying different foods and diets, figuring out what exercise we can tolerate, wearing compression, managing swelling and pain, and for some of us, saving ridiculous amounts of money for surgery. We are constantly thinking about our bodies. And yet, somehow, there can still be this feeling that we need to prove that we are actually trying.
You find yourself explaining what you eat. Explaining that yes, you do exercise. Explaining why you’re tired. Why you need to sit down. Why you can’t just “push through it”. You don’t want someone to think you’re lazy, so you keep going when your legs are screaming at you. You feel guilty for cancelling something because you’re in pain. You compare yourself to people whose bodies aren’t dealing with what yours is dealing with and then wonder why you can’t keep up.
And sometimes we it’s not even others that are being judgmental or harsh, we bully ourselves. You also spending half your energy trying to prove, to other people (and sometimes to yourself) that you’re doing your best.
When Shame Becomes Internalised
One of the damaging parts of being dismissed is that eventually, the criticism no longer needs to come from other people. It begins happening internally.
After years of hearing comments about discipline, weight, effort, or self control, many people begin monitoring themselves constantly and questioning whether they have earned rest, they feel guilty while eating or ashamed when exhausted and people often criticise themselves for needing help. Even people who logically understand that lipoedema is a medical condition can still carry enormous emotional shame around it, because shame is not always rational.
When people repeatedly receive the message that their struggle is their fault, they can often start believing that they are a problem, a failure, or not enough. Over time, this can create a sense of shame, so instead of thinking, “my body is failing me”, they can think, “I am a failure”
Many people become harsher toward themselves than they would ever be toward somebody else.
The Fear of Being Judged
Yes. Your strongest sections use “we/us” because you’re part of the group, but you’re not making yourself the case study. The occasional personal sentence works, but this section doesn’t need one.
I’d also stop trying to make every paragraph beautifully constructed. Your original has more natural movement.
The Fear of Being Judged
A lot of us have had years of comments about our legs, our weight, what we eat, what exercise we should be doing, or what we should try next. Doctors telling us to lose weight. People recommending diets we’ve already tried. Someone telling you what worked for their friend, sister, cousin, neighbour. After a while, of course some of that gets in your head, which can lead to us becoming really aware of how other people might see us.
It can be something as simple as ordering food at a restaurant and wondering if someone is looking at your plate. Going to the gym and feeling like you somehow need people to know that yes, you DO exercise. Wearing shorts and being conscious of your legs, or needing to sit down when everyone else is standing and feeling like you need to explain why.
You might cover your legs when you actually want to wear the shorts. Keep going when your body is telling you it’s had enough. Explain your Lipoedema when nobody even asked, because you don’t want them assuming you’re lazy or unfit.
And that is exhausting. We’re not necessarily being judged everywhere we go. But when you’ve spent enough time feeling like your body needs an explanation, you can start expecting that judgement before anyone has even said a word.
The Emotional Consequences of Moralising Illness
When illness becomes moralised, people often stop feeling supported and start feeling evaluated. Compassion can feel like it has conditions and becomes dependent on either visible suffering or visible effort. People may feel they need to “earn” empathy by proving how hard they are trying, how little they are eating, how much pain they are in, or how exhausted they feel.
Human worth is not dependent on productivity, appearance, or physical capability, yet many people living with chronic illness carry enormous guilt for not functioning in the way they believe they “should.”
There can be grief around needing help, slowing down, limitations and not feeling fully understood which can turn into shame, not only shame about the body itself, but shame about no longer feeling able to meet the expectations placed upon it.
Relearning Compassion
For the final section, I’d make it feel less like a therapeutic conclusion and more like the natural place your whole article has been heading. I also wouldn’t suddenly tell people they need to “practise self-compassion.” Your point is more practical: maybe we can stop treating ourselves as if we’re the problem.
Relearning Compassion
After years of trying to fight, fix and control our bodies it’s not always easy to learn how to have compassion for ourselves. And for a lot of us, being hard on ourselves has felt useful. If I push myself, I’ll exercise. If I feel guilty, I’ll eat better. If I don’t let myself make excuses, I’ll keep going.
Except eventually you have to ask whether all that self criticism is actually helping. Lipoedema is hard enough without also having someone in your head giving you a performance review every five minutes.
And compassion doesn’t mean we suddenly have to love having Lipoedema, love our legs, stop caring about our health or give up on things we want to change. I don’t think we need another message telling women how they should feel about their bodies.
Perhaps we could try simply being a little more fair with ourselves. Recognising that being in pain is tiring. That sometimes our bodies need a rest. That needing help isn’t evidence that we haven’t tried hard enough. And that we can be frustrated, sad, angry or completely over Lipoedema some days without turning those feelings into another reason to criticise ourselves.
We’ve spent enough years being told to try harder.
Maybe we don’t need to keep saying it to ourselves as well,
If this article resonated, I offer counselling for people living with lipoedema across Australia, please reach out, you deserve support.
Click the link to see my Lipoedema Counselling service page.
Related Reading
• The Grief of Not Fully Participating in Your Own Life
• Have You Tried Counting Calories? The Emotional Damage of Being Dismissed
