These are not real products, but they are real dismissals women have heard when seeking help for their pain.
Hillary Withers
I was probably always living with pain. I didn't think it was strange. I accepted it. Everybody said, oh, well, I'm a hairdresser, and it's just the way I was standing. I didn't really question it back in the day, it was only as I got a bit older that I thought, I can't live like this.
Carrying shopping was tricky, bending down was almost impossible. I was told it was just wear and tear. I was probably in my early fifties at the time, so I didn't feel like I'd done that much for it to be wear and tear, but that's what I was told it was. The doctors told me to swim and to stretch. I bought a new bed. It didn't make any difference. Because it wasn't wear and tear. It was a disk that was leaking, and it had to be operated on.
Natasha Saltzer
Prior to getting ill, I was incredibly fit. I'd been dj-ing about 60 nights in a row and was setting off again for another night, dj-ing on the London Underground, carrying my two big bags with CD cases. And then suddenly the ground started to move, and I thought I'm going to collapse. And that was basically the start of my ME chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia journey. I was just in excruciating pain throughout my entire body.
The frustrating thing was that no tests were coming back that there was anything wrong with me other than this collapse. I think it was about two and a half to three years that I was eventually diagnosed.
Some of the words that were said to me were like, “well, maybe it's just stress.” The amount of times someone might say to me “oh you look well”, and I'm like, secretly, inside going, I look well, I'm in a lot of pain. I felt invisible. It's kind of like this energy of dismissal. I felt like I turned into this ghost.
Lolly Streek
I was just 18 months old when I was first diagnosed with something called Still's Disease. I've probably taken painkillers every day of my life since I was probably about 18 months old. So over 50 years of living with pain.
I think it's interesting that when I kind of look back, it's not that maybe the pain I recall or remember. It may be how other people were treating me around that. “Oh, you must be tired. Why don't you go to bed then, if you're in pain?” And it's not that easy. Just being listened to would be make a huge difference.
I feel that particularly when I was having all these tummy pains, it was almost being told, “Oh that's just women problems.” And you don't just hear it from men or from doctors. Even other women will say to you, “that's just women's problems” because it's become so absorbed as part of our narrative that we all tell each other.
Ndella Longley
I have endometriosis, which causes pain in a lot of different ways. The main one being pelvic pain and stomach pain, back pain, pain in my legs. It's quite debilitating and affects a lot of different systems in my body.
It wasn't until lockdown when I moved in with my mum and she saw regularly how much pain I was in that I started to take it a bit more seriously. I suppose because I had that corroboration of like this isn't normal and you should do something about it. I think it says something that is also true of a lot of women. Which is that we are sort of conditioned or socialised to get on with things and not to complain about things.
Most of the times I've left the doctor's office, I felt disappointed or undermined by the experience. I think the most prevalent dismissal is that experiencing pain like this is just part of being a woman and that it's something that you should just expect to put up with and to experience regularly. It completely takes any strength out of what you're saying. It's very infantilizing.
Natasha Mushonga
My experience started off in my teenage years when I used to get really, really bad period pain. And at first, it was really brushed off to say, you know, it's just period pain, it's part of growing up, it's part of being a teenager.
I had been told by people as well that with this type of bad period pain, you would never be able to conceive. “It's too intense, your period pain. We've never seen anything like it.” When I got older, they found that I had polycystic ovaries and that could have also caused the periods to be really, really painful.
I prolonged seeking medical help because I thought, you know, you can do this. I sort of tried to ignore the problem. You just put up and, you know, carry on, which at the time I couldn't. All I wanted to do was to, you know, for it to go.
It has been a very hard journey, but I feel like I have gotten there in the end. It hasn't been easy. It's been very painful.
Chloe Elizabeth Elliot
I remember being eight years old and thinking that having a period that made me collapse, faint, throw up, I couldn't go to school, couldn't do what my friends were doing, was normal. I felt so alone and isolated. It was horrendous.
After around 30 A&E visits in two months, I was just so confused because I didn't know what was wrong with me. They said that “I was attention seeking. You're stressed. You're just overly emotional. This is because you've got your GCSEs coming up.”
No one was listening. They just looked at me and assumed I was an overly dramatic woman. And you start to believe professionals when they say that there's nothing medically wrong and you start questioning your own mind.
I think if I'd have been told your pain's real, you have endometriosis, it'd save my mental health, it'd probably have saved me a lot of scar tissue and pain because the endometriosis wouldn't have spread so much. I might be living a better life now.
Sarah Leach
"It could be an STD" was the usual response I had from health care professionals when I talked about the pelvic pain I experience. My GP suggested it was the cause, even though the test came back negative. A nurse suggested it when I went in for a blood test. A paramedic made a sarcastic "oh, does it burn when you wee" comment while I was literally writhing in agony, unable to move. On that occasion I actually had a ruptured endometrioma, or 'chocolate cyst' on my ovary, caused by severe (undiagnosed) endometriosis. I needed a week in hospital and emergency surgery before I finally got my diagnosis.
I had been back and forth to the doctors for years with increasingly severe pain, and was told it was 'just normal', it was a UTI, an STD, that a coil would help, that the coil was the cause, and that I should just go back on the pill (which I had stopped because the side effects were too much). I had no idea how to push the doctors to make sure I was heard. I had been to my GP, walk in centres, and then finally a morphine-fuelled trip to A&E in an ambulance which ended with surgery. I had never heard of endometriosis, and no one had ever suggested it despite its prevalence. Now I try to talk about my journey to diagnosis wherever I can, so that hopefully other women experiencing barriers are better able to advocate for the care they need.
Hillary Withers
I was probably always living with pain. I didn't think it was strange. I accepted it. Everybody said, oh, well, I'm a hairdresser, and it's just the way I was standing. I didn't really question it back in the day, it was only as I got a bit older that I thought, I can't live like this.
Carrying shopping was tricky, bending down was almost impossible. I was told it was just wear and tear. I was probably in my early fifties at the time, so I didn't feel like I'd done that much for it to be wear and tear, but that's what I was told it was. The doctors told me to swim and to stretch. I bought a new bed. It didn't make any difference. Because it wasn't wear and tear. It was a disk that was leaking, and it had to be operated on.
Ndella Longley
I have endometriosis, which causes pain in a lot of different ways. The main one being pelvic pain and stomach pain, back pain, pain in my legs. It's quite debilitating and affects a lot of different systems in my body.
It wasn't until lockdown when I moved in with my mum and she saw regularly how much pain I was in that I started to take it a bit more seriously. I suppose because I had that corroboration of like this isn't normal and you should do something about it. I think it says something that is also true of a lot of women. Which is that we are sort of conditioned or socialised to get on with things and not to complain about things.
Most of the times I've left the doctor's office, I felt disappointed or undermined by the experience. I think the most prevalent dismissal is that experiencing pain like this is just part of being a woman and that it's something that you should just expect to put up with and to experience regularly. It completely takes any strength out of what you're saying. It's very infantilizing.
Sarah Leach
"It could be an STD" was the usual response I had from health care professionals when I talked about the pelvic pain I experience. My GP suggested it was the cause, even though the test came back negative. A nurse suggested it when I went in for a blood test. A paramedic made a sarcastic "oh, does it burn when you wee" comment while I was literally writhing in agony, unable to move. On that occasion I actually had a ruptured endometrioma, or 'chocolate cyst' on my ovary, caused by severe (undiagnosed) endometriosis. I needed a week in hospital and emergency surgery before I finally got my diagnosis.
I had been back and forth to the doctors for years with increasingly severe pain, and was told it was 'just normal', it was a UTI, an STD, that a coil would help, that the coil was the cause, and that I should just go back on the pill (which I had stopped because the side effects were too much). I had no idea how to push the doctors to make sure I was heard. I had been to my GP, walk in centres, and then finally a morphine-fuelled trip to A&E in an ambulance which ended with surgery. I had never heard of endometriosis, and no one had ever suggested it despite its prevalence. Now I try to talk about my journey to diagnosis wherever I can, so that hopefully other women experiencing barriers are better able to advocate for the care they need.
Natasha Saltzer
Prior to getting ill, I was incredibly fit. I'd been dj-ing about 60 nights in a row and was setting off again for another night, dj-ing on the London Underground, carrying my two big bags with CD cases. And then suddenly the ground started to move, and I thought I'm going to collapse. And that was basically the start of my ME chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia journey. I was just in excruciating pain throughout my entire body.
The frustrating thing was that no tests were coming back that there was anything wrong with me other than this collapse. I think it was about two and a half to three years that I was eventually diagnosed.
Some of the words that were said to me were like, “well, maybe it's just stress.” The amount of times someone might say to me “oh you look well”, and I'm like, secretly, inside going, I look well, I'm in a lot of pain. I felt invisible. It's kind of like this energy of dismissal. I felt like I turned into this ghost.
Natasha Mushonga
My experience started off in my teenage years when I used to get really, really bad period pain. And at first, it was really brushed off to say, you know, it's just period pain, it's part of growing up, it's part of being a teenager.
I had been told by people as well that with this type of bad period pain, you would never be able to conceive. “It's too intense, your period pain. We've never seen anything like it.” When I got older, they found that I had polycystic ovaries and that could have also caused the periods to be really, really painful.
I prolonged seeking medical help because I thought, you know, you can do this. I sort of tried to ignore the problem. You just put up and, you know, carry on, which at the time I couldn't. All I wanted to do was to, you know, for it to go.
It has been a very hard journey, but I feel like I have gotten there in the end. It hasn't been easy. It's been very painful.
Lolly Streek
I was just 18 months old when I was first diagnosed with something called Still's Disease. I've probably taken painkillers every day of my life since I was probably about 18 months old. So over 50 years of living with pain.
I think it's interesting that when I kind of look back, it's not that maybe the pain I recall or remember. It may be how other people were treating me around that. “Oh, you must be tired. Why don't you go to bed then, if you're in pain?” And it's not that easy. Just being listened to would be make a huge difference.
I feel that particularly when I was having all these tummy pains, it was almost being told, “Oh that's just women problems.” And you don't just hear it from men or from doctors. Even other women will say to you, “that's just women's problems” because it's become so absorbed as part of our narrative that we all tell each other.
Chloe Elizabeth Elliot
I remember being eight years old and thinking that having a period that made me collapse, faint, throw up, I couldn't go to school, couldn't do what my friends were doing, was normal. I felt so alone and isolated. It was horrendous.
After around 30 A&E visits in two months, I was just so confused because I didn't know what was wrong with me. They said that “I was attention seeking. You're stressed. You're just overly emotional. This is because you've got your GCSEs coming up.”
No one was listening. They just looked at me and assumed I was an overly dramatic woman. And you start to believe professionals when they say that there's nothing medically wrong and you start questioning your own mind.
I think if I'd have been told your pain's real, you have endometriosis, it'd save my mental health, it'd probably have saved me a lot of scar tissue and pain because the endometriosis wouldn't have spread so much. I might be living a better life now.