ME/CFS sufferer recently diagnosed with Fibro - new to forum, wanted to say hello

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Well of course it is not being "dumb" that is the issue.
It is that most people, including ourselves, have a hard time really understanding something about which we know nothing and that we have never experienced, and further that we cannot see easily.

We cannot blame them for this.

Imagine someone told you that they had hallucinations all the time and couldn't tell what was real and what was not a lot of the time, for instance. Unless you have experienced this you will have no idea what that would be like, and you might think it's something the person could fix, or y ou might even think (especially if the person held down a job and had a family and seemed "normal" a lot of the time) that the person was making it up. Not because you are "dumb", but because you simply have no context of reference to put that in, so you cannot understand how a person could live with that and seem normal.

I think if we expect other people to have compassion for us, and believe what we say, it is also important for us to have compassion for them and not blame them for not understanding what we are going through. If we approach others with the attitude that they are "dumb", or feel angry or resentful, we cannot educate them. If we approach them with the understanding that it's hard for them to grasp what we go through then we may be able to change their thinking.

Now, if a person is nasty to us in any way that is another matter. We do not have to put up with that.
 
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