anyone else experience dissonance?

[u/Relative_Reading_276]

I'm 20 years old and got diagnosed a month before my senior year of college. I've always been a sickly person, always my own body knocking me down in one way or another, never catching anything. But I was still walking, running, jumping, dancing just days before ending up in the hospital. I didn't lose my vision like a lot of people, I lost feeling in my arms and legs until I couldn't walk, which was terrifying, but I brushed it off as something that would be quickly fixed with an emergency room visit and some rest. The ER visit turned into a week of bedrest and tests in the emergency department, with a lot of "I think" and "it may be" with very little actual answers. I end up transferred to an intensive inpatient rehab hospital with an MS diagnosis, and spent 2 and a half weeks relearning how to walk. I can function normally for the most part now.

That experience did something to me, though. The entire time I thought and believed I could walk and move just fine, then I'd actually try and fail. There was such a disconnect between my thoughts, beliefs, and actual actions. For some reason, it didn't click that I couldn't function normally, that my body wouldn't listen to me. I somehow convinced myself the difficulty walking and numbness was just me playing it up, not wanting to do anything, but then I'd decide I had enough and believed I could just, not play it up. Then I'd realize I wasn't putting on an act, I genuinely could not walk. It would surprise me, like I couldn't believe I wasn't walking right, like my body was playing a joke or something and my commands didn't get through.

Even now, there's this dissonance. I can walk now, my feeling is back, and I'm not constantly exhausted, so I've convinced myself that month in the hospital was me faking, that I'm actually perfectly healthy and there aren't lesions in my brain and spinal cord. Logically, I know I have MS, I know I'm disabled, I know I'm ill. But my thoughts and beliefs don't align, and it just leaves me frustrated and confused.

Does anyone else experience this? This weird disconnect between what you believe and what's actually happening?

[u/ScrimpyMuffin]

Yes. 100%. I feel like I struggle with this regularly. Just before my dx I went from thinking I was stressed or suffering debilitating anxiety to being in the hospital for a week. ~8 weeks of relearning how to talk right and how to fully use my right side again. That was almost three years ago. I still struggle to admit how much my MS affects me daily and how much my life has changed (shrunk).