Invisible disabilities are underrepresented in fiction

Being disabled doesn’t always mean someone has a visible or physical disability. I often see people asking for disability representation in books and art, but they leave out people who are disabled with mental illnesses, diagnoses like fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, GERD, and other invisible chronic illnesses.

I’m disabled with many of these diagnoses, and the mental illnesses I’ve had to cope with from repeated traumas are some of my biggest hindrances in life. I rarely see characters like me in works of fiction who genuinely struggle with these issues, and I don’t just mean depression and anxiety, although that is not to say depression and anxiety aren’t difficult to deal with in any form.

They aren’t always explored in the way that they are truly disabling.

I write about characters with disabilities like these in my books, and I promote my work with disability representation mentioned, but I often become anxious to share them in those circles because when people say they want disabled characters, I only see mentions of physical or visible disabilities. As a disabled person with several invisible disabilities, I wish we talked more about this and didn’t only mention physical disabilities in spaces where people ask for disability representation in art.

Some examples of representation in fiction of invisible illnesses could look like: A character struggles to leave their home, but they finally decide to go on that long journey. During it, they have panic attacks, they crash after a rush of adrenaline after an epic fight, or they struggle through chronic pain.

Maybe a character who is bedbound, or homebound, goes through these journeys in dreams or through astral projection, and it leads to something impactful in the real world as a fantasy narrative. There are ways to get creative that can give people with these illnesses hope, or help them cope. We can be heroes, but it takes great effort, and that effort can be shown and written into an interesting story worth telling.

Ultimately, your disability is enough and it matters too, and we need to be more inclusive when it comes to disability representation in fiction.