Episode 8: Stigma - The Invisible Mark

Full Transcript: English

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Hi hi, Welcome back to our healing language corner….

And today, I might again start --- quite literally --- with language itself……

There's a word I want to sit with today…..

A word that sounds sharp even before you realise what it means.

Stigma.

Before today's meaning --- before, you know, psychology, before social labels ---

this word had flesh and blood in it.

In ancient Greek, stigma meant:

"a sting, a mark burnt into the skin."

A literal wound. You were branded so others could see something about you ---

ownership, punishment, shame.

The point was visibility. And to make someone feel ashamed. Everyone was supposed to know. A person marked with a stigma would be separated from
the so-called "sound, free, normal, better part of society..."

Today, we usually don't burn marks into skin anymore. But we do something else. … We burn them into identities. …Into people. Into the way we look at someone who hurts on the inside.

We don't use a knife or hot iron.

We use language --- and words, or even just a look,

can pierce just as deeply as a branding tool.

We use silence.

We use assumptions-----

The meaning of the word shifted.

The wound didn't.

When we stigmatize someone today, we don't burn their skin ---

we burn their sense of worth.

We don't mark the body.

We mark the person. Their confidence, their ability to trust themselves ----

The wound is invisible to the eye,

but painfully visible in how others respond-----

When we talk about mental health ---

or depression, or emotional pain pretty often -- in my experience

we're talking about a mark that society somehow very eager to brand you with----

Not on your skin ----- but on your VALUE.

On how employable you are.

On whether people consider you reliable, "balanced," normal.

On whether people stay --- or quietly back away.

Your pain becomes your identity.

And that --- that is the mark.

Maybe Unseen by the eye.

But definitely Unmistakable in reaction.

You feel it in the pause, the glance, the awkward silence.

And still --- on the other hand, many people believe they understand depression for instance ...

Because they've read posts on Instagram,

or skimmed some articles,

or watched a polished talk.

But the truth is --- at least as I sensed it --- stigma rarely shows up as open judgment.

It's more subtle than that.

It hides inside well-meaning words.

It disguises itself as advice, concern, even love.

Sentences that sound supportive on the surface

and are quietly destroying underneath.

In my own life, it sounded like this, and not just from strangers, but

from people close to me…..

"Maybe you only thought you were depressed."

"You're healthy, intelligent, beautiful --- what do you even have to be

depressed about?"

"Just rewire the brain for positivity. Overcoming depression is a decision."

Or this one:

"Look for wonders in your life."

Which always struck me as a little cruel ---

because I do see wonders.

I'm the kind of person who's moved to tears by dew,

by the way sunrays fall through the forest canopy,

by the chance to catch the first snowflakes.

Feeling pain doesn't mean you're blind to beauty, everyday small

Treasures -----It's not a failure of grtitude....

And the one that cut the deepest:

"Maybe you want to stay depressed. Maybe you feed those emotions.

Maybe you get something out of it."

Well --- I don't. I don’t want to stay depressed …

And yes, I do get something out of it.

Because that's the nature of real experience:

even pain carries insight.

Even the darkest sadness has something to show.

But that doesn't mean I chose it.

Or that I want to stay there....

The moment I heard that, it hurt, really hurt ...

Because how do you defend yourself against a sentence like that?

If you disagree, you prove them right ---

you're emotional, irrational, "too sensitive.", constantly focused on yourself ….

----- If you agree, you betray yourself ---- you DENY yourself

Stigma does feel like a trap.

A circular argument.

A mark you can't shake off.

There is a deeper cruelty behind all these sentences:

they deny reality.

If your pain is invisible,

people feel entitled to reinterpret it.

If someone broke their leg, no one would say:

"Maybe you only think it's broken." Right?

But when your soul hurts, your psyche ….

everyone suddenly becomes a doctor.

Or a motivational speaker.

Or a philosopher -- which, to be honest, wouldn't be such a bad thing

if it meant real introspection, practiced daily and humbly.

But most of the time, it's not.

It's just another way of telling you to be less of a burden----

I feel that the worst form of stigma is spiritual bypassing:

"Just release your emotions. Everything changes in a second."

Or:

"You choose suffering. Healing is about decisions."

And my favorite from the semi-spiritual scene:

"It doesn't matter who you are. Ego is illusion, it’s not your real self "

And this said by someone who makes sure to list every degree he ever earned

on every public page entry--- I am not judging, I just notice the contradiction ….

------------------------------

There is also a myth I keep reading:

"People in the past just coped. So why can't you?"

--------As if suffering didn't exist before the invention of therapy.

--------As if depression is a modern luxury ---

something for people who "have too much time to think."

And every time I hear this,

two emotions appear in me at the same time.

First: humility.

I know I am privileged.

I have not grown up in war or starvation- though both my father and grandparents did…

I have a roof over my head -------I have what people would call ‘safety.’

Second: defiance.

Pain does not disappear just because someone else's pain might seem bigger.

Comparing suffering does not make anyone happier.

It just adds shame to sadness.

My impression is that… past generations didn’t cope.

They coped, sure.

But it wasn’t the kind of coping that heals.

It was the kind that hides.

And yes — it requires effort. It takes strength.

I know that very well.

But They silenced.

And based on my observation .... silence always leaks.

Into bodies.

Into relationships

Into children.

Into us.

When I look at my family ---

my grandmother, my mother, myself ---

I see a chain of inherited shame.

Not spoken.

But present.

Patterns of minimizing.

Avoiding. Enduring.

A kind of emotional survival that says:

"Don't feel. Don't speak. Don't burden anyone."

And I feel two things at once:

I pity them.

And I'm angry.

Angry they couldn't break it.

Angry they handed me a wound they never learned to name.

But I also see something else:

They didn't have the tools, the language.

They didn't have the right to speak.

They had stigma instead of vocabulary.

Silence instead of space.

And yes --- you inherit what isn't healed.

Not just emotionally.

Also physically. Biologically.

Someone who’s written about this in a way that really stays with me is Gabor Maté — a doctor and trauma expert.

He says trauma isn’t what happens to you —

it’s what happens inside you,

when your needs aren’t met,

when you have to adapt by disconnecting from yourself.

And it’s this inner wound — not the event itself —

that so often lives underneath depression, anxiety, chronic stress.

It doesn’t just pass.

It embeds.

And it often shows up not in memories —

but in symptoms.

In illness. In exhaustion. In our cells, In autoimmune patterns.

In my case, I’ve inherited more than just silence.

I’ve inherited a body that still remembers

what no one dared to speak.

I inherited shame.

And --- yes, shame, too, can be hereditary.

Sometimes I also hear:

"You're coping. You're functioning. So how bad can it be?"

But functioning is not healing.

Functioning is what you do when the world will not tolerate your pain.

Functioning is camouflage.

It keeps others comfortable.

And people assume that stigmatizing ---

this discomfort, this distance --- comes from ignorance.

That if people just understood mental health better, they'd stop judging.

But that's not always true.

Quite often, I think, stigma is about fear.

When someone sees your pain,

it forces them to confront their own.

Their unprocessed grief.

Their unspoken depression.

Their untouched shame.

If they admit yours is real,

they might have to admit theirs.

So instead, they say:

"You're exaggerating."

"It's just a phase."

"Be grateful for what you have."

Which really means:

"Don't remind me of the part of myself I don't want to feel."

I want to tell you something I wish someone had told me years ago:

Your pain is not a character flaw. It's a response.

A response to history.

To family systems.

To emotional inheritance.

Depression is not weakness.

What is weakness

is denying another person's reality

because it makes you uncomfortable.

There's a moment in healing when something shifts:

Not when the pain disappears.

But when the shame around it----- dissolves.

When you stop apologizing.

When you stop explaining.

When you simply say:

"I'm hurting."

"And I'm still worthy of being here."

Healing is not fixing.

Healing is witnessing.

Sometimes the most healing sentence anyone can say is:

"I believe you."

At the beginning of this episode,

I said that stigma once meant a mark burned into the skin.

Today, the mark is not on our bodies.

It's on visibility.

On our ability to speak.

To exist.

To say:

"Something hurts."

----------The world is uncomfortable with visible pain.

But real awareness ---

real change ---

begins when what was hidden becomes speakable.

Not solved.

Not reframed.

Just acknowledged.

One of the most powerful acts of healing is to say:

"This is how it is for me."

And to stay.

Without shame.