it's all in your head
I wrote It's All in Your Head because for years I was told, directly and indirectly, that my pain, symptoms and experiences were not real. Before being diagnosed with Fowler's Syndrome, I spent years navigating a healthcare system that often dismissed, questioned or misunderstood what I was living through. Like many people with rare and poorly understood conditions, I was made to feel that my body was failing in ways that could not be explained, and that perhaps the problem existed only in my mind.
The title comes from a phrase that many disabled and chronically ill people know all too well. Whether spoken aloud or implied through disbelief, delay and dismissal, "it's all in your head" becomes a powerful form of erasure. This collection challenges that narrative. It is a refusal to be silenced and a refusal to allow lived experience to be ignored.
The poems explore Fowler's Syndrome, chronic illness, disability, medical trauma, invasive procedures, hospital spaces, catheters, surgery, fear, grief and survival. They document experiences that are rarely represented in literature and give language to emotions that can be difficult to express. Through poetry, I was able to transform clinical experiences into human stories and reclaim ownership of experiences that often left me feeling powerless.
Many of these poems were written during periods of uncertainty, pain and isolation. Some were written while waiting for appointments, recovering from procedures or trying to make sense of a future that felt increasingly unpredictable. Writing became a way of processing what was happening to me, but also a way of connecting with others who were experiencing similar struggles.
At its heart, It's All in Your Head is not simply a collection about illness. It is a collection about resilience, identity, visibility and survival. It asks what happens when people are not believed and what becomes possible when they finally find their voice. These poems are for anyone who has ever been dismissed, overlooked or made to feel invisible. They are a reminder that our stories matter, our pain is real, and our experiences deserve to be heard.
STOMACH SPASMS
They called them stomach spasms—
which sounds almost polite,
like my body had raised
a small internal query
about lunch,
not clamped down at 3 a.m.
while I lay perfectly still,
sweating into the mattress,
counting breaths,
counting ceiling cracks,
counting the stupid distance
from bed
to bathroom.
They said try Buscopan.
Try water.
Try relaxing.
Try not being the sort of woman
whose pelvis becomes a complaint form
no department wants to process.
Try not arriving again
with the same problem
in different trousers.
Try making pain sound new
for the notes.
And I tried.
Obviously I tried.
I drank from plastic cups
in waiting rooms,
thin water bending the rim
between my fingers.
I logged symptoms.
I apologised for symptoms.
I smiled at people
who asked if I was stressed
while my body folded itself
around a locked room
inside me.
Because before a diagnosis,
you still think effort matters.
You think if you are polite enough,
clear enough,
grateful enough,
thin enough,
calm enough,
someone might stamp the right box
and send your body
to the correct department.
So I pressed both hands
into my stomach
as if I could persuade it
back into ordinary—
ordinary sleep,
ordinary jeans,
ordinary mornings
where the first thought
was not bathroom, pain, distance, proof.
But ordinary had already gone.
No note.
No forwarding address.
Just the shape of it left behind
in every room
I used to enter
without planning an exit.
LONG GAPS BETWEEN BATHROOM TRIPS
06:40 wake up and audit the body
bladder: silent
stomach: tight
dignity: pending
07:15 coffee
because the day needs edges
even if the body refuses them
08:30 first lesson
Year 8 asks to go to the toilet
I say yes
too quickly
09:50 corridor bell
doors open
bags swing
trainers squeak
bodies move because they can
my bladder remains
a locked classroom
11:05 staff briefing
sit near the door
notebook ready
exit route rehearsed
nod
as if listening
is the main thing
my body is doing
12:20 lunch duty avoided
if the system remembers
if not,
I stand in a corridor
holding keys, radio, bladder, face
13:40 someone says
you look better
because I have put concealer
over the evidence
because looking ill enough
is apparently another skill
I have failed to master
15:10 final bell
students pour out laughing,
untucked, thirsty, urgent, free
I wait
for the building
to empty me back
into myself
16:05 disabled toilet
lock checked twice
sterile packet
gel
breath held
urine arriving
through plastic
like proof
not relief exactly
more like the body
finally handing over
a document
it has been withholding
all day
22:58 bed
calculate the gap
sixteen hours
and change
call it data
call it Tuesday
A&E AGAIN
The chairs had been designed by someone with a personal grievance against the human spine. The lighting was aggressive. The coffee smelled burnt and metallic, scraped from a machine that had given up caring. Near the vending machine, a man argued with security about whether the toilet counted as private property, which, at hour fourteen, felt like a philosophical question worth pursuing.
I sat with my legs crossed and my bladder full of unsent messages.
Triage wanted numbers.
Pain out of ten.
Last time I passed urine.
Medication.
Allergies.
Could I provide a sample?
She held out the little pot.
I laughed, not because it was funny, but because sarcasm sometimes gets to the body before collapse does.
They wrote urinary retention.
They wrote query infection.
They wrote patient appears anxious.
Fair.
I was anxious.
I was carrying a litre of panic under my waistband while strangers ate crisps, children slept across plastic chairs, and the screen kept calling names that were not mine.
I was anxious because my body was locked from the inside.
I was anxious because the pot in her hand had become a joke nobody else knew they were telling.
I was anxious because every hour made me less like a person and more like a problem waiting to be filed.
When someone finally helped, relief came without elegance.
Tubing.
Gel.
A sharp breath.
Knees shaking under fluorescent light.
The ugly holiness of a body releasing what it had held hostage.
No music.
No revelation.
Just urine moving through plastic while a nurse looked away with practised kindness.
Then discharge.
Then follow up with your GP.
Then come back if it happens again,
as if I had chosen the loyalty-card version
of medical crisis.
I went home before sunrise with the hospital bracelet still biting my wrist:
name,
date of birth,
number,
barcode.
Proof in black print.
Proof with a plastic edge.
Proof I had been there,
swollen with pain,
documented,
drained,
and sent back into the morning
like evidence
nobody had quite finished reading.
PAIN SCORE
0
does not live here
1
the nurse says discomfort
and I let her have it
2
the waiting-room chair
bites politely
3
bladder pressure
low alarm
behind the ribs
not loud enough
for anyone else
to leave the room
4
teaching voice
still available
smile fixed
corridor appropriate
hand on the door frame
until the wave passes
5
the body interrupts
mid-sentence
whiteboard pen
still in my hand
twenty-eight faces
waiting for the verb
6
accessible toilet
someone knocks
then knocks again
I become patient
and public inconvenience
one hand holding the catheter
one hand holding the door
as if privacy
is something I can keep shut
by force
7
catheter will not pass
jaw locked
thighs shaking
wife awake again
hot water bottle
pressed to the place
where language stops helping
try again
try again
try again
8
A&E curtain
fluorescent migraine
plastic chair
plastic pot
plastic smile
disinfectant pretending
anything here
is under control
9
try to relax
10
being told
to drink more water
when water
is the problem
being told
it might be anxiety
when anxiety
is what happens
after the body locks
being told
to provide a sample
when the sample
is trapped inside me
being told
to wait
when waiting
is already
what the pain
has been doing
all day
10
is not the number
10
is the room
the knock
the pot
the locked door
the notes
the needing help
and the small bright violence
of having to ask
correctly.
TRIAGE
NURSE:
When did you last pass urine?
PATIENT:
Define pass.
NURSE:
Roughly.
PATIENT:
Roughly is how I live now.
NURSE:
Any burning?
PATIENT:
Yes.
NURSE:
Any pain?
PATIENT:
Which one?
NURSE:
On a scale of one to ten?
PATIENT:
The bladder,
the pelvis,
the waiting,
or the bit where I have to make this sound
believable?
NURSE:
Are you able to provide a sample?
PATIENT:
She holds out the pot.
Small.
Plastic.
Hopeful.
NURSE:
Sorry?
PATIENT:
I said,
I admire your optimism.
NURSE:
Have you tried relaxing?
PATIENT:
My bladder does not respond
to motivational language.
NURSE:
Breathing exercises?
PATIENT:
It has ignored
several official channels.
NURSE:
Any chance you could be pregnant?
PATIENT:
No.
NURSE:
Any chance this is anxiety?
PATIENT:
There it is.
NURSE:
Sorry?
PATIENT:
The part where my body
becomes a personality flaw.
The nurse clicks the pen.
The pot waits
between us,
empty
as evidence.
NORMAL RESULTS
normal bloods
normal scan
normal renal function
normal observations
normal abdomen
normal range
normal limits
normal
normal
normal
the word stamped itself
across the page
like a door closing softly
except
I could not pee
except
my bladder was full
and silent
except
pain had learned
to sit very still
and look presentable
normal meant
nothing urgent
nothing visible
nothing here
worth chasing
normal meant
go home
normal meant
come back
when the body
has made itself
impossible enough
to count.
emotional
POP ART
physical
ACRYLIC
CHARCOAL
environmental
