It’s been a while since I started subscribing the monthly Scientific American issues. Through reading, I found something profound, which people would turn from suffering to science, specializing in the field to better understand their disorders, as well as hoping to help people who have the same condition with them.

In Understanding Dissociative Identity Disorder through the “Community” of Ella, Ella, who is diagnosed with DID, lives with 12 distinct personalities and suffered from not being able to foster harmony among them. After she and her therapist managed to explore the way of letting the different personalities cooperate instead of merging them into a single self, she became an expert in the field. With her personal experience, she can connect real-life situations with science based principles, creating a way to have nuanced understandings of her own condition. She also empowers people who have the same disorder with her, hoping to develop new treatments for them.

To give it another example is Defogging Data published in the November 2024 issue. Jyoti Madhusoodanan is an Indian who later moved to Buffalo, New York. There, she found that American medical system is using a one-size-fits-all public health strategy to diagnose disorders among Asian people. Especially when Indian Americans and Chinese Americans are combined into the “Asian” group, the unique risk that Indian Americans are more likely to have cardiovascular disorders is underestimated. To ensure people of her ethnic background to receive more accurate diagnoses, she showed her perspectives and suggested approaches that can lead to medical equities.

Recalling my memory, I had similar experiences. In junior high school, one of my teachers said something in front of the whole class with a dismissive tone that left a lasting mark on me, “I think all the teachers believe that Hannah(ME) is definitely not as intelligent as a certain student. The reason why she got better grades than him is she worked harder.” In the consecutive days, I questioned myself again and again. But gradually, I started transforming that into fuel, not thinking talent and hardworking are substitutes. Now, I believe that I have proved perseverance is one of my unique strengths and I have benefited a lot from it and reached several achievements with it. From my perspective, I think the most important point is not to let those hashtags define you. I hope that I can help people around me who lost their self-esteem after being putting on hashtags by other people.

It seems that people who got hurt really are the best healers.