I believed that if I accepted myself as having RSD then it would become my reality because I would be living, behaving, and functioning in a way that would cause the world to respond a certain way to me. In essence, I would be sending both verbal and non-verbal messages to the world that RSD was my "fate". A vicious cycle would then ensue and my world would become a sort of "prison," treating me as "disabled." If I let this happen, it would probably become one battle that I most likely would not win. Therefore, it became critical to me to keep my condition concealed to the "public" as much as possible. In this way, the world would continue to respond to me as a healthy and normally functioning individual.
In order to deal with the fact that I had RSD, I presented a private self to my family, friends, and physicians , and a public self to the rest of the world. The private self allowed me to hurt, feel the unrelenting pain, and share my troubles with family and close friends. My public self, however, attempted on a daily basis to deny to the general public, various acquaintances, and co-workers the pain and hurt I was experiencing. Instead I portrayed myself as healthy, pain-free, and as capable as anyone else. The world then responded to me in this way. I hid the problem as well as I could, went out of my way to use my leg normally, to not be treated any differently, and to carry on all of life's responsibilities as normally as possible. "FAKE IT TO MAKE IT" was something a friend who was aware of my health problem once whispered to me. I took that slogan to heart and repeated it often, especially on those days that faking it seemed especially hard.