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"But doctor, that's not what it says on the internet." This is something a patient being treated for bipolar disorder told my colleague Juan during a routine consultation. She wasn't challenging his advice; she was telling him what she had read on social media and asking how it fit with his recommendations. That one sentence stayed with him since and sent us both down a rabbit hole.

“I don’t understand why I have to put a stole to cover myself up,” I said, horrified. I was fourteen, with simmering teenage anger, making sense of the world and not liking the position Muslim women were often put into. I had clarity; if you want to wear something, you wear it, whether Hijab or dresses, and if you don’t like something you don’t wear it. But my extended family was insistent that it was the ‘right’ age for me to start covering up, a narrative common for many Mu

Growing up, I thought Dad was stoic. He always managed to keep his emotions in check, even when he was diagnosed with Myotonic Muscular Dystrophy, alongside my uncle and aunt. Even as he watched them pass away and felt his own muscles atrophy until he couldn’t leave the house anymore, he kept a stiff upper lip like the British men of his generation had been taught to do by their fathers. When Dad died in 2025, I thought about his stoicism and how I was going to cope with the

I am 66 years old. I have had bipolar since the age of 21. (Bipolar is a condition where a person’s mood may go high or low). I have written three times before on this platform: about diagnostic overshadowing, about mixed affective states, and about living with a serious mental health condition. As well as bipolar, I have developed several physical health conditions. I have ulcerative colitis (an inflammatory bowel disease). I have also experienced two lymphomas.

People are often surprised when I tell them that writing became one of the healthiest things in my life. From the outside, I have always seemed like someone doing okay. I joke a lot, laugh easily, and rarely let uncomfortable emotions sit visibly on my face for too long. Humour became my survival tool long before writing did. Whenever friends tried checking in on me emotionally, I usually brushed it off with jokes.

I left an abusive marriage. Four turbulent years later, their father abducted them, taking them out of the country and out of my reach for more than two years. When they finally came home, we were no longer the same people. In the aftermath, I began writing our story in the margins of my life, after work, before school events, and between counselling sessions, trying to make sense of what had happened to us.

I was called a survivor before I understood the word, and styled as a victim long after I stopped recognising myself in it. I am Srijani, a writer, poet and educator based in India. Being a neurodivergent survivor myself, I have expressed my thoughts on victimhood and the perspectives on it in my article. I hope this helps you understand and navigate what victimhood is and how it stands in the socio-cultural, emotional and psychological contexts we live in.

Israel did not allow foreign journalists into the Gaza Strip as it carried out its genocide. In their absence, every person with internet access became a war correspondent. Civilians filmed their ruined homes; fathers stood for photos holding plastic bags containing the remains of their children. A little girl named Renad shared Instagram Reels of recipes made from the rations received in aid packages.

Many of us would like to think that we always believe the survivors first. That we sympathise with them. But often, what we really believe in is the idea of the “perfect victim.” Victimhood, at least publicly, sometimes comes with unwritten rules. There are expectations people place upon survivors, things they expect to see that qualify someone as believable. You are expected to be visibly hurt, emotionally open and undeniably vulnerable. Your pain has to look recognisable bu