Hi, I’m Tommy, and I’m a current college student living with Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS). POTS is a condition affecting circulation with some nasty symptoms, such as dizziness, brain fog, fainting, chronic fatigue, and gastrointestinal stress. POTS is categorized as a chronic illness, meaning it does not often go away over time. To live with POTS, one has to develop a lifestyle where they can function despite their symptoms. Today, I’ll be talking about some of the pains and gains I’ve experienced because of POTS, and I’ll also be touching on what I view as the hidden powers of challenges, disability and diversity. I believe everyone can relate to this post in some way and it can be thought-provoking and/or put a smile on your face. Enjoy!
When I read the famous Spoon Theory post by Christine Miseranido, I realized using spoons as an analogy was an incredibly enlightening way to explain chronic illness to someone. For those that are unfamiliar, the Spoon Theory is a disability metaphor and expression used to explain the reduced amount of energy available for daily activities that can result from chronic illness. It can be a great way to understand the challenges of living with disability.
What I liked most is the idea that spoons are invisible, meaning people can look perfectly healthy and well but may not actually be healthy and well. Additionally, I’ve learned through experience that some people start the day with more “spoons” than others, and different tasks take different amounts and energy from different people. Personally, because of living with POTS, I have to devote a certain amount of energy every day to taking care of my health and making deposits in my energy “bank.” If I don’t, I know that when I try and make withdrawals out of my “bank” in the future, by expending mental or physical energy through effort, I’ll crash if I don’t have any energy stored. For me, trying to run on empty could not just affect my day, but even multiple days or an entire week.
I want to build off of the spoon theory today by talking about the “secret backpack” theory. The theory discusses not just disability but also diversity, while also bringing to light the advantages and superpowers one can develop from limitations, obstacles, and other perceived “negatives.”
First off, I have to give credit where credit is due — my Uncle Jeff and fitness influencer Shaun T have been instrumental in helping me form this theory, and I’m directly communicating many of their ideas. I’m even copying the name of the “secret backpack” concept from Shaun T; I heard him talk about it on a podcast recently and it inspired me to write this post. I combine his ideas with some of my own, and I hope my perspective as a college student who has battled through chronic illness can bring a unique and refreshing viewpoint to the limitation conversation.
By now, you’re probably wondering, what is the concept of the “secret backpack”? What does it have to do with me?
I believe everyone carries an invisible backpack through life. Each person on Earth has their own backpack, and everyone’s bag is filled with the weight of challenges, limitations, shame, fear, self-loathing, pressure, and all other sorts of baggage that comes from both internal and external sources.
To personify this concept, we can start with a person with a disability. They might be carrying an extra 20 pounds relative to the average person. Their weight could be made up of the daily stressors caused by physical or mental limitations, or fear and self-loathing from social discrimination and harassment, or anxiety because they don’t fit into groups very well. Their weight could be a combination of all those things.
For someone who is an ethnic or sexual minority, they too are carrying some extra weight, because of the stress and trauma they constantly face through discrimination, microaggressions, and cognitive biases. Furthermore, you can add some weight to anyone’s pack if they grew up without a stable family structure. Same with anyone who has ever experienced financial hardship. Those are visible challenges, but invisible, internal, challenges can weigh one down too.
Even those who can be viewed as famous or privileged are carrying some sort of weight. Shame and guilt? The pressure of success? Anxiety? Loss of a loved one? That’s all extra luggage. People who struggle with mental illness, eating disorders, diabetes, or ADHD? Add weight. The point is, everyone has some kind of weight in their backpack. Some have more than others. And if you look at all of the weight I just mentioned, not too much of it is visible to the public eye. How often do we think of what others are going through before we judge? And how many of their challenges do we acknowledge on a daily basis?
I don’t know about you, but I never used to look at people with an initial reaction of trying to understand the backpack they’re wearing. If they are clearly physically disabled, or the subject of visible discrimination, it’s pretty easy. But I never understood the struggle of a racial or sexual minority. I still can’t fully relate — I’m a straight white male. However, I can now empathize much more with those who do carry some heavy individual baggage, because of what I’ve been through and because of my new perspective on the world through the secret backpack lens.
I used to dismiss and disparage the diversity programs at schools and corporations because I thought those programs gave unfair advantages to minorities solely because they were gay or black or transgender. I didn’t understand how the programs were leveling any playing field. Ironically, though, I failed to step back and grasp that I’ve used my story of struggles with disability to showcase my backpack. I’ve probably been a benefactor of open-mindedness and empathy because I know someone out there has acknowledged my limitations and weight and given me a special chance or opportunity because of what I’ve gone through. Realizing that completely changed my viewpoint.
Sitting here today, I get it. I’m a fan of diversity programs. They acknowledge secret backpacks. Not only do they appreciate the weight that people secretly carry, but they also realize that secret backpacks don’t just carry dead weight. The heavier a bag is, the more tools and superpowers it contains. It’s not just about leveling the playing field for people who have visible or invisible struggles, rather, it’s more so about giving people the opportunity to use their tools and superpowers that they’ve developed through times of hardship. This allows for a platform for those with the heaviest bags to showcase their abilities of empathy, creativity, resilience, execution, and positivity. I’ll jump in more into the superpowers later on, but I first want to touch on how the weight actually affects people. Because it’s invisible, and it’s easy to dismiss. But stories and statistics can help to illuminate struggles and their significance.
I’ll start with the example of my life, which I touched on at the start of this piece. How does Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia, and its related disorders, affect me?
My backpack is weighed down by physical weight, along with mental and psychological weight. First off, because of POTS, I have to pay strict attention to my sleep, exercise, and diet. Getting a consistent 8 hours of high-quality sleep is close to a non-negotiable for me. If I don’t get proper sleep, you can add some weight to my backpack. We can all relate to that; getting no sleep isn’t fun for anyone. However, because of my body and its makeup, I carry a little more weight than the average person if I miss out on sleep. Plus, I don’t recover as quickly and lose that weight out of my bag as fast as others.
Don’t get me wrong, I can get through a day on low sleep. It’ll be a little tougher, but I can carry that bag. However, if I don’t take care of my sleep the next night, my bag doesn’t get any lighter overnight. It gets even heavier. Ditto for exercise and diet. If I don’t exercise, stretch, and do my mobility drills on a daily basis, my headaches and neck and back pain will flare up. That pain is not too bad to deal with from time to time. It’s a little extra weight. However, imagine combining that weight with the weight from bad sleep. If you add the weight put on by rapid inflammation or stomach distress resulting from poor dietary choices, I’m suddenly carrying a much heavier bag. Life becomes much harder.
A day with a headache isn’t that hard. A day with aching upper body pain, fatigue, and brain fog, along with nausea after every meal, is far more difficult.
A different example for me, using the same analogy, can be shown through my mental energy capacity. When I take an exam at school, I believe my backpack fills up a little bit faster than others’ do. Once I’ve completed an exam, my bag is often so heavy – in the form of mental stress – that it’s difficult to do anything else during the day. Going back to the spoons analogy, a difficult exam can take all of my spoons away for the day. Same with a basketball game, for instance. I absolutely love playing basketball, and I often want to never stop playing once I get on the court. However, if I play for too long, I’ll pay the price. Whether it’s later that day or sometime in the next, I’ll realize my backpack got heavier, as I’ll start to experience an inflamed upper body and tightness and searing pains in my muscles.
I don’t want to play the victim here or make it look like I’m fighting an internal war every day when I wake up. I was just relaying some of my toughest challenges and how they relate to my bag. I know that in everyone’s backpack, there’s a lot of weight added after an exam. Some people, through learning disabilities or things such as ADHD or anxiety, can have a backpack that fills up much more rapidly than mine. Other might love to play basketball, but the weight of past injuries or illness might prevent them from ever stepping foot on the court again. I’ll reiterate it here — everyone has a secret backpack. Everyone’s backpack weighs them down in some areas of life.
I struggled to relate to the weight brought on by being a member of a typical “minority” group. However, I can see how being black, gay, or a woman, in modern society, could add weight into a backpack. The Harvard-based Implicit Association test highlights unconscious cognitive biases and shows, using numbers and statistics, that many white people, including myself, have a more favorable view of whites than blacks. In the past, after taking the test and revealing my bias to myself, I thought, “so what, I still treat black people and gay people and women with the same respect as everyone else.” And I stayed true to that. However, the new science of microaggressions shows that these cognitive biases can lead to slights that can add up over time.
Before I dive into this, I want to say there are arguments both for and against microaggressions by scientists and thought leaders alike. With that being said, even if you disagree with the concept, bear with me, because I think something can be gained from a discussion of how race can relate to weight in our backpacks.
According to the Journal of Qualitative Psychology,
“Microaggresions are subtle, mundane exchanges that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to individuals based on group membership. They can be verbal, behavioural, or environmental, and include staring, glaring, comments, actions, and gestures. These actions are not always conscious, yet are constant – often daily – experiences for people of colour, women, LGBTQ+ communities, people with disabilities, and members of other under-represented groups.”
A study from the scientific journal Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology showed that ethnic minority students experienced an average of 291 microaggressions over the span of 3 months. It also found a significant association between microaggressions and anxiety as well as microaggressions and binge drinking.
Say what you want about that study, but there’s something to be gleaned from that information. My view is that taunts, insults, snide remarks, jokes, and other small, hurtful, actions add up over time. They are small, and inconsequential, and can often seem harmless. However, just think about every slight, or microaggression, as a pebble. One doesn’t do anything. But add 291 to a backpack, and that bag gets very heavy. Even when that number is much lower, stuff adds up over time. A comment about affirmative action toward a black person? A gay joke? Telling a woman they’re lucky they’re pretty, or else they wouldn’t have a job? Some things are aggressions, some are microaggressions, and some are straight up insults.
Imagine the weight that can build up and bear down on someone just because they are different. There may not ever come a moment where you see direct discrimination or hate directed towards a person, but the invisible accumulation of small things can make someone’s life that much harder. I don’t want to speak too much on sexism or racism because I haven’t really experienced it. But I think discrimination and microaggressions are significant forms of weight for a backpack, and the secret buildup of that weight can lead to a very heavy secret backpack.
As I mentioned before, I think there are examples of weight in everyone’s life and in all places. I know there are people who may have made a decision as a child that they still regret and have never come to terms with. I view that as weight in a backpack, and that weight is probably there for life without some degree of acceptance or acknowledgment to help remove it. People that have a tendency towards anxiety also have thousands of tiny pebbles that add up over time, and, when you add a rock from an exam or breakup or another stressful life event to the backpack, they can absolutely crumble under the heavy weight. To others, it can look like someone is perfectly fine, whereas the weight of their backpack could be growing too heavy for them to carry, starting to overflow with rocks and pebbles of the present and past.
If you think about carrying a backpack every day, carrying a heavier one would be undesirable and would lead to more daily stress. Over time, though, there’s also something positive about carrying weight. It helps you build strength, and carrying the same amount of weight every day gets easier over time.
I believe, using the same analogy, we get better at carrying our secret backpacks over time. At first, a weight can be very heavy and difficult to carry, and new, added, baggage in the form of trauma or challenges just makes life harder. But, carrying that same amount of weight gets a bit easier the next day. Even if weight is added over time, we as humans are adept at adjusting and adapting. Whether we are healing mental or physical scars or distancing ourselves from a negative event, we are often able to come to terms with the heaviest weight in our lives, over time.
The process of pain and struggle is how we rise up and conquer limitations, and it’s also through struggles where we can build some of our biggest strengths. That’s the second component of the secret backpack, and one that may be even more important than the first.
Those weighed down most by weight in their packs grow stronger over time, and living life despite their weight helps them to develop superpowers that no one else has. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and I believe every hidden weight develops an equal and opposite superpower in people.
I’ll start with what I believe are my hidden superpowers. First off, I think I’ve developed the perspective to write this post through the empathy I have developed on my journey. Before I was diagnosed with POTS, I had it all in life; it was easy to relate to those around me who excelled in school, sports, and in their social life. However, when I had all three of those things taken away from me in a single year of high school, I suddenly couldn’t relate as much to the all-stars and overachievers. I initially thought that was a bad thing; it’s easy to look at society and see the top achievers as the most special and important people out there. When I looked around, though, I realized that there were other people who had hidden struggles. The girl who took a test in a different room was no longer weird or different for doing that; she was now a friend because she was the only other one in the class who walked to the Testing Room with me. That kid who sat out of gym class often, because he “hurt his back?” He sure did look fine. But I looked fine too, and I could relate to him because I was experiencing firsthand that not all injuries are visible cuts and bruises.
I was starting to see everyone else’s backpack. Actually, to be fair, I swung to the other end of the empathy pendulum, and I identified much more with the invisible than the visible, popular, superstars. I started to look down upon the people who had it all. I was a bit jealous — they had what I used to have, and now I had to struggle, while they lived an easy, ideal, life, focusing on what I viewed as surface-level achievements in school and sports.
My superpower started out small, but my empathy has increased over time. Remember the equal and opposite reaction principle? I realized that with fame comes pressure, with power comes responsibility, and with achievement comes unrealistic expectations. Now I was really starting to see the backpacks of others. Not only could I see the hidden “negative” struggles of others a little better, but I also realized that everything society views as “positive” comes with a cost, and that cost equals weight in a backpack. Did I still think it was unfair that my backpack was heavier than the bags of others? Yes, but I also realized my backpack was a far lighter load than so many others’ in the world. The empathy that allowed me to view and relate to people’s challenges helped my perspective to dramatically shift.
I was always focused on what mattered in my community growing up, which meant achievement in academics and athletics. I don’t believe the societal championing of achievement is wrong, but I also realized some people are limited by their body or their past in what they can achieve. I’m a proponent of big ideas, big dreams, and the concept of “you can do anything you put your mind to,” but, when I was suffering the most through POTS, I couldn’t do everything. Literally, if I tried to push my body too far out of my comfort zone, it would push back. I would have a miserable few days that could include vomiting and fainting and headaches and brain fog, and I would have to live far below my comfort zone for a number of days just to get my body back to normal. That thought was completely new to me.
I’m still very driven by achievement, but it’s definitely not the value I champion today. To me, progress is more important. Progress is something we can all do. Everyone can be a little bit better than they were yesterday. Progress can mean taking one more step on the treadmill or lasting a little longer through a class without a headache. For Amazon, progress could mean a billion more dollars in revenue It’s all relative. We’re only competing against ourselves. My superpower of empathy bred the development of my superpower of perspective, and both of those are fundamental principles in my life today.
Diversity, especially for organizations, is clearly a superpower — this article cites studies done by McKinsey & Company that show that gender and ethnic diversity in companies are clearly correlated with profitability. Why is this the case? There’s definitely the valid argument that diversity of people leads to diversity of thought, and diversity of thought helps to challenge long-standing beliefs while bringing new ideas to the table. I agree with that theory. I also surmise there is something else working behind the scenes for diverse companies. It’s the superpowers of diverse people themselves!
I talked earlier about how sexual and ethnic minorities have heavier bags than others, due to cognitive biases, implicit associations, and direct and indirect discrimination. I also talked about how more weight leads to more strength. If someone has been faced taunts and slights and discrimination all their life, they might have developed an incredible fortitude. They don’t care what people say or think, and it allows them to act with complete self-awareness and leverage their strengths more than others, so that they can give their absolute best contribution to their work and relationships. A man who has been in a wheelchair all his life may have to work much harder than others to plan his day because “normal” activities are more difficult for him than average. In turn, this planning has helped him to develop incredible organizational and management superpowers, so he may be able to oversee multiple large teams in a corporation and keep them all on track without any problems. These are all hypotheticals, but you can see where I’m going. People who are blind or deaf compensate by developing extraordinarily strong senses in a different part of their body. Similarly, when people get weighed down in one area of life, they compensate by growing stronger in another.
I mentioned my personal empathy as a superpower earlier, but I bet I pale in comparison to so many others. That’s a superpower that almost anyone who has gone through a struggle can pull from. The more challenges you’ve gone through, the more you can relate to others who have faced obstacles. And all of us, from the newborn child to the Fortune 500 CEO, want and need people to relate to us and help us through our problems. There’s a reason Forbes talks about sensitivity and empathy as a superpower. With the world becoming so interconnected, the ability to relate to others on a human level is becoming increasingly important. The heavier one’s secret backpack is, the more they can relate to the hidden weight of others.
Think about it: what coping strategies have you used to work through your toughest trials, and how have those strategies helped you to develop superpowers today? A different strength of mine I didn’t mention earlier, that comes directly from my battle with POTS, is my desire to improve and progress in my life. When I was out of school, sports, and without a social life, I had to find a way to get past those issues and take back control of my life. Since then, I’ve harnessed the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy-related powers of the brain to find new habits and strategies by which I can live my life, and then I have implemented them into a sustainable structure. I can’t tell you how much my morning meditation, cold showers, exercise, healthy eating, and high-quality sleep have changed my life. I wouldn’t be the person I am today without any of those habits. I can tell you, though, that they’ve been built up over time, and I’ve taken the initiative to build each of them from scratch, modeling myself after world-class performers in different areas of my life to set my body up to support my brain and its work. I don’t think the desire to constantly innovate and improve in my life will ever go away. It would’ve never materialized, however, had I not hit rock bottom, with no choice but to make progress in my life. When I was content with my life before POTS, I saw no need to innovate or improve. I’m now thankful for all of the weight POTS added to my backpack, because now I have a superpower I pull from my bag on a daily basis.
My only ask to readers of this post is that they recognize secret backpacks; both the bags that one carries personally and the bags of others. I truly believe one’s greatest strengths come from his most strenuous challenges, and recognizing and accepting pain is often the first step in lightening one’s load and building up a superpower. In addition, when we accept our own weight, it helps us to relate to and acknowledge the weight of others. Privilege is the ability to live without a certain weight that others may have. Privilege for me, as a straight white male, is the benefit of never having to worry about being discriminated against. If I get a promotion, I’ll never hear it’s just because I’m pretty (even though I am!) or because I’m filling a quota. If I get pulled over by a cop, there’s no worry about unfair violence against me. I’m privileged because I’ve never had to worry about if there will be food on the table for dinner.
I can go to the gym on a daily basis and work my body out almost to its max, without too many repercussions afterward. That’s a privilege that’s very real to me right now, because it’s one that I didn’t have two years ago. Two years ago, other people had the privilege of living on a daily basis without having to worry about their salt intake, standing up too fast and getting dizzy, or getting a splitting migraine ten minutes after starting a test. We all have different challenges and privileges.
I don’t think people should be shamed for being straight or white or rich. I just think people who have the privilege of not having certain weights in their secret backpack should acknowledge others who do. If someone gets accommodations in school or says they can’t go out to eat with everyone, take a step back and think for a second. Maybe they have a secret backpack with an intense learning disability or a myriad of money issues hidden inside. The worst thing you can do is ignore the backpack altogether and dismiss someone for being different, thinking that you’re better than them.
We all have different backpacks, and we all have different ways in which we are privileged. We also all have different superpowers that we’ve developed because we’ve lacked certain privileges and advantages, and we’ve had no choice but to push our way through certain weights in our bags. Let’s remember that and show love and acceptance to everyone.
Much like the powers present in diverse organizations, when society as a whole recognizes the secret backpacks worn by its members, society, in turn, develops superpowers. First, we recognize the weight held by our peers, and love and acknowledgment will lead to personal acceptance and peace. Then, once we can become self and societally-aware, we can start to bring out the absolute best in people. A world of superheroes with superpowers will lead to superhuman efforts, advancements, and developments. How does that sound for a change?
Thanks for reading! I appreciate every little bit of feedback and support, so please reach out to me if you have any comments, questions or thoughts!