Why do I keep asking “why me?” with chronic illness?
Asking “why me?” with chronic illness can be a way of expressing anger, looking for an explanation, or trying to make sense of a changed life. The question may return as circumstances change. You don’t have to find a grand purpose in being ill before you deserve support or can get on with living.
I was diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia in January 2015. One consequence was discovering how uncomfortable illness could make a conversation. People didn’t always know what to say. That awkwardness helped prompt Corinne Gray and me to start URevolution in 2018.
There is a useful distinction here. I can explain how living with illness contributed to starting this magazine. That does not explain why I developed leukemia.
Something worthwhile can follow an illness without making the illness necessary. I want us to be more careful about the distance between those two ideas, especially when we’re talking to someone still trying to get through the day.
“Why me?” leaves an uncomfortable silence. We’re often too quick to fill it.
What are you asking when you ask “why me?”
The words can contain several different questions.
You might want a medical explanation: what caused this condition? You might be asking about fairness: why did this happen when I was doing everything I understood I should? Or you might be expressing how tired you are of having to accommodate an illness that never accommodates you.
Those questions need different responses. A lecture about biology will do little for someone who is trying to say that another canceled weekend hurts.
A 2023 qualitative study examining how patients use “why me?” found that its meaning varied, including questions about causes, chance, punishment, and being singled out. People’s answers could change over time, and the reactions of others could shape the conversation.
That is a more useful starting point than assuming the question means someone is stuck or feeling sorry for themselves.
Chronic illness can also give it fresh occasions to return. Consider someone who has managed a condition for years, then needs a different treatment or loses an arrangement that made work possible. Asking “why me?” again might concern this new disruption. It needn’t erase everything they have already learned.
If the question underneath is “Who am I now?”, we’ve written separately about rebuilding identity after chronic illness. Here, I’m interested in the demand for an explanation, including the demand we sometimes place on ourselves.
What the research actually found
In a 2024 study published in PLOS Mental Health, Rebecca J. Purc-Stephenson and Rachel Edwards surveyed 317 adults who reported an inflammatory bowel disease diagnosis. Most had Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis.
About 85 percent said they had asked “why me?” That figure describes these participants, not everyone living with chronic illness.
The researchers grouped respondents according to whether they had arrived at an explanation, were still looking, or had no explanation or weren’t searching. Explanations included chance, genetics, religious belief, personal growth, and self-blame. These were participants’ interpretations, not verified causes of their conditions.
People who had found an explanation reported more positive feelings and more perceived personal growth than the other groups. Those still searching reported more negative feelings and lower life satisfaction.
But there was another finding worth pausing over. The group without an explanation or an active search reported similar levels of illness acceptance, life satisfaction, and negative feelings to the group that had found meaning.
In other words, the results did not place everyone without an answer in the same unhappy category.
There are limits. This was an online survey taken at one point in time. It cannot tell us whether finding meaning improved wellbeing, whether people feeling better found it easier to settle on an explanation, or how other circumstances affected both. Participants were mostly White and female, and the researchers could not independently confirm their diagnoses.
The study also used a narrow way of identifying meaning: asking why someone thought they had been diagnosed. That tells us something about explanations for illness. It cannot capture everything that gives a person’s life meaning.
A reason for illness and a reason to enjoy Tuesday
You can have no satisfactory explanation for being ill and still care about a friend, a piece of music, or what happens next in a book. Those things don’t have to answer the question of why your body changed.
Equally, some people do find a larger meaning in their illness. Faith may help. A different understanding of their priorities may matter. They may feel closer to someone who stayed through a difficult period.
That interpretation belongs to the person living it.
URevolution has room for accounts such as Melissa Fleming’s reflection on what cancer taught her about life. Her account describes her experience; it creates no obligation for another person with cancer to reach the same conclusions.
Research continues to explore these differences. A 2026 qualitative study of 38 people living with incurable cancer examined drawings made over time and identified varied ways people understood their lives. It offers a closer view of that process, rather than a universal formula for adapting to illness.
My own editorial position is straightforward: people should have room to decide what an experience means to them, including whether they want to spend time deciding at all.
When “everything happens for a reason” makes things harder
“This happened for a reason” can be comforting when it expresses your own belief. Spoken over someone else’s distress, it can close the conversation before they have finished telling you what hurts.
If someone says they cannot afford another appointment, an explanation about personal growth is a poor response to a bill. If they miss having energy for their children, they may want you to understand the loss before offering a different way to see it.
At URevolution, we have already covered the pressure to stay positive about chronic illness. Meaning carries a related risk when it becomes another task the ill person must complete to put everyone else at ease.
Even a sympathetic phrase can set an expectation: tell me how this made you stronger. What if the answer is that it has made this month more difficult?
There should be space for that answer, too.
And be careful with self-blame. A person’s belief that they caused their illness is not medical evidence that they did. The PLOS study recorded self-blame among the explanations people gave; that does not make blaming yourself a sound conclusion or something to encourage.
Questions about causes deserve reliable information. Questions about what you deserve should never become a test you must pass to receive care.
What to do when the question keeps returning
You don’t need to ban the words. It may be more useful to notice what you want from them today.
If you want information, write down the specific uncertainty you want to discuss with your healthcare team. “What do we know about the causes of my condition?” is a question someone may be able to help answer. They may also have to explain what remains unknown.
If you want someone to understand, say that as plainly as you can. For example: “I’m having a hard time with how unfair this feels. I’d like you to listen for a minute.” This is suggested wording, not a script you have to deliver perfectly.
If you need something practical, it is reasonable to ask for that alongside the bigger question. A ride, help with an insurance letter, or company during a long afternoon may be useful even while the unfairness remains unresolved.
If the search is wearing you down, you can leave the question unanswered for now. Talking with a trusted person, a peer group, or a counselor familiar with chronic illness may give you somewhere to explore it without pressure to produce an uplifting conclusion. You can be explicit about what you want from that conversation.
None of these options requires you to be grateful for illness. Nor should emotional support stand in for care, money, access, or relief from symptoms. Sometimes there is a very concrete reason today feels unbearable, and someone needs to help with that.
If someone you love asks “why me?”
You can admit that you don’t know.
“I wish I had an answer. Do you want to tell me what’s hardest today?” leaves room for the person to say more. So does asking whether they want company, help thinking something through, or assistance with a particular task.
Let them introduce their own beliefs. If faith matters to them, listen. If they’re angry, don’t rush to replace that anger with a lesson. If they describe a change they value, you can appreciate it without deciding the illness was worth it.
I write about this because a magazine shaped by chronic illness should allow the unfinished conversation. Publishing only the stories with a reassuring lesson would leave out too much of the life that happens between appointments.
The next time someone asks “why me?”, try letting the question stay in the room. You may learn more about what they need if you don’t immediately answer it.
Source and adaptation note
This article draws on and adapts ideas and findings from Rebecca J. Purc-Stephenson and Rachel Edwards, “Finding meaning in chronic illness and its relationship to psychological well-being: A mixed-methods study,” PLOS Mental Health 1(4), e0000121 (2024), © 2024 Purc-Stephenson and Edwards, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. The material has been substantially rewritten and reorganized for a general audience, with additional research, Brendan McDonald’s lived experience, and editorial commentary. This adaptation does not imply endorsement by the original authors. No source images have been reproduced.
