My Thyroid Wasn’t Ruining My Life. My Excuses Were.

by Erika Matic – hormonally stable, emotionally audited, and no longer outsourcing accountability to a butterfly-shaped gland

In the women of my family, thyroid problems are less of a diagnosis and more of a bloodline hobby.

Some families inherit heirloom rings. We inherited endocrine plot twists.

• Mother? Thyroid.
• Sister? Thyroid.
• Aunt? Thyroid.
• Cousins? Thyroid.
• Me? Obviously thyroid.

At this point, our family tree looks less like ancestry and more like an endocrinology waiting room.

So when I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s at 24, it barely even felt dramatic. It was almost comforting. Ah yes, there it is. The ancient female family curse has arrived. Welcome. Take a seat.

At first, it was manageable. My hormones were stable, my doctors were calm, and I didn’t even need therapy. Which, in hindsight, was dangerous. Because the moment life gave me a legitimate diagnosis, it also handed me the perfect long-term scapegoat.

When Grief Makes Every Explanation Feel Absolute

Then came my first pregnancy.

And this is where life stopped being funny for a while.

My thyroid went completely feral, my hormones collapsed into chaos, and I lost the pregnancy. There are experiences that divide your life into before and after, and grief has a way of making every explanation feel both necessary and unbearable.

Some pain changes the architecture of your thinking. After that, it became almost impossible not to connect everything to my thyroid. The grief was real. The hormonal instability was real. The trauma was real.

And slowly, the diagnosis expanded. It stopped being one part of the story and became the explanation for the entire story.

The Golden Age of Blaming Hormones

After that, every inconvenience in my life found its way back to the same villain.

• Why was I exhausted? Thyroid.
• Why was I gaining weight? Thyroid.
• Why was I angry? Thyroid.
• Why did I feel disconnected from myself? Thyroid.
• Why was I living on autopilot, eating badly, moving less, and spiralling emotionally? Well. Conveniently: thyroid.

And to be fair, some of that was true. But this is where satire meets psychology: the most powerful excuses are built on partial truth.

Once I started therapy, my labs improved beautifully. My hormones stabilised. My medication did exactly what it was supposed to do. Meanwhile, I was still behaving like my body was in a hostage situation.

I ate badly. I barely moved. I outsourced my stress management to food and denial. But because Hashimoto’s is a real diagnosis, I gave my lifestyle a medical alibi.

I wasn’t avoiding responsibility. I was “complex.”

Honestly, there is something seductive about being medically complex. It sounds noble. Sophisticated. Almost intellectual.

• Not overeating. Inflammatory hunger.
• Not sedentary. Hormonal fatigue.
• Not in denial. Autoimmune limitations.

At some point, my thyroid became less of a condition and more of a full-service public relations agency for my habits.

The Second Pregnancy and the Return of Delusion

Then came my second pregnancy, and thankfully, everything went well. My daughter arrived four years ago and rearranged my world in all the ways children do: beautifully, chaotically, permanently.

But the rest of me stayed the same.

• Still overweight.
• Still tired.
• Still disconnected.
• Still convinced the main architect of my life dissatisfaction was located in the front of my neck.

Because if biology is responsible, behaviour gets to remain unexamined. And behaviour is where the real admin lives.

The Least Glamorous Epiphany of My Life

Then about a year ago, I had the most inconvenient realisation available to an adult woman. What if my thyroid is no longer the main issue?

No dramatic awakening. No cinematic gym montage. No inspirational sunrise run. Just a deeply annoying moment of honesty.

My therapy worked. My hormones were under control. So if I still felt awful, maybe the remaining problem was not pathology.

Maybe it was repetition.

• The repeated meals.
• The repeated excuses.
• The repeated avoidance.
• The repeated promise that I would “start Monday.”

The Radical Power of Doing Boring Things

So I did the least sexy thing imaginable.

• I became consistent.
• I started working out. Not dramatically. Just regularly.
• I cleaned up my diet. Not restrictively. Just honestly.
• I moved more. I ate less nonsense. I stopped confusing self-care with self-soothing.

And then the deeply offensive thing happened.

It worked.

The scale went down. My energy improved. My mood improved. My health improved. Even my relationship with myself became less hostile.

Turns out my thyroid was not personally opening the fridge at night.

That was me.

The Modern Obsession With Elegant Explanations

This is the part that fascinates me most. We love elegant explanations. Hormones. Genetics. Stress. Cortisol. Mercury retrograde. The moon. Trauma. Motherhood. Inflammation.

And yes – all of these things can matter. But sometimes the truth is much less poetic. Sometimes your life improves because you finally started doing the things you’ve been intellectually romanticising for years.

Walking. Sleeping. Eating real food. Lifting weights. Repeating basic habits until they quietly save you. There is nothing glamorous about consistency, which is why so few people want it to be the answer.

The Soft Part Hidden Inside the Satire

This isn’t a story about blaming sick people for being sick. Hashimoto’s is real. Hormones matter. Thyroid dysfunction can absolutely disrupt weight, mood, fertility, and quality of life.

This is simply my story about the moment a valid diagnosis stopped being the truth and started becoming an identity. The hardest part was admitting that I had used something painful and real to protect myself from an even harder truth: I had stopped participating in my own wellbeing.

And once I started again, life responded. Not perfectly. Not magically. But predictably.

Which is somehow even more insulting.

The Ending My Excuses Hated

The most liberating thought I’ve had in years was this: If my choices helped create this version of my life, my choices can also rebuild it.

That is not blame. That is power.

So yes, I still have Hashimoto’s. I still take my therapy. I still come from a long line of women whose thyroids enjoy drama.

But now I also move. I train. I eat like I respect tomorrow. I no longer hand all responsibility over to a gland.

Because the real issue was never just my thyroid.

It was the comfort of believing I had no agency. And honestly?

That’s a much scarier disease.

Erika Matic writes about health, motherhood, self-deception, and the absurd comfort of medically sophisticated excuses. She believes some diagnoses need medication, some need movement, and some need the deeply rude honesty of looking at your own habits in daylight.