Maybe this is similar.

I have an extreme need for external confirmation that I am ill. I think it happened this way. I don't really send out "ill" signals when I'm ill, so people think I'm much better than I say I am. I nearly died once in hospital because I wasn't seen as a bad case, I "looked" so well, but when they finally examined me they realized I was totally burning up with fever and the meter they had for blood pressure was nor refined enough to even pick up my blood pressure because it was too low.

Got kicked out of rheumy care because I look "happy and healthy" and my diagnoses were taken away. In this case, even the labs couldn't save me.

So I internalized all people's reactions to me. All their telling me that I shouldn't complain, I'm fine, I don't look ill.

It comes a time when you believe them. I started doubting the signals I got from my body. Now I think everyone else feels much, much worse than me when they are ill and I'm sort of just making it up. I think that my shakiness and weird heart rate and that I collapse if I pressure myself if I push myself a little, is plain laziness.

I try to convince myself, maybe I can get sick, but I never believe me anymore. And if it is obvious that I'm sick, like with a bad cold (people notice that), I think it is just slight and others have the cold worse than I do.

I've never had a doc telling me to take it easy, but if they did, I simply wouldn't believe them.