Like Christina Applegate, I have MS. From my experience, I know looking healthy doesn't always mean feeling healthy.

• Like Christina Applegate, I, too, have multiple sclerosis.
• She looked radiant in a recent video. For many with chronic illness, looks can be deceiving.
• In my experience, you can look healthy while struggling with symptoms inside.

I remember the morning just after my 21st birthday when pain first began shooting down my once healthy legs. Soon, fatigue settled into every cell in my body, and walking, which was once routine, grew burdensome. Muscle twitches flickered in every part of me, sparking a fear I'd never known previously. My body felt foreign and broken, but on the outside, looking in the mirror, I was still me. Symptoms of multiple sclerosis (MS) were festering from within; my appearance told a lie that confused everyone.

On Monday, Christina Applegate shared a video to Instagram announcing her release from a monthslong hospital stay for complications of her MS. Acknowledging a mark on her cheek, she showed off her new hair color and a body that appeared fit and strong. Christina smiled in the video, joy exuding from her, but it likely told only half of her story. The other half — how she feels physically — remains elusive, only understood by those who live with chronic illness.

I know firsthand that looks can be deceiving

While I don't know how she's feeling now, I do know that looks can be deceiving. For the last two decades, I've heard comments like, "Well, you look good!" Assumptions that I am well because my appearance hides the destruction within me are damaging and imperceptive. They negate the pain, the weakness, the fatigue, the shakiness, and everything that weighs on me daily, leaving me wondering why I'm feeling so debilitated when I look so well. Complimenting my appearance as a way to say I must be doing well brings me down — because it's not my truth.

In the comment section of Christina's video, I saw words delivered with good intention, but lacking recognition that she may still be struggling with symptoms of MS:

"She's looking well."

"You look great."

"Gorgeous! You're so inspiring!"

"You are so strong."

"Still so beautiful."

"She is STILL STUNNING."

Fans ecstatic to see Christina looking so well called her courageous, strong, and beautiful — and they aren't wrong. But they miss the bigger picture of living with an illness that never fades. She survived a flare of a disease with enough strength to take your ability to walk and came out on the other side still looking like herself. For that, people assume she's doing better. Hopefully, she's better than she was a month ago, but she'll never be disease-free again.

I wish people understood that despite how I look, I'm still struggling

I remember feeling relieved at first that MS hadn't taken my appearance along with it. Others seemed impressed that I could look so good despite having a disease that comes with such a bad reputation.

"But you look so good," they'd say, confusedly, as if I were somehow faking on the inside and my outside was proof. I was happy to look well, but I wanted others to realize that looks can be deceiving. I wondered what I was doing wrong for failing to show how deeply profound the weakness smothering me truly was. What could I do differently to prove to others that sometimes I genuinely cannot stand in line and wait my turn like everyone else, or that I do indeed need this handicapped placard I occasionally hang in my car? How can I show them the way I feel inside when it doesn't match how I look on the surface? But the answer was and always will be, I can't.

Christina deserves to feel beautiful. She is worthy of every kind statement said about her, and maintaining the one part of her that this disease cannot touch — her beauty — is a reminder that she is still herself. But we need to remember to offer words that do more than simply complement her appearance.

It's nice to hear you look beautiful, especially when you don't feel radiant from within. But, at least for me, when someone acknowledges what I'm battling despite looking so well, then I feel seen and supported rather than misunderstood and alone.