Tag: disability shame

Believing in ourselves as disabled people

Real Social Skills

As disabled people, it can be very hard to learn to believe in ourselves. We’re often taught not to.

We’re told over and over “believe in yourself, and you can do anything!” and that if we work hard, we can overcome disability. That sounds positive, but it actually teaches us that we’re not worth believing in as the people we really are.

In the name of believing in ourselves, we’re told to ignore key facts about ourselves. We’re taught that believing in ourselves means that if we ignore disability as hard as possible, it will go away and we’ll be ok.

But ignoring reality doesn’t change it. No matter how we feel, no matter what we believe, our bodies exist and matter. Our limitations stay important.

We need to get real, and we need to believe in ourselves for real. We have real bodies. We have real minds. We have real limitations. We are real people, worthwhile as we really are.

Believing in ourselves means self awareness and self acceptance, including of our disabilities. We can believe in ourselves enough to stop fighting with our bodies and brains, and to start working with them rather than against them.

We can understand our limitations, and face them without shame. We can accommodate our disabilities. We can take our strengths seriously, and respect our capabilities in an honest way. We can enjoy things and have good lives. We can figure out for ourselves which things to do, and how to do them.

We can’t overcome disability — and we don’t need to. We are worth believing in as the people we really are.

Open letter to disability professionals

Real Social Skills

Dear disability professionals,

I’m not sure why, but I keep encountering disability professionals who try to deny that disability exists, or to downplay its importance.

It’s so extreme that disability professionals often try to convince people with disabilities that we are just like everybody else. Even when our differences are the reason that you have a job.

We are not just like everyone else. We are alike in that we are all human, with the same basic needs and capacities that go along with humanity. We are also different, in that we have disabilities and most people do not.

Disability exists. Disability is important. People with disabilities are different from most people people in ways that matter. And we need those differences to be speakable.

Our bodies are different. We can’t make this go away by smiling, being brave, and trying hard.

The differences in our bodies matter. Most people can do things that are physically impossible for us. Most people can do some things easily that are excruciatingly difficult for us. The specifics of which things these are depend on the person and the disability. They always exist. That’s what disability means, it means having a different kind of body, a body that can’t do certain kinds of things easily or at all.

For everyone, with and without disabilities, understanding the limits of what our bodies can do is a key life skill. Everyone’s safety depends on understanding that they do not have wings, and that they can’t fly. My safety also depends on understanding that I have impaired vision, motor coordination, and executive functioning. Understanding these things means I have chosen not to drive, and that I have found adaptive strategies that enable me to cook safely.

From my perspective, the fact that I don’t concentrate hard and try to drive isn’t so different from the fact that I don’t flap my wings and try to fly. All I’m doing is acknowledging physical reality, and making choices that fit with my understanding of reality. Some of the physical limitations on what my body can do are the normal limits that apply to all human bodies. Other physical limitations come from my disability. They’re all just physical facts, they’re all just things I need to take into account when I make decisions. 

But as a person with a disability, I learned young that only some limitations are ok to talk about. If I say “I can’t fly”, no one contradicts me. If I say “I can’t catch”, people say “just keep trying”. Both are physically impossible for me. Trying hard will not make either possible. Neither will being brave, smiling, or believing in myself.

For some reason, many disability professionals seem to believe that honesty about our limitations will somehow destroy our self esteem. Actually, the opposite is the case. They want us to believe that if we just smile and keep trying, we can do anything that we put our minds to. But it’s a lie, and we get hurt badly when we believe it.

When professionals refuse to accept our limitations, they force us to attempt impossible tasks over and over. There is nothing positive about this experience. We try and fail, and we watch others our age succeed at the same tasks. If we believe that we can do whatever we put our minds to, then we feel like it’s our fault for not trying hard enough.

It hurts when people yell at us for failing, and it hurts when people plaster on smiles and urge us to smile and keep trying. “Come on, you can do it!” doesn’t sound like encouragement when you know that you will fail. It feels like being told that you’re somehow screwing up on purpose, and that if you would just decide to be a better person, you’d suddenly be about to do it. This kind of thing can go on for years, and it leaves scars. We often come to feel like we are unworthy people, and that there’s something deeply flawed about who we are. 

It’s very, very important that people with disabilities understand that we are disabled. We need to know that our bodies are different, and that some things that are possible for most other people aren’t possible for us. We can’t stop being disabled through an act of will. Our bodies limit us. That is not a moral failing. It’s just a fact of physical reality. And it needs to be speakable.

Our bodies and our disabilities are nothing to be ashamed of.  We don’t have to be different to be good enough. We don’t have to be nondisabled to do things that matter. We don’t have to do impossible things to be worthy of love and respect. We’re people, and who we are is ok.

And for professionals – please understand that when you refuse to acknowledge disability, you are teaching people with disabilities to be ashamed of themselves. This is probably not your intention, but it’s an inevitable consequence of making disability unspeakable.

It is much better to tell the truth. It is much better to support us in understanding who we really are, than to push us to believe in an impossible dream. I could dream of flying or playing baseball, but it wouldn’t get me anywhere. By living in the real world and working with the body I actually have, I can do things that matter. And so can all of your clients. There is no need for silence, evasion, or shame. Disability is important, and it’s much easier to live with when we can face it honestly.

On feeling like you have no right to call yourself disabled

Real Social Skills
A reader asked:
I have depression and OCD, and I keep feeling like I don’t have the right to consider myself disabled or seek accommodation because they’re mental illnesses. How do I shake that feeling?
realsocialskills said:
I think that it might help to realize that self-doubt is normal for people with disabilities. I think most of us feel that way, regardless of what kind of disability we have.
The reason this is important to understand is that often, when we feel doubt, it can feel like evidence that there’s a *reason* to feel that kind of doubt. But it it isn’t. Most people with disabilities feel that way.
I don’t think this actually has much to do with your particular conditions being mental illnesses.
Categories don’t matter, except for some practical reasons like access to services and making it easier to find other people who get it. What matters is what your needs are. If you need accommodations in order to function well, it’s important to seek them out. Spending a lot of mental energy agonizing over whether or not you deserve them is not going to do you or anyone any good.
I think part of the reason a lot of us feel this way is that we never really see descriptions of disabled folks who resemble us, but we see a LOT of descriptions of disability that don’t match us at all.
Think about what the media’s like. It’s full of people who bravely overcame their disabilities. It’s also full of stories like “the doctors said my baby would never walk, but we didn’t listen to those doctors and now she’s an honor student!”. It’s also full of smutty stories about people who didn’t overcome their impairments suffering and dying and being mysterious unpeople. Or as having super powers, or as having a disability kind of like an accessory, without it affecting their life in any significant way. None of these descriptions match what people with disabilities are actually like, but they are *the only ones we ever see*.
And even beyond what the media says, most people without disabilities have no idea how wrong these descriptions are. It’s jarring.
When your actual experience with disability bears little resemblance to what everyone around you thinks disability is like, it’s easy to feel like a fraud.
One thing that helps with that is seeking out other people with disabilities similar to yours who think of disability in a matter-of-fact way, and work on trying to live well with your kind of disability. When you talk to people who get it, it makes it a lot easier to realize that what you are experiencing is real.
So, for you, it would probably be really helpful to find more people with depression and OCD to talk to, and more authors with depression and OCD to read.
Also, be careful about exposing yourself to people who yell a lot about fake disabled people or appropriation. Those people are wrong, but what they say hits insecure disabled folks really hard. If you’re not confident about yourself, you can get hurt really badly by that ideology.

Shame is not a cure

Real Social Skills

So, here’s the thing.

People with disabilities are taught that we’re just lazy. That eventually, if we care enough, we’ll be cured. That we can shame our way out of being disabled. 

This is counterproductive.

If you can accept the way you are, the way your mind works, the way your body works – 

You can figure out how to do things in the way that *actually works for you*.

And you can do a lot more, than if you’re stuck in the mindset of thinking that shame will cure you.

Shame doesn’t create abilities. Self-hatred doesn’t create abilities.

Acceptance creates abilities. Understanding and working with your real configuration rather than against it can greatly expand what you can actually do. Even though there are abilities you will never have. There’s a lot you can do, if you understand and accept yourself as you are.