Tag: you get proud by practicing

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.

Pride in disabled accomplishments vs inspiration porn

Real Social Skills

I think sometimes people with disabilities get caught between a rock and a hard place regarding pride and inspiration porn.

When people without disabilities choose to do hard things, they usually feel proud of accomplishing them. And they usually have people in their lives who notice the hard things, and who respect them for doing them. Doing hard things is something that people generally respect.

People with disabilities are often totally excluded from that kind of respect, when the thing that’s hard is hard for reasons related to disability.

Sometimes the difficulty of being disabled is acknowledged, or at least referred to, but in a way that’s utterly devoid of respect. That can take the form of condescending and degrading praise, eg:

  • “Wow, you are a person with a disability in public! You’re not even in your house! You are doing a thing! That is so inspiring!”, or:
  • “Hello, fellow parents at the conference. This is my son. I never gave up on him, so he’s going to play the guitar badly for us. See what our special kids can accomplish if we believe in them?!”, or:
  • “Wow, you sure are good at driving that wheelchair that you have been using every day for the past ten years.“
  • “Wow, really, you’re autistic? I never would have known! I don’t see you that way at all. You even talk to people and everything.”

And then there’s the other side, where everyone just completely ignores difficult things that people with disabilities accomplish when the difficulty was disability-related, eg:

  • Learning, through considerable focused effort, to speak in a way that others can understand (nondisabled people are allowed to be proud of their communication skills)
  • Preferring to walk and putting in a lot of effort to retain the ability (nondisabled people are allowed to be proud of their ability to run)
  • Bearing hate and breaking into a profession that’s hostile to people with disabilities
  • Learning to read even though it’s cognitively difficult (nondisabled people are allowed to be proud of learning to understand something difficult)
  • Learning how to recognize facial expressions
  • Figuring out a way to do calligraphy even though your motor skills are awful (nondisabled people are allowed to be proud of mastering a difficult artistic skill)
  • Explaining your reality to someone who you need to understand it

When people don’t acknowledge this kind of thing, it’s degrading in a different way:

  • Doing things that are easy for most people can, genuinely, be a major accomplishment for us
  • Our struggles aren’t acknowledged very much, and almost never in respectful terms
  • And our disability-related accomplishments aren’t often celebrated, except when they’re being used as a way to shame nondisabled people into being less lazy or something
  • Having the difficult things we do go completely unacknowledged is also degrading
  • Disability-related accomplishments matter just as much as accomplishments not related to disability

Or, in short, these things are very different:

  • Being exhibited by someone else as you play the guitar badly, while that person implies the the audience that this is the height of what you will ever accomplish
  • Having messed up hands, deciding to try to learn to play guitar anyway, getting to the point where you can coordinate well enough to play a few songs badly, and being proud that you’ve come so far

It’s ok to be proud of doing things that are hard for you, even if they’re easy for most people. It’s not a failure of acceptance. It’s not the same as pushing yourself to be normal at all costs. Your accomplishments deserve respect.

Being with family can do weird things to you

Real Social Skills

Something to be aware of if you’re with family for the holidays/break/visting/etc:

If you’ve been working on self-acceptance lately and making progress, some aspects of that are likely to be harder when you’re around family. When you visit family, you might feel bad about things you’ve learned to feel good about in other environments. That might be very frightening. It helps somewhat to know that it’s normal, and that most people struggling with self-acceptance go through this.

It will be easier when you leave again. And, in time, as your self-acceptance solidifies, you will likely learn to hold on to it more consistently when you’re with family. This takes time and practice. It’s not your fault that it’s hard. It’s not a failure and it doesn’t mean you’re doing self-acceptance wrong. It just means that it’s hard.

An example: If you’re fat and you’ve been learning body positivity and feeling good about yourself and your body, that’s likely to be harder to maintain while you’re visiting family. Most people aren’t in tune with that particular kind of body positivity. And some families are actively awful about it. You might feel worse during your visit, and feeling worse may linger after your visit. But it’s a temporary setback; it’s not permanent and it’s not your fault. It’s just that these things are hard, and close relationships complicate things when you’re trying to learn to live by values people you’re close to don’t share.

It can help to actively stay connected to people who share your values while you’re visiting family. (Eg: take time to read body-postive blogs; talk to your friends; write emails.) It can also help to journal.

And, in the words of Laura Hershey, it helps to remember that you get proud by practicing. Feeling good about stigmatized attributes you have takes time and practice. Feeling good about those things even when you’re around family members who feel bad about them is an advanced kind of pride. It takes a lot of practice to level up and feel ok even in that context. It’s hard, and that’s not your fault. You’re ok, even if you feel bad right now.

Learning self respect

Real Social Skills
A reader asked:
I’m twenty years old and I can’t help but think that everyone thinks I’m stupid. I stutter, I feel slow, I say dumb things, and I sometimes catch people giving me judging looks. No one’s ever said that to me except maybe once or twice when I was much younger, but I can’t help be bothered by it.
I feel like there’s something wrong with me mentally, but people don’t want to address it. I hate it. I’d rather be messed up and not aware of it than this. How do I learn to love and be okay with myself?
realsocialskills said:
The most helpful thing I know about this, I learned from Dave Hingsburger’s book _The Are Word_. And, in the simplest form, it’s this:
You’re ok. They’re mean.
If you stutter and think slowly and have cognitive problems and have trouble communicating, there probably are a lot of people in your life who think you are stupid.
They may think that, but it isn’t true.
You’re ok. They’re mean.
People who think that you are stupid are being mean. People who give you judging looks are being really mean.
You’re ok. They’re mean.
The way you talk doesn’t make them look down on you. The way you think doesn’t make them look down on you. Your voice is not the problem. Your brain is not the problem. They’re mean because they’re bigoted and mean.
You’re ok. They’re mean.
And, in the words of Laura Hershey: you get proud by practicing.
I know it hurts. It hurts terribly. It’s not your fault, and you won’t always feel this awful. It takes time. It takes practice. It’s slow, and incremental. Try not to be hard on yourself for struggling with this. We all do. It’s hard. That’s not your fault, either.
You’re ok. They’re mean. And as you practice understanding this, and as you practice getting proud, it will be easier to feel ok and harder for them to hurt you.