I wrote this article in my role as Disability "Topic Expert" on GoodTherapy.org. I'm now reposting it here.
While some disabilities are immediately evident to people who see a person with a disability, other disabilities are “invisible.” Beginning in childhood, people with disabilities who have the option of “passing” as non-disabled often get in the habit of automatically hiding their disabilities. For example, a visually impaired person who is being shown a map might pretend that he/she can see the map while actually listening for verbal clues as to the correct way to his/her destination. In this way, and hundreds of others each day, the disabled person “lives as” non-disabled.
What are the reasons for “passing”? Generally speaking, people with disabilities are depicted in media of various kinds as either pathetic, or as “overcoming” heroes. There isn’t much middle ground. People with disabilities internalize this stereotyping just as much as non-disabled people do. Not at all sure that they can be heroes, and not wanting on any account to be seen as pathetic, people with disabilities will often try simply to erase the fact of their disabilities from perception. And, to top it off, they get praise for this too. Non-disabled people seem to believe that it is the highest compliment to say to a person with a disability, “I never think of you as disabled”. If we can downplay our disabilities, almost to the point of disappearance, we figure, maybe we can have a normal life with friends who find us appealing.
Additionally, on a practical level, unemployment among people with disabilities who are perfectly capable of working is at staggering levels (and I’m talking pre-recession here too). Practically speaking, if you are a person with a disability who can “pass” at a job interview, you should do it; it may very well make the difference between employment and unemployment. That’s a really painful fact, and I, for one, have had a lot of trouble swallowing it; but, I’ve learned the hard way that if you can’t get a foot in the door of the workplace, you can’t begin to change it.
So, clearly, there are times when passing is the best (if unpalatable) choice. What I want to emphasize, though, is that passing is only empowering when it is a choice. If one passes by habit and/or based on an internalized belief that disability is a shameful, embarrassing attribute, then one has little chance of living an authentic, integrated life. People with disabilities who spend their lives passing can never relax, as any moment of letting down their guards may lead to detection. Additionally, their capacities for self-awareness and for intimate relationships with others are diminished by the fact that, on some level, they are always putting on an act.
Liberation from passing comes through casting out shame and through recognizing that without one’s disability, one would not be the person one is/ is becoming. Certainly, for example, I would not have become a counselor if I had been able-bodied--and I love being a counselor. That casting out process, though, is not a short or easy business. When I think of the agonies of self-consciousness I went through in first persuading myself to publicly wield my monocular (for reading street signs, wall menus, subtitles, etc.), I remember what a grand endeavor self-liberation can be.
In addition to the great emotional, personal, and interpersonal tolls that internalized oppression and passing can take on people with disabilities, passing causes a lot of practical problems too. If I want to get to my meeting on time, and I can’t read the number on the bus approaching the stop, then I need to ask the stranger standing next to me what the number is and I need to tolerate whatever that person’s judgments of a person who can’t read bus numbers may be. If I don’t ask for help, then I may get on the wrong bus or I may miss the bus I need. At a certain point, my desire to accomplish my own goals and live my life as I see fit surpassed my horror of what people would think. But, leading up to that point, I had a lot of anxious moments at bus stops.
Both my personal and my clinical experience suggest to me that asking for help is particularly difficult for people with disabilities as, even more than others in this do-it-yourself society we live in, disabled people are terrified of being perceived as “helpless,” which is, after all, so dangerously close to the “pathetic” label that is our greatest fear. One thing that I suggest to my disabled clients who are struggling with the issue of asking for help is that they start looking for opportunities to help others. In actuality, whether officially disabled or non-disabled, we all need help sometimes. Helping and being helped is, in fact, what holds humans together in community.
I dream of the day when our disabled children will grow up without having to learn to pass, and, subsequently, be able to mature without having to spend 20 years unlearning that procedure.
In the meantime, there’s counseling.Labels: "invisible" disability, asking for help, casting out shame, discrimination, internalized oppression, passing, self-liberation, stereotyping