This short article was originally published on www.goodtherapy.org.
Media accounts of individuals with disabilities who have achieved something will often refer to such people as having “overcome” their disabilities in order to become successful. Sometimes such people will also be referred to as “brave,” as if they had another alternative to living with their disabilities.
The problem with this formulation is that it suggests that people with disabilities ought to, essentially, disown their impairments; it suggests that we succeed despite our disabilities, and not with them, or because of them. They are not really a part of us—just some sort of encumbrance—and they are certainly nothing we would claim as part of our identity as human beings. The best thing we can do, this way of thinking goes, is, through our achievements, render our disabilities invisible.
So, we end up with this condition (blindness, paraplegia, a learning disorder, or whatever it is) which is like some unwanted appendage that we have to drag around with us and feel ashamed of, get rid of, “overcome”. And our experience is dissonant and uncomfortable, because the truth is that being disabled is inseparable from who we are. We have developed from infancy with our disability, or acquiring a disability has markedly changed our lives. Either way, we wouldn’t be who we are without our disability, and having a disability is woven into the multi-faceted fabric of our everyday life. On the one hand, we are having disability-related experiences all the time, and, on the other hand, society is pushing us to consider our disability as irrelevant.
People with disabilities will often end up in therapy with anxiety disorders and/ or depression resulting from this dissonance. They often can’t feel comfortable in their own skins; they are burdened by shame and a sense of constantly needing to prove themselves; they are hyper-vigilant , self-conscious, self-blaming and/or self-punishing; they are workaholics or, on the other hand, feel blocked in their lives; they feel empty and say they don’t know who they really are.
The work of therapy is often to help people integrate their disabilities into their sense of self and let go of society’s mandates for them. The work is often to help people figure out how to live as themselves in the way that will be most fulfilling for them, given all the parameters of their lives, including their disabilities—society be damned.
So, if we are “successful” as people with disabilities, it is actually because we have succeeded in integrating our disabilities into our sense of self, and not because we have “overcome” them. Then, being disabled is a part of us, just as being Jewish or Turkish or short is a part of us. It is not THE thing about us, and it is not irrelevant.
Granted, we very likely will still have to deal with social discrimination (not to mention downright foolishness) and we still will have to deal with all of the pain-in-the-behind aspects of living with a disability on a daily basis and in an inaccessible world; but, psychologically, we will be freer.Labels: counseling, disability, identity, integrating, overcoming, success