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As always, we ask that in order to participate in the weekly megathread, one self-identifies as some form of disabled, which is broadly defined in the community sidebar:
“Disability” is an umbrella term which encompasses physical disabilities, emotional/psychiatric disabilities, neurodivergence, intellectual/developmental disabilities, sensory disabilities, invisible disabilities, and more. You do not have to have an official diagnosis to consider yourself disabled.
Mask up, love one another, and stay alive for one more week.
The emotional hurdle for me is that it feels the opposite of brave. I’m inclined to look at the most extreme, visually evident disabilities and say I’m nowhere near that limited so calling my issues a “disability” is trivializing how desperately others need accommodations by playing up what I’m enduring.
I can walk through rationally why this mindset isn’t reasonable or healthy, but I’ve internalized so much invalidation that it’s hard to shake. Right now I can barely leave home so I can confidently state this is legitimate, but the instant my symptoms ease up I start believing I’ve been dramatizing the whole time. I know I’m wrong when I start believing that, I have so much evidence now to point to, but the emotions behind it just don’t dissipate.
It takes time. I can tell you that I sometimes feel like I’m only pretending to be disabled, even though I have a confirmed list of proven disabilities. I think this feeling of “I’m trivializing other people’s struggle by calling myself disabled” is a result of our conditioning - we’re always shown people who have it worse, or are reprimanded for needing help even though we “look fine” or some other nonsense. It’s a process of unlearning these beliefs because they have always been wrong, but it’s not like you can magically just say “I’m disabled and I need help” and suddenly everything is better. That’s what I meant when I said it takes strength and courage. You don’t just have to admit to yourself that you need help because of a disability, you also have to sit through a lot of waiting, degrading and belittling until you get a chance for help.
Again, I have no idea how to unlearn these structures, and this is how I’ve approached this problem for myself: I’ve usually just tried to stop myself from thinking this way and ask myself why I feel so bad when I think of myself as disabled. What I know by now is that none of the reasons have anything to do with my disabilities or myself. All the negative emotions tied to it come from what I’ve experienced others say or do to me, or the general difference in treatment I get when I tell people I’m disabled. Once I got there, it started becoming easier to accept disability as a label for myself because I know it’s true and I chose it, not because someone else tells me what I am and am not entitled to.