If and When to Tell Other People about Disability and Illness

Posted on by Wendy E. Smith, MA, LMHC

So, you are corresponding with a man on an online dating site and he asks if you’d like to meet in a part of town that is awkward to get to by bus. Is this the time to tell him you are legally blind and can’t drive, or should you make some other excuse for wanting a different meeting location and tell him about your disability when you and he know each other better? Experience suggests that many people are not educated about what it is like to live with a disability and harbor prejudices that would cut off prospects of a date with this man right there. On the other hand, why should you have to hide who you are? And would you want a date with this guy anyway, if it turns out he can’t take in this piece of information in an open-minded manner?

With the huge and important exception of job interviews, I usually err on the side of straightforwardness when it comes to such matters. In my more defiant moments, I tell my friends that talking about illness and disability is a good screening device that helps eliminate the closed-minded in one fell swoop.

Thus, a few years ago, when I read Rhoda Olkin’s excellent book, What Psychotherapists Should Know about Disability, I was interested to discover that she made a point, on her first date with her future husband, to arrive at the restaurant first and get seated, so that he would not see that she had trouble walking as a result of Polio until after they had had the opportunity to converse during dinner. That made me think. After all, Rhoda is married and I’m single! Additionally, I thought of one of my very close friends and how, long after we had gotten to know each other very well, we were able to have some frank conversations about disability experiences and rights in which, he admitted, he may not have been able to participate so fully earlier on in our relationship. And he is a very thoughtful and open-minded guy.

I know that when I see men online who are wanting to date women of certain races and not of others, I eliminate them from my consideration immediately. I don’t want to date a racist, even an honest one. However, almost every guy states that he is looking for a woman who is young (or young looking) and fit as heck and “healthy”. As a person with many wonderful qualities and a chronic illness (which is, in fact, the source of some of those terrific traits), that offends me too; but, if I eliminated all those men, I’d be out of the dating business completely. Realistically, men might have to meet me first before they realize what is really attractive and important to them. Society is still in the dark ages when it comes to disability and illness.

So, “if and when to tell” is a tricky business. I still prefer to tell early and take my chances (What can I say? I’ve just got to be me!) but I keep a more open mind now when I help my clients with disabilities and illnesses consider their options in making these difficult choices. Perhaps every such choice must be made both on an individual and a case by case basis.

Disability: Overcoming versus Integrating

Posted on by Wendy E. Smith, MA, LMHC

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.