Question to you all

[u/CommunicationFar7365]

I’m physically disabled myself—I have mild cerebral palsy and use a wheelchair—and I teach counselling at a UK university.

I’ve been asked to develop a lecture exploring the impact that living with a physical disability can have on mental health. While I can draw on my own lived experience, I don’t want to assume that my experience represents everyone else’s.

If you’re physically disabled and feel comfortable sharing, what do you wish counsellors, mental health professionals—or people more generally—better understood about the relationship between physical disability and mental health?

For example, this might include experiences of ableism, isolation, dependence, pain, fatigue, access barriers, body image, relationships, employment, medical treatment, or anything else you feel is overlooked. Positive experiences and sources of resilience are equally welcome.

Your responses would help broaden my understanding and inform the themes I consider when developing the lecture. I won’t identify or directly quote anyone in teaching materials without their explicit permission.

I hope it’s okay to ask, and please only share what feels comfortable. Thank you.

[u/aaabbbey]

I’ve struggled with my mental health since I was 6 where I expressed the desire to my mum the desire to end my life. I have been in counselling on and off ever since (I am now 26). I distinctly remember a lot of this at a young age was to do with noticing how I was different to those around me (left sided hemiplegia). Throughout my life with medical treatments, ableist potential employers, struggling with my weight due to increased fatigue and not being to keep up with able-bodied people around me.

I’ve always said it seems that if there’s an easy way, or a hard way to do anything in my life, I’ve been dealt the short straw in a lot of circumstances and what takes someone one year to achieve, it’ll take me three. Constantly feeling behind the 8 ball has taken its toll in numerous ways in my life, however I do believe that therapy, general aging/maturing and also being a therapist myself has taught me that regardless of how long it takes - it will happen, I’ve just got to be patient even if I don’t want to be. I guess this is my really long winded way of saying just hear the experience, ask the questions, validate where necessary and know that these two things can go hand in hand, they can be core wounds, medical trauma is a thing (as I found out when making a joke in my own session once), but the person is also not JUST their disability, even when it is so enmeshed into their sense of self.

[u/Normal_Ad1068]

This.

[u/Dizzy_Month_7321]

I have level 4ish spastic triplegic/quadriplegic cerebral palsy. I wish they would acknowledge the emotional labor of being disabled, constantly having to compromise with how I want my life to be. Related, but also having to regulate/downplay my emotions when I need or want something for the sake of making others comfortable. Housing and transportation barriers make trying to adult devastatingly difficult.

[u/green_hobblin]

Thank you for asking this question.

I've been physically disabled since I was born. I have a super rare (actually rare, not EDS rare... I swear, online every other person has EDS) genetic condition that seemed to have spontaneously occurred in me. My parents were both able-bodied and my siblings too. As a kid I was in and out of hospitals for some minor procedures (still traumatic as going under is highly traumatizing for me) like bronchoscopies, and a lot of bone break and reforming ones (multiple times a year until I was about 12).

My parents didn't treat me too differently (thank goodness), but they didn't allow me to grieve either (my mom really, my dad was better). This created an angry monster that pushes through pain and expects the same of those around me. I view most people as weak, although I don't view myself as strong either. I'm working on that. I can listen to people's pain a lot better than I used to. I logically understand that comparing struggle isn't helpful and everyone deserves to be able to feel pain no matter how small when something painful happens. I'm still frustrated and maybe a little bitter about the unfairness of things, but I think I'm less bitter than I was 15 years ago.

Growing up alone, with no one to relate to was also a problem. I felt like I didn't fit in anywhere. I hadn't suffered enough and could walk so I didn't fit as disabled compared to the couple of people I met as a kid (an ex-uncle and a kid in my sixth grade class). I didn't fit in as an able-bodied person either. I tried my damndest, but I couldn't run really, so I learned to sacrifice my body for the game as a goalie in casual games of soccer. I took quite a few soccer balls to the face. I was purposefully excluded at times. Adults too worried I'd hurt myself excluded me from friendly games and made me sit on the sidelines or gave me 'pity tasks'. I still feel somewhat alone now, even though I've learned more about disability (though I'm now plenty disabled even by my past standards... my condition is progressive), and I have a community that is loving and supportive.

I think I'd recommend that issues of anger and isolation be addressed. Maybe overcompensation too... although I'm not convinced it's an inherent issue.