Yes! I am having this same type of struggle. That combined with the feeling that I’m not disabled enough to claim the label makes me feel really insecure about “coming out” as disabled. I still haven’t “come out” to many people because the few times I’ve worked up the nerve to mention it people get all concerned, as if now that they know I have a disability I’m about to fall over and die RIGHT NOW because I am so fragile and pathetic and they must PROTECT me and ask me if I need help every couple of minutes. Um, hello, I was just a regular, independent person to you a few minutes ago.

It is easy to write that, but in reality it is a lot harder to put into practice.

For example: part of my disability is an inability to articulate things easily. In one of my classes at university, several of my classmates are non-native english speakers. We all, in our various ways, have difficulty finding words sometimes, but somehow I’ve managed to convince myself that their reason for having difficulties is more legitimate that my reason.

I am working on it, but it is hard.

I still struggle with not seeing my mental illnesses and a moral failing on my part.
.-= thetroubleis´s last blog ..What It Is To Be A Monster =-.

Then the fibro got suddenly and severely worse and the months dragged on and my doctor suggested I start applying for things like social security disability and medicaid and the need arose for a disabled parking tag and a cane and a shower chair and … and my doctor wrote things on the application forms for this stuff that read “this patient is permanently and totally disabled” and it was like, yep. That’s me, now.

It took me having to focus intently for months on filling out forms that required me to list every single thing that made life difficult for me and had been making life difficult for me for years to really call myself disabled. And I suppose I was disabled all those years prior – not “permanently and totally” maybe, but enough that I always had to be hyper-aware of my limitations, couldn’t take or keep certain jobs, had to leave school and jobs I liked at various times, had to call in sick a lot even when I was able to be in school or work, etc.

So, I think for me, it’s not so much claiming the label for myself now, since I’ve been doing that for years already – but admitting that the label actually did apply to me before I realized it. That being totally unable to work wasn’t when I became disabled. It was just when I became too disabled to work. Ya know?
.-= Rosemary´s last blog ..Blahblah =-.

Just to touch on what you said about not claiming the label for oneself in comment 14, peanutbutter, the thought that people can try to force one into a label is really angry-making. I’ve been fortunate in that I got to label myself.

And yeah, deafness is a really weird one. Unless you try to communicate with a deaf person, you won’t know. We’re invisible up to that point. And it’s easy for alternate assumptions to be made instead. We’re rude. Antisocial. We’ve got it in for you. We have behavioral problems (do you know how many deaf people wound up in mental institutions back when institutionalization was the norm and even still today?). We’re ungrateful, nasty, don’t concentrate, don’t pay attention, ignore anything we’re not interested in, etc etc etc. (Or, we’re helpless, ignorant, childlike, vulnerable — a lot of this will be gendered, too.) Deaf people (particularly deaf men) for example, are frequently injured in confrontations with the police, who assume that the deaf person is defying them, not unable to hear & therefore cooperate, and get shot or tasered as a result.

One of the very interesting things (to me) about reading about “invisible disabilities” (for lack of any better description) is how often I’ve been nodding along going “Yes, yes, yes.” It’s been downright spooky sometimes.

myriad: You’ve done nothing wrong! Thank you for commenting.

So I more or less identify as being disabled for my emotional stuff – dissociation and PTSD and depression – but I have been coming to terms with some of my physical stuff lately and it feels like I’m starting all over again. Like I must be faking. A phrase I heard somewhere haunts me – some “researcher” claiming that Fibromyalgia was just what most people dismiss as “normal aches and pains” – I know it’s BS but I can’t get the phrase out of my head. Take that together with how good I’ve been at dissociating pain, and I feel like an asshole for claiming anything, for not carrying heavy stuff for people. Especially since I can push through the pain if I need to (and do so frequently/constantly) – so the self-talk says that I must not really have anything wrong with me. If I really had fibro (which I was diagnosed with just last month, but you know, I could have been faking during the exam), then I wouldn’t physically be able to push myself up the stairs, or whatever. Doing so hurts but I can still *do* it. And it’s definitely true that a lot of people with fibro have a lot more barriers/pain than I do. So am I physically disabled, or not? And what about how the emotional disabilities interact with the physical? If I am hurting all over partly due to a hard session at therapy, or encountering a trigger, does that make it not physical or not fibro? What if I’m remembering something that hurt before and it contributes to the pain now? It’s so tangled.

(Sorry for being so long-winded and maybe overly specific. I really, really love this blog and have been challenging myself to comment here, but I have severe social anxiety, so it’s scary to participate and I generally feel I’ve been doing it wrong. If it is too long or anything, please let me know. And sorry if this disclaimer was what is wrong.)
.-= myriad´s last blog ..just low =-.

I think I am going to very gently suggest that it’s probably best not to make too many assumptions about what constitutes a visible vs invisible disability. Deafness in particular can rather spectacularly and disastrously combine both elements of being very visible and at the same time completely invisible, and as a profoundly deaf person who can nevertheless speak, I run into that fact often enough to find your above quote somewhat jarring.

(Not to mention that I don’t necessarily claim the label disabled for *myself* either, although I recognize that I’m shoved into this category willynilly because I can’t hear.)

And it’s not the case that tootling along in a wheelchair suddenly makes everyone instantly aware of, and appropriately accommodating towards, your disability.

It’s a curious thing about disability, that PWD can be as ableist as the abled are toward PWD who have different disabilities from themselves. I’ve had to do some work on my own part in this area.

So, am I disabled? I’m not sure. I definitely identify with a lot of what Moria says– I feel like I’m capable of doing what anyone else does; I just have to work harder. I have talked to the disability office on my campus in order to let my professors know, mostly because I’ve been having more and more trouble getting out of bed and to class on time, and I want my profs to know that I’m not late because I’m intentionally being disrespectful– I’m late because I physically can’t be on time.

But part of the reason I think I don’t accept the disability label– at least not now– is that I have to believe that this is temporary. Because if I don’t believe that I will get my anxiety & depression under control, the depression wins, and I won’t be able to get out of bed.