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[med trauma]
Sometimes people talk about internalized ableism in the undiagnosed/recently diagnosed community as if it's a character flaw and not a common side effect of a lifetime of medical neglect & trauma, and that omission makes me want to scream?
Sometimes people talk about internalized ableism in the undiagnosed/recently diagnosed community as if it's a character flaw and not a common side effect of a lifetime of medical neglect & trauma, and that omission makes me want to scream?
It is, for example, really incredibly difficult to relate to a lot of disability theory if you don't know what your impairment is.
[med trauma]
And it's incredibly difficult to process trauma that you don't yet have the tools & language to contextualize.
And it's incredibly difficult to process trauma that you don't yet have the tools & language to contextualize.
And without that context or understanding of your impairment, the idea of accommodations is frankly laughable for a lot of people.
And then when those same folks are like "I don't identify as disabled because everybody has always told me I'm just lazy AND I don't have a name for my impairment so I don't know if it qualifies AND I don't think accommodations will help me?"
They get told they don't understand.
They get told they don't understand.
Anyway I don't know, disability is not a monolith and we're not going to welcome undiagnosed & recently diagnosed folks into the community by telling them they're interpreting their own experiences wrong.
[med trauma]
I mean honestly, telling undiagnosed folks that they're interpreting their experiences incorrectly is a type of lateral ableism that's nearly indistinct from the medical gaslighting that defines many undiagnosed folks' experiences.
That's why it fires me up.
I mean honestly, telling undiagnosed folks that they're interpreting their experiences incorrectly is a type of lateral ableism that's nearly indistinct from the medical gaslighting that defines many undiagnosed folks' experiences.
That's why it fires me up.
