Positive Experiences with Disability

[michealsmells]

I hope this is alright to ask, but I want to conduct a teeny tiny study here. For people with disabilities, whether they be mental or physical, do you have any positive experiences to share about them? I know it's a little weird but I noticed all we do is focus on the negatives of disabilities rather than some of the good that can spring from them.

I, for example, have ADHD. I've had it my whole life of course and it's entirely shaped my life. I have a lot of trauma related to things it may of caused sure, but I also have a lot of good memories! The feeling of hyperfocusing on my college work is one of the most recent. I'm taking Chemistry, which is a lot of Math, and I'm LOVING it. And I HATE math. Also having special interests is something I really treasure that I can't understand others don't experience it. Yeah they can get in the way at times and I might get too excited about things that aren't that huge, but I have no idea how others don't have that One or Two Things that will just, no matter what, bring them out of a dark place and completely take over their thoughts. In a good way of course.

So my question still stands, what are some positive experiences with a disability you may have? I really hope this thread doesn't come off as rude in any way. I know we suffer through a lot and each disability is different, its just that I don't think they're nearly as bad as made out to be. Its good to find positive light in things that will otherwise be negative.

 

[Midoriya]

Ooo, I totally get what you’re going for here! No worries.

I was born with Aspergers (Autistic Spectrum Disorder), and it has honestly made me consider things in ways not others nor myself would had I not been born with it. It has made me smart in some ways, and affected me socially in others, but I honestly just like to be able to consider things, anything, in life from many different perspectives because of it. I won’t say it defines me because it really doesn’t, and I don’t like labels, but I am glad it has been a part in shaping me into the kind person I am today.

 

[xSuperMario64x]

Unfortunately mental disorders run in my family (especially my mom's side) so I deal with a lot of stuff. The most prominent for me are Aspergers, inattentive ADHD (ADD), and ofc anxiety/depression. I wouldn't say there's really anything positive about having anxiety or depression but the other two are p interesting.

Having Aspergers or ADHD can cause someone to have "special interests" and I have both so it seems to be really prominent for me. It's prob not difficult to notice that I have a narrow interest pool and I'm really interested in the things in that narrow pool. Sometimes I feel like I'm acting like a child because it seems like a lot of the things I love are things that a re marketed towards children (for a great example, I'm a big fan of Super Mario but because it's mainly marketed at young boys I often find myself going to the young boys' section at stores just to see if they have any stuff like that lol. For another example, I really love rainbows but when looking up rainbow clothes they're always clothes for little girls. Luckily the LGBT community exists for this purpose lol love yall).
And ofc there's all the other stuff that comes with having Aspergers and ADD. Inability to focus very well, prominent memory loss, repetitive movements and speech, borderline weird obsessions, ya get it.

I guess a positive aspect of it all is that it makes me uniquely myself. Though that can also be negative because it makes it difficult to find people irl who like me. But I wouldn't care if someone told me that I need to stop playing the games that I like because "they're for kids." It's something that I like and I won't stop just cause someone else thinks it's not age appropriate or smth.

And about getting super excited over small things, that happens to me! It doesn't happen often because my friends/parents don't seem to understand what it is that would make me so happy (although tbf I'm afraid to talk about my specific interests with people irl in fear of being ridiculed) but there are times when I'll see something that I really like and I'll just make this really awkward squeak noise and jump around (hence the feeling of being ridiculed).
But it's those little things that remind us to be happy! I could never truly be unhappy when I'm in my room, because I'm surrounded by the things that I love! ☺
(I mean seriously tho how could someone be sad when WALOOGI IS A THING THAT EXISTS???)

 

[Seastar]

Oh gosh, all the stuff about "special interests"... Yeah, that's me. I have autism and I just... get obsessed over things... things that are usually marketed towards children such as cartoons and Nintendo games...
I can't help it, but I also don't want it to stop. I'm happy being the way I am.

 

[biibii]

i have extremely debilitating rheumatoid arthritis. my doctor said that if all treatments fail, i could be in a wheelchair before 28. i got diagnosed at 15 and will never be able to live a life medicine/injection free. RA took my biggest passion away from me which was dance. When I first got diagnosed, I was a medical anomaly. I went from being perfectly healthy and having perfect range of motion everywhere, to waking up the next morning with a 38-degree contracture in my arm. I couldnt move it. I couldnt stretch it. My mom had to dress me in the mornings as I cried in pain. RA is horrible, I wouldnt wish it on my worst enemy, but I think it was a wakeup call I very much needed. My whole life, from a young age, I was riddled with extreme anxiety stemming from a fear of vomiting that took control of my life. Slowly, it went from vomiting to just being scared of any illness or medical equipment. I would shelter myself away from my family and friends and washed my hands so religiously that my skin would crack. If someone near me felt sick, I would break down and cry, sometimes even faint from the impending doom I felt. My mental health was nonexistent, and even made me question why I was here in the first place. I stopped eating normally and only consumed “safe foods” out of my irrational fears. With my diagnosis, I had to toughen up. I was faced with the possibility of receiving chemotherapeutic treatment and with having to inject myself weekly in order to get better. I refused to let people touch me out of fear of transmitting “disease” to me, but I had to start visiting an occupational therapist to regain the motion in my arm. With my medicine, my energy returned, and thus my appetite. I stopped being so scared. I had become accustomed to the 800 mil trek from home to my specialist. RA was and is the most difficult thing I have ever gone through, but it helped me recover a little from my mental wellbeing. I eventually got a procedure done in my elbow which restored 90% of my movement. I am grateful now to be alive, despite my “complications”.

below is an image of my arm FULLY EXTENDED around my diagnosis date

Spoiler

 

[idiotdoomspiral]

i have ASD and while i have a lot of negative experiences around it i have a lot of positive ones too. i was diagnosed in 2016 and at some point i was in complete denial but that has changed a lot over time - especially now that im not around people anymore who told me that im "normal" enough to not have it. i was very shy growing up, i was in my own world most of the time but socialising was fine for me until i became self aware that i just didnt really understand how to do it which then made me self conscious if that makes sense. in the right environment i feel i can socialise well, my special interest is music and i go to concerts to see bands or artists that i like. ive had some great conversations with people there that have really stuck with me, experiences like that keep me motivated. i wouldnt change a thing about myself that has to do with autism but my social anxiety is something i would like to work on! its definitely not easy as i feel like im an alien growing up in a world that is hard to understand but i still think my autistic traits which make me the person i am are much more positive than negative

 

[Dwayne Johnson]

i've been stumped on how to write this for a few hours without it coming out too negative (this is a thread about positivity after all lol) but here goes...

my experience with my disability has been okay i guess? i was diagnosed when i was 7 and at the time i was too young to really think anything of it, after all to me it just seemed like another doctors appointment but with a lot of questions and that was it. it really didn't start to hit me until i got to junior high that i was different then my peers, mainly because i was still acting like we all did in elementary school while they started to mature, then i started to realize the scope of things. im not really proud of how long it took me to grow out of some things but eventually i did, but by then i was halfway through hs and the social damage was done, so i pretty much became an outsider. i wouldn't say that was a bad thing though, since now i wasn't being constantly berated for being "weird" by my "friends". but here's where it starts getting better: i had the alone time to really work on the aspects that i struggled with before, and by the time it came to graduating i was capable enough to fit in with most people, i moved on from my bad hs experiences and my first year out was great, and im looking forward to the future.

i used to suffer from pretty bad panic attacks, but i was able to overcome them, and now i rarely have them, which im really proud of. ive also helped a lot of people dealing with the same problems i had through public school figure out ways to use their differences in a productive way, and it makes me happy to see them finally smiling and enjoying themselves. i also have a really good memory, almost photographic, which is really helpful for remembering studies (now if only i wasn't so lazy lol), and while i did move on from a lot of my old obsessions, i still have a few hobbies and interests that i love, like anime, hockey and film so i didn't strip away everything that makes me who i am, i just knew which parts i had to shed to improve myself. i didnt say what exactly i have because i still am a bit insecure about it, due to negative reactions ive gotten because of it and just the general way it seems to be viewed by people. i hope one day i'll have the confidence to come to terms with it but for now i still am a bit embarrassed of having it, but thats about it.

sorry for such a long post, i just felt like i needed to get it off my chest lol. hope its not too painful to read

 

[michealsmells]

I dont know how to respond to all of you guys individually so I'll try to say this best as a blanket statement. I'm proud of you all. Its really hard to read through some of the struggles you've gone through but the fact that you can look back at them and smile at seeing how far you've come is so, SO important and sweet.

You all have shown that you arent defined by your disabilities. I know that sounds sappy and corny but it's true! You're here today and that means that you've survived everything thats been thrown at you.

Besides my adhd, I have depression and anxiety (caused mostly by trauma ) and they can be a bench and a half to deal with. Whats nice is that I can look back on horrible things that have happened, though not in too much detail otherwise ill get anxious, and see all the steps I took from there to here. Some steps have crumbled away and I can't remember them. Some seemed to have changed. Some I just see from a different perspective. Either way I'm happy to have grown as a person and taking time to be proud of that is good. Just like taking time to look at something that may have been a curse and twist it into a blessing.

I'm rambling. Basically I love all of you youre so valid and amazing and I couldn't be happier that you'd be willing to share.

 

[Xara]

hoo boy - the biggest mental disability i have is anxiety and it is absolutely gruelling. it makes my life hell and makes the tiniest of tasks and situations seem so much worse than they should be but in a way, i’m also kind of grateful to it. before i even started experiencing anxiety when i was much younger, i was honestly not a great kid at all - i was a brat and quite frankly, a bully, and i didn’t care about anything or anyone but myself with no regard for the things i did and said. anxiety’s definitely helped me think about my actions and the things i say more carefully, and while i think too much a lot of the time, i genuinely believe anxiety saved me from a lifetime of being an ass ;;

 

[idiotdoomspiral]

Besides my adhd, I have depression and anxiety (caused mostly by trauma ) and they can be a bench and a half to deal with. Whats nice is that I can look back on horrible things that have happened, though not in too much detail otherwise ill get anxious, and see all the steps I took from there to here. Some steps have crumbled away and I can't remember them. Some seemed to have changed. Some I just see from a different perspective. Either way I'm happy to have grown as a person and taking time to be proud of that is good. Just like taking time to look at something that may have been a curse and twist it into a blessing.

my post might be very messy but hopefully its easy to understand

i have had trauma to deal with as well to the point where my whole life has been a blur. to cope i stuck myself in an imaginary world which lasted for years and years, i completely shut myself off from everyone in real life. looking back on it now with the messages i sent to my online friends i gave them hints on how i felt and what happened to me which seems like a subconscious thing i did. i never thought it bothered me since i was never in touch with my emotions so when i was told i was severely ill it didnt phase me because it was all i had ever known. when i was first sent to the mental health team they were hesitant to work extensively with me because i was in that bad of a state, i still dont understand why this is but it was a very slow and gradual thing. this whole situation is a blur for me as well. the more i understood what my emotions were the more explosive i became and i got a lot off my chest from it. it was the darkest point in my life but it was also the starting point of coming to terms with myself and figuring out who i was. while i am still trying to find out what i can do in this world i have come a very long way which is hard to accept sometimes as i still have depressive episodes, but ultimately i am proud that i am still alive despite everything.

the way i dealt with it i could attribute to autism, not that i think its to blame at all - its just difficult for people to really know whats wrong if i expressed it in a way that might be outside the norm. im still rarely ever expressive unless something makes me really happy or really sad or angry and even then i tend to keep to myself about those things or express them as privately as possible. i understand myself a lot better now and accept myself for who i am but its still a giant hurdle to make the effort for someone else to understand me. the one thing i want to say to people is just because i dont tell you how i feel it doesnt mean that i dont want to. a common misconception towards autistic people is that we are incapable of understanding others or feeling empathy (i have also seen this towards adhd) which is complete garbage. it might be a slower process especially if trauma is involved but we have our own ways of expressing things and we are all our own individuals. we all have our own quirks, strengths and weaknesses and i hope the world becomes more accepting towards our own.

 

[ting1984]

Another Aspie here. Diagnosed in 2014 at the age of 29.

Despite some major social difficulties, I do have an ability to focus on narrow tasks in great detail. Once people get past my lack of tact and inability to socialize in preferred or expected ways with others, they can tell I can gather large amounts of info on topics, and apply familiar operations to tasks with great accuracy and precision. I've gotten a lot of praise for that, when people bother to actually give me the opportunity to do so.

 

[Neb]

My autism is very mild. Outside of social development and sensitivity to sights and sounds, I’m pretty close to being neurotypical. Even so, I wasn’t able to make neurotypical friends for the longest time. There were simply too many conversational skills that I lacked. Out of desperation I spent months studying social skills books. Learning the techniques that autism kept from me was so rewarding. I lost most of my self hatred and made several online friends on my own! That joy is the best experience I’ve had with the disability.

 

[UglyMonsterFace]

I wish I could find something positive to come from my social anxiety and just anxiety in general.. and other issues I have, but I guess that opportunity just hasn't come to me. I suppose I could say that it has given me a level of empathy and understanding that I otherwise might have lacked without my own experiences so that's kind of a good thing

 

[Dinosaurz]

It’s difficult to think of positives when something has affected everything you do and your whole life in such a negative way.

I mean if you feel good about your disability great but wish I could relate lol

 

[that-writergirl]

I'm a part-time wheelchair user, and there's definitely been some positives to it! It's connected me with a great community, and I've discovered that I'm super interested in disability law, which I never would have looked into. I also have a rad cane named Penelope, which is a fun fashion statement. My scooter drives pretty fast, which is fun, and I never have to worry about "practical" footwear when I'm in it! (I just got the cutest heels I would never be able to wear walking around.) I like to enjoy the little things–it makes the rest of it more bearable

 

[Mary]

Mental stuff runs in my family. I myself struggle with depression, and my dad has bipolar disorder (rapid-cycling). It made my life hard for a while, especially when I was like ages 11-15. My dad’s mood swings would make him aggressive, which would lead to massive fights between him and my mom. Sometimes they would get physical, and sometimes I would jump in (although this made it worse more often than not.) For a while i felt like I was walking on eggshells- the tiniest thing could set him off, and then the whole day would be inevitably ruined. For a while it looked like my parents would get divorced, and mom would often kick him out to go stay in a hotel. My siblings were younger than me, and I had to reassure them. We were all really scared at the time. Meanwhile, I was going to Catholic school, where I had no friends (our class was only 7 people) and was bullied. I remember wanting to be home all day when I was at school, and then getting home just to wish I were at school. I was also struggling with my own ADHD and depression, and trying to keep my head above water. Because my dad works in the finance industry, we couldn’t really tell people about his struggles - no one would let him manage their money if they knew. I felt so alone and there was really no one I could talk to at the time. He eventually got a diagnosis and is doing really well now. He has been medicated for years with major success. Once he was more stable, I was also able to get treatment and am doing well also.

The whole experience was very painful for me, and for my whole family. I can honestly say, though, that it shaped who I am as a person in a very positive way. It made me a lot more empathetic - you never really know what a person is going through. It also made me a good listener, because I never want anyone to feel alone like I felt in those years. I’m thankful for the experience now, and that my family relationships are stronger for what we’ve gone through.

 

[IronDefender]

I am autistic with an intellectual disability. I wasn't diagnosed till I was 15 (grade 9) so I didn't know there was something 'off' about me for half my life; only my parents knew but didn't bother to get me tested. I became very depressed over it and because of my parents influences, I was taught to hate myself for it. I didn't have many friends at school but had I one during high school that I still keep in contact with to this day. Now that I'm older and becoming more independent, and meeting more people with disabilities; I've started to embrace and even be proud of not only my autism but also my intellectual disability, I want to be a disability advocate and meet other autistics who also have cognitive related disabilities.

 

[michealsmells]

Hey since my disabilities are kinda UHHH kicking my butt right now and I just need some dang positivity, I'm bringing this thread back. I just,, wanna know what people have found that helps them through it.

 

[ReanimatedSorceress]

ADHD here. My "special interest" changes often with few exceptions (like Animal Crossing) and as a result I have retained a lot of information of about many things, ranging from entertainment, to various skills, and topics.

"A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one"

 

[SolaireOfAstora]

I technically have autism (it's an ongoing debate among my medical professionals lol) but I've always had a special interest in chemistry too. I also have an outstanding memory (I memorized the entire periodic table pretty easily) so there's definitely an upside.

I've also "outgrown" most of my "autistic tendencies" for instance, I'm VERY sarcastic which is odd for autistic ppl.