The original quote from the blog Radical Neurodivergence Speaking. Please click above to read the whole blog entry ‘Overcoming’ Is Not a Moral Obligation.
Society demands that we keep overcoming, overcoming, overcoming. But we don’t have to. Nowhere is it written that to be a really real human you have to brute force your way through your limits. Nowhere is it written that not doing so makes you less worthy. For most people, constantly refusing to acknowledge that you have limits is seen as a problem. We all have limits & we are supposed to acknowledge them, know where they are, work within them.
But when you have a disability, it’s like everyone expects you to push past your limits all the time. They want to be inspired, or they want to not have to deal with the fact that a disability means “there are things I cannot and will never be able to do”, even as they expect me to know there are things I can do that they will never be able to.
So we are pushed to keep ‘overcoming’, and if we can’t we are failures and lazy. But if we can, we aren’t really disabled. It’s a no win either way. Our choices are be burned out or be looked down on even more, be told we aren’t disabled because we can do xyz or because we can’t.Brilliant. That is all.
Re-reblogging for truth.
This. We are constantly saying that we feel like we give 110% and the world wants 300% and we just do not have it in us. This is particularly hard as a college student. We know that college is supposed to push you and make you grow as a person, but we are bodily diagnosed with panic disorder with acute agoraphobia - there are days that sometimes, we just can not get out of the house and even if we can, sometimes we can not go to a certain class because of reasons or do a certain thing because of reasons. This is not because we are lazy, not applying ourselves, don’t care about our future, are not invested in x thing or whatever other thing that people think. We actually had an instructor one semester who said she had panic disorder and understood our limitations. We thought we had an ally. Nope. She failed us for attendance because her panic disorder apparently isn’t as bad as ours so she couldn’t fathom the depths of something as bad as what we have. We quit jobs - not because we don’t care or don’t want to be successful, but because of our base responses to fear and stress, which of course, makes our stress worse, because great, we got away from the triggering response to work, but now how are we going to pay the bills? So we push on and push on and push on and then we hit our breaking point and nothing will ever be right again. This need to “overcome” is what eventually broke us. We are still trying to overcome a meltdown that’s almost a year old now. Because some days we are just not okay and that’s how it is. We are doing everything we can to work within our limits and be the best we can be, and that is what matters.
everything intending-to-burn said.
this has been a lesson i have failed to learn and further failed to accept for years, partially because it is what is socially accepted, but mostly because i came from a struggling household, and the only way i was told i would ever “get anywhere” was if i worked hard to ~overcome my hardships like my ancestors~ [illiterate depression-era immigrants], otherwise i was worthless, weak, and stupid.
this is pretty deeply ingrained in me still, there are days when the worst pain comes not from my ill health, but from my crushing guilt that somehow i am failing my family/friends/self/the world for not being able to do what “everyone” else does so effortlessly every day.
i could have had a 3.5/4.0 this semester, but my health failed me in the last two weeks of the semester and i just barely scraped a 2.9. honestly, i couldn’t care less about my GPA, but i still feel like a total bum for fear that my professors/peers think i don’t respect them or myself or our subject matter enough to “put in the work”. you know what’s “work”? sleeping at night. getting out of bed. putting on clothes in less than an hour [often clothing is so painful i panic and can’t leave the house]. sitting all the way through class without screaming or fainting [sitting in excruciating, people make me panic, and hallucinations are distracting]. tbh, i probably “work” harder at my education than half the people i know. it just shows in different ways.
i’m slowly learning how to be more ok with stuff like that.
(Source: djinnstorm)
