Internalized Ableism and Me
A month ago, disability advocate said to me that my CPSTD is a form of disability. And I was like, WHAT? And then I was like, HOW? And then I was like, MAYBE?
And then I sat on it. I didn't tell anyone, not even my therapist. It felt really big and I wasn't sure if I was in a place to process that information.
Then a couple weeks ago, a friend of mine shared this:
And I felt CALLED THE FUCK OUT!
And then I sat on it again. Not in therapy. Nothing.
And then I got laid off. And I don't want to talk about the layoff. It's because of the pandemic and soooo many other people are in this boat and 2020 is the fucking worst. The end.
Except it's not the end, is it? Because for every single human, big events like that have an effect on our mental health and when you live with CPTSD, it can have a major effect, so I guess I need to work through that. Fine. Okay. I'll talk about it.
Fine! Okay fine.
Something people have commented on for years is that I'm "good in a crisis." Something scary happens and I don't freak out. Nope. I jump in, take control, handle it. Then I freak out later. I can think of so many instances in which I did that over and over and over. Jump in. Take Control. Handle it.
And that's exactly what happened when I got laid off. I was fine! Everything is fine! I can handle it! And my husband looked stressed and so I comforted him and told him I'LL BE FINE! IT'S FINE! And friends called to see if I was okay and I was like, YES I'M FINE! And I wasn't faking it. I was handling it. I was feeling fine. Actually, I wasn't feeling anything.
Because there are 3 innate responses to stressful situations for humans: fight, flight, and freeze (there's also Fawn response, which is a learned behavior and also a coping mechanism of mine). This is the freeze response and I've been doing it my whole life, because my whole life, from the start, has been packed with trauma and I've coped by freezing, by feeling nothing, by compartmentalizing and powering through.
And by taking control.
I've talked about this before here and in therapy. Being a control freak isn't an unusual thing, but I developed the need to control as a survival mechanism. Because I had nothing I could control in childhood and adolescence, not even my emotions, not anything - because my mother controlled everything and dictated every bit of my life, I cope by finding anything I can to control to have something, anything of my own.
I still do this. When I have some things in my life I control, I cope fine. When I lose control or feel like too many things are out of my control, I melt down. Which is exactly what happened after my freeze response wore off and I started to feel again and descended back into my old friends depression and panic.
Suddenly, I started cataloging all the ways I don't have control over my life, from my income to feeling like I'm waiting to get COVID19 and die. Talk about no control.
And, honestly, finding ways to contribute to the Black Lives Matter movement had been keeping me going the last few months, feeling like I could help in some small ways, by educating others and donating money and calling representatives, I felt like I had something positive I could DO to make a difference. But then I found myself depressed and hurting and having no energy to even take care of myself, let alone be active, and suddenly having no money to donate, wellll, I felt like shit. I felt useless.
None of that is true, btw. I know I'm not useless. I know that's a lifetime of capitalist programming telling me I should be DOING THINGS and that I only have value if I'm productive in some way. I know that's not true. But telling myself that and believing it are harder to do.
Which brings me back to ableism, because I think capitalism is a huge component of ableism, which places a preimum on a person's productivity and then acsribes less value to a disabled person thusly.
So maybe I can have this conversation about using that word for myself: disabled. I don't know if I'm totally ready for that yet and I know part of that is ableism, but it's also extremely complicated give my mother's disability and her hypochondria and, I think, her desire to be disabled because she equated positive attention to any physical ailment of any kind.
That conversation is long and complicated and really best suited to have with my therapist (and we have, at length), but I still think it's important to note that in my deep unconscious brain, my biggest and most formative experience with disability is with my abusive mother and her relationship with disability. And that will take a long time to unpack, but I think it informs this process in a huge way.
It also bears noting that I don't think of myself of disabled because I feel like it's sort of a sacred thing that deserves protecting and not because it's some terrible thing to be. But, I have to admit that is problematic too, because it's a form of gatekeeping, even if I haven't been through that gate myself, and that it's really not my or anyone else's place to say who gets excluded and what counts as disability. Who does decide and can I speak to them?
Again, that' going to take some time to unpack.
But if I'm honest with myself, my trauma does affect my daily life, both personally or professionally, both mentally and physically. I'll go back to that bingo card, because holy shit I've felt or thought every single one of these.
I've felt these things when in mental anguish, but also physical anguish, because my trauma has physical symptoms too, physical symptoms that both doctors and employers have refused to understand. Doctors just want to mediate individual symptoms and not the cause, but when I have constant digestive illnesses that I know track alongside massive anxiety and panic attacks, I know it's the anxiety causing that.
I know that after a panic attack, I'll be in massive amounts of pain for days after. I had a panic attack on Sunday and the last few days, my whole body has been in pain. My joints ache and my wrists are killing me typing this. My head aches. My back hurts. I could barely sleep last night due to the pain.
Is that not effecting my abilities?
I know that a few boss' ago, when I did catering, I let a boss make me feel lazy when I was in too much pain to do something alone. Asking for help is not laziness. I believe that an employer needs to provide accommodations, so why didn't I apply that to myself?
Oh yeah I know why! Because my childhood abuse makes it incredibly hard for me to be assertive and internalize what authority figures tell me!
So how is that not effecting my daily life?
CPSTD means the world is a landmine of emotional triggers that could give me debilitating emotional and physical symptoms, so why can't I admit that that means I could, in fact, have a disability?
May I refer you to the bingo card again?
A while ago, I was talking to a good friend about her trauma and she said something like, "But everyone goes through this. I'm not special." And I said, "Who said anything about special? We all have trauma; that doesn't mean it's not significant or important."
I think that applies here. Likely, way more people have disabilities that we think or admit and that gatekeeping and capitalism and internalized ableism has kept a lot of people behind and in pain and from accessing the things they need. That we need.
I'm not totally ready to make any pronouncements about my identity yet, but I do think that this is a good time to work through it all.
Hey! You're still here! Since you lasted this long listening to me talk about myself, please take a moment to donate some money or sign some petitions or contact your representatives:
Donate to Black Lives Matter
Donate to the ACLU
Donate to Planned Parenthood
Sign Black Live Matter Petitions
Demand Safe and Easy Voting in Every State
And then I sat on it. I didn't tell anyone, not even my therapist. It felt really big and I wasn't sure if I was in a place to process that information.
Then a couple weeks ago, a friend of mine shared this:
And I felt CALLED THE FUCK OUT!
And then I sat on it again. Not in therapy. Nothing.
And then I got laid off. And I don't want to talk about the layoff. It's because of the pandemic and soooo many other people are in this boat and 2020 is the fucking worst. The end.
Except it's not the end, is it? Because for every single human, big events like that have an effect on our mental health and when you live with CPTSD, it can have a major effect, so I guess I need to work through that. Fine. Okay. I'll talk about it.
Fine! Okay fine.
Something people have commented on for years is that I'm "good in a crisis." Something scary happens and I don't freak out. Nope. I jump in, take control, handle it. Then I freak out later. I can think of so many instances in which I did that over and over and over. Jump in. Take Control. Handle it.
And that's exactly what happened when I got laid off. I was fine! Everything is fine! I can handle it! And my husband looked stressed and so I comforted him and told him I'LL BE FINE! IT'S FINE! And friends called to see if I was okay and I was like, YES I'M FINE! And I wasn't faking it. I was handling it. I was feeling fine. Actually, I wasn't feeling anything.
Because there are 3 innate responses to stressful situations for humans: fight, flight, and freeze (there's also Fawn response, which is a learned behavior and also a coping mechanism of mine). This is the freeze response and I've been doing it my whole life, because my whole life, from the start, has been packed with trauma and I've coped by freezing, by feeling nothing, by compartmentalizing and powering through.
And by taking control.
I've talked about this before here and in therapy. Being a control freak isn't an unusual thing, but I developed the need to control as a survival mechanism. Because I had nothing I could control in childhood and adolescence, not even my emotions, not anything - because my mother controlled everything and dictated every bit of my life, I cope by finding anything I can to control to have something, anything of my own.
I still do this. When I have some things in my life I control, I cope fine. When I lose control or feel like too many things are out of my control, I melt down. Which is exactly what happened after my freeze response wore off and I started to feel again and descended back into my old friends depression and panic.
Suddenly, I started cataloging all the ways I don't have control over my life, from my income to feeling like I'm waiting to get COVID19 and die. Talk about no control.
And, honestly, finding ways to contribute to the Black Lives Matter movement had been keeping me going the last few months, feeling like I could help in some small ways, by educating others and donating money and calling representatives, I felt like I had something positive I could DO to make a difference. But then I found myself depressed and hurting and having no energy to even take care of myself, let alone be active, and suddenly having no money to donate, wellll, I felt like shit. I felt useless.
None of that is true, btw. I know I'm not useless. I know that's a lifetime of capitalist programming telling me I should be DOING THINGS and that I only have value if I'm productive in some way. I know that's not true. But telling myself that and believing it are harder to do.
Which brings me back to ableism, because I think capitalism is a huge component of ableism, which places a preimum on a person's productivity and then acsribes less value to a disabled person thusly.
So maybe I can have this conversation about using that word for myself: disabled. I don't know if I'm totally ready for that yet and I know part of that is ableism, but it's also extremely complicated give my mother's disability and her hypochondria and, I think, her desire to be disabled because she equated positive attention to any physical ailment of any kind.
It also bears noting that I don't think of myself of disabled because I feel like it's sort of a sacred thing that deserves protecting and not because it's some terrible thing to be. But, I have to admit that is problematic too, because it's a form of gatekeeping, even if I haven't been through that gate myself, and that it's really not my or anyone else's place to say who gets excluded and what counts as disability. Who does decide and can I speak to them?
Again, that' going to take some time to unpack.
But if I'm honest with myself, my trauma does affect my daily life, both personally or professionally, both mentally and physically. I'll go back to that bingo card, because holy shit I've felt or thought every single one of these.
I've felt these things when in mental anguish, but also physical anguish, because my trauma has physical symptoms too, physical symptoms that both doctors and employers have refused to understand. Doctors just want to mediate individual symptoms and not the cause, but when I have constant digestive illnesses that I know track alongside massive anxiety and panic attacks, I know it's the anxiety causing that.
I know that after a panic attack, I'll be in massive amounts of pain for days after. I had a panic attack on Sunday and the last few days, my whole body has been in pain. My joints ache and my wrists are killing me typing this. My head aches. My back hurts. I could barely sleep last night due to the pain.
Is that not effecting my abilities?
I know that a few boss' ago, when I did catering, I let a boss make me feel lazy when I was in too much pain to do something alone. Asking for help is not laziness. I believe that an employer needs to provide accommodations, so why didn't I apply that to myself?
Oh yeah I know why! Because my childhood abuse makes it incredibly hard for me to be assertive and internalize what authority figures tell me!
So how is that not effecting my daily life?
CPSTD means the world is a landmine of emotional triggers that could give me debilitating emotional and physical symptoms, so why can't I admit that that means I could, in fact, have a disability?
May I refer you to the bingo card again?
A while ago, I was talking to a good friend about her trauma and she said something like, "But everyone goes through this. I'm not special." And I said, "Who said anything about special? We all have trauma; that doesn't mean it's not significant or important."
I think that applies here. Likely, way more people have disabilities that we think or admit and that gatekeeping and capitalism and internalized ableism has kept a lot of people behind and in pain and from accessing the things they need. That we need.
I'm not totally ready to make any pronouncements about my identity yet, but I do think that this is a good time to work through it all.
*********************
Hey! You're still here! Since you lasted this long listening to me talk about myself, please take a moment to donate some money or sign some petitions or contact your representatives:
Donate to Black Lives Matter
Donate to the ACLU
Donate to Planned Parenthood
Sign Black Live Matter Petitions
Demand Safe and Easy Voting in Every State
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