3 Things That Influence How Disabled People Think About Their Disabilities

1. Personality

It should be obvious, but it’s still worth a reminder that disabled people are subject to the same personality differences as non-disabled people.

Some of us are introverts, others are extroverts. Some of us are analytical, others more emotional. Some are strategic, others reactive. Some of us take a detached, ironic, or sarcastic approach to our disability struggles, while others are more sincere, serious, and grimly determined. Some disabled people seem gloomy and pensive much of the time, while others always seem to be light and joyful. Some disabled people are proudly individualistic, while others just as proudly identify and struggle along with a wider disability community.

These are all qualities that can be found in people with or without disabilities. And while having a disability can influence how a disabled person’s personality develops, it’s probably more accurate to say that our underlying personalities affect how we live with our disabilities and present ourselves as disabled people.

Whether or not we crack dark jokes about or own disabilities, or speak about them only in the most serious terms with people we trust most isn’t so much a function of what kind of disability we have, but rather what kind of a person we are or have become. Whether we do better fighting for ourselves or for others like us, and whether we focus more on very local, specific matters or larger national and international issues depends on how our minds work and where our attention is naturally drawn. Optimism and pessimism too seems to be only partially related to the specifics of our disabilities. People with “less severe” seeming disabilities can be more dissatisfied and cautious than people with “more severe” impairments. These differences are often blamed on our disabilities themselves, or on our “moral” character, but they more often simply reflect our naturally different personalities.