Thinking

My mind is going over and over a new idea. I just can't find a good answer.

Yesterday in my therapy appointment I realized that I am able to say that I have a disability but I don't give myself leeway to be disabled. I don't think I actually know quite what my limits realistically are. In fact I know I don't, as this is in large part the reason I am on disability: I kept trying to do more than I thought I could because I felt I had to.

I have all sorts of training in disability. Mainly it was in dealing with patients with physical disability though. Physical disability is a bit easier because if you have a limb amputated, you obviously cannot use that limb. Mental disability is less easily defined. I'm used to working with people with psychiatric disabilities, but it is easy to not consider my needs to be like those of my patients because they are so much more severely affected. My patients are basically those people who show no potential to develop skills to live with any level of independence greater than constant supervision and cueing. (Often they need much more than this). That's not the same as me, and I haven't thought of my limitations like that.

Instead I've thought of my disability as "making things harder" and then when I couldn't do something I got mad at myself. One of the things that is hardest for me is that at this point, and for a number of years now, I can't go to church. There is too much stimulation and it triggers symptoms. For years now I've been angry at myself for not trying harder, instead of simply admitting that this is something I cannot do. I have a ton of paperwork waiting for me at work that I haven't been able to do. It never occurred to me that it wasn't getting done because I couldn't do it. I thought I was just being lazy or bad at my job or something. I'm not sure that I had considered anything beyond my abilities if I pushed hard enough until last night.

Somehow admitting this feels like giving in. Yet it also makes so much sense. This is what I will be trying to figure out now I guess.