How to Emotionally Cope With Having Disabilities

Last Updated: January 8, 2023 References Approved

Having a disability can be really hard, but there are many ways to accept your circumstance. In this article, you'll learn how to cope with having disabilities.

Steps

1
Organize yourself properly. Keeping your room, body, and lifestyle clean and organized can really lower your stress levels and help you be more confident.^{[1]
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Research source} Find help with any household tasks you can't do for yourself. If you're not capable of cleaning up after yourself, doing your own laundry or preparing your own meals, there are still several options:
- Ask family for help. If you have family members who are willing, this is usually the best choice. However, don't let real dependence attract codependence; sometimes the risk of getting help from family is being trapped in unhealthy family relationships, especially where they behave in abusive or patronizing ways. Understand your family relationships and if it appears that you're being harmed by such interactions, seek alternative sources of help.
- A second option is to ask friends for help and reciprocate with things that you can do. If you lack mobility but you're good at webpage writing or listing auction items online, maybe you can trade such work on a friend's website or listing their items to sell, in return for housekeeping help. Naturally, don't continue to help when it's not reciprocated - your time and effort are as valuable as those of abled people.
- A reliable option, if you can get it, is to seek local resources for independent living with disability. Some cities, counties, hospital programs, and so on, have either charities or government programs that help disabled people close gaps in their self care needs. You may be able to get a personal assistant who's paid to come over, spend time with you, run errands or drive you around if you're incapable of doing these things on your own. Search online and phone your local hospitals, clinics, government offices asking for contact numbers. Don't give up thinking there is nothing offered; you don't know what resources you have until you've checked them out.
- Consider moving to a new city or area with better resources made available to help disabled people live independently. You have a right to live in a clean, comfortable environment and to get help keeping a clean body if you can't manage this on your own. It's not your fault if you can't do these things on your own and it's not a character flaw.
- Accept help graciously and actively seek better alternatives if the people helping you are patronizing, cruel, or abusive. This is important in the long term - what's acceptable in an emergency might be "any port in a storm" but don't let yourself be trapped in a bad situation. Seek help lines and outside assistance from state, provincial, regional, or federal/national agencies and charities if you're in a bad situation and need help getting out of it.
2
Exercise often. Get plenty of exercise in any way that you can. If you're in a wheelchair, then ask your doctor about exercise options for you – there are a lot of them.^{[2]
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Trustworthy Source
HelpGuide
Nonprofit organization dedicated to providing free, evidence-based mental health and wellness resources.
Go to source} If you're not able to partake in exercise, then get all the mental exercise you can.
- Don't be ashamed if you can't exercise the way other people do. Exercises are designed for people with standard bodies and a full set of normal abilities. Don't measure your progress against other people's. Judge your progress realistically in relation to your own past efforts and results. Stop if it hurts, especially with back injury and disability, bad knees and any other condition that can cause sports injury.
- Remember that the Special Olympics has it right - everyone's a winner. If you manage any exercise at all, or any improvement in physical function, you've won something. Effort does count a lot more than it would for someone abled. Don't expect your results to be the same as someone who's abled and decides to change a sedentary lifestyle.
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3
Be polite and stay calm with obnoxious people. Even if somebody makes fun of you, there are ways to turn around the situation. When someone makes fun of you, keep your dignity. Be aware that heckler has just destroyed his or her reputation. A sarcastic remark or two can help – judge your timing and the reactions of people around the heckler. Be funnier than they are, especially in public situations with plenty of witnesses. If you laugh at someone who's trying to put you down, that can be a game-changer sometimes. Play to the audience, not to the idiot; you won't change that person's mind but you can make them look as foolish as they're really behaving.
- Be aware that many people are nervous about how to act around someone who's disabled. They're afraid of embarrassing themselves and may be patronizing without really realizing it, in an attempt to see themselves as nice people. Be firm when refusing unnecessary help – that's another big social pitfall.
- Be generous with other people's nervousness. Educate them politely, once they're used to it they'll get to know you as a person. Many people seem to hold the idea that disabled people ought to be pathetically grateful for unwanted advice and any attention at all. The more you don't play those games, the easier it is to start filtering your acquaintances for people who treat you with respect.
- Demand respect, and stay calm when you do. Keeping your head in face of all the social challenges of disability builds real courage. Eventually all the lousy stereotypes, idiotic reactions, codependent mind games and patronizing attitudes of others will become familiar. Each situation has its own effective counters. Learn to become assertive rather than aggressive or passive. You will need more social skills than someone who doesn't stand out as different.
- There's a stereotype that disabled people must be sweet, saintly, nice to everyone, and never have a bad day. Being nice to everyone on first meeting and cutting people some slack for initial bad reactions can help, but if it doesn't help, seek effective, assertive ways to deal with difficult people. Learn which friends you can genuinely trust. Don't let "be nice to everyone" become "be everyone's doormat and never express anything negative." You don't have to be Tiny Tim to demand human respect.
4
Let yourself grieve and go through all five stages of grief about your disability. Seek real support from therapists, counselors and trusted friends or family members. Learn to judge who's genuinely supportive and who's pitying - pity is just another flavor of humiliation and usually covers up the other's terror of winding up in your situation. Do your best not to take out your grief on the people in your life who are genuinely trying to help, even if they're not good at it.^{[3]
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5
Don't beat yourself up for it if you're not nice to everyone. Definitely don't beat yourself up for it if other people treat you badly. That's their problem. That's a measure of how ignorant they are or how petty and cruel.
6
Don't be surprised if people start thinking of you as brave. When you're done grieving and you've become used to something as everyday, it stops being a crisis or a tragedy. At the point your disability is just the way things are and you're used to it, this kind of reaction can feel patronizing. That's fair and normal, even when people are trying to be kind and supportive. When possible, try to accept compliments on your courage graciously but don't be afraid to explain to them, nicely, why you feel no more "brave" than anyone else. You can say something like, "Oh, everyone has different challenges in life; there's no need to focus on mine, when I'm sure you have your own. Either both of us are brave or neither of us are!"
7
Accept your disability. This is the most difficult part as it can be very discouraging. Accept that you may never walk, hear or see again and that you can still enjoy life. If your disability can be changed with physical therapy and treatment, seize the day and fight it every day.^{[4]
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Trustworthy Source
HelpGuide
Nonprofit organization dedicated to providing free, evidence-based mental health and wellness resources.
Go to source}
- Accepting your disability means grieving the loss of a normal status with no stigma against you and a life without enormous inconvenience. It's not right, it's not fair, it's not good. There is no up side to it but on the other side, it's not something wrong with your character either. Grief takes the time that it does.
8
Take advantage of what can be done. Some conditions like blindness or the loss of a limb require extensive retraining to use what prosthetics and life strategies can enrich your life. Even if you can't change the disability itself, you can improve your life by using every assist and strategy available. Don't be embarrassed to use a white cane or a service dog or a wheelchair. You'll be surprised how much easier life is when you have those aids than not.^{[5]
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Trustworthy Source
PubMed Central
Journal archive from the U.S. National Institutes of Health
Go to source}
9
Seek assistance from the community of other disabled people, especially those who've got the same conditions you do. They understand and they've been through everything you're going through now. They may have lists of contact numbers and resources for things you think you can't afford. They understand and accept the grief that comes with sudden disability and social pressures.^{[6]
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Research source}
- Seek support groups with people who face the same challenges. Think of them as challenges rather than thinking of yourself as a victim, this is a big step up from self-pity. Remember that your social challenges are real. Don't agree with people who are putting you down or laughing at you, that's perhaps the hardest thing to learn. You can't hold on to attitudes that denigrate disabled people or you're shooting yourself in the foot.
10
Try to overcome other prejudices. A person of a different religion, race, culture or social class may have a lot more experience dealing with the prejudice you live with than you did on becoming disabled. If you treat those around you with dignity, the best among them will reciprocate and you can at least find out who the stubbornly ignorant are.
- Obnoxious acquaintances aren't worth hanging onto. Obnoxious friends and family may get a longer chance to work on the relationship and more effort on your part, but recognize that sometimes that's a brick wall.
11
Get a hobby. Find something that you like to take your mind off of things, like sewing, jewelry making, woodworking, scrapbooking, painting, drawing, writing, birdwatching, collecting. Explore your interests. Some may even lead to successful self-employment or new job skills - many hobbies are someone else's profession. Most of all, find the activities you enjoy most. You'll meet other people who get into them and have something more interesting to talk about than your disability.^{[7]
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12
Get good Internet access and a decent computer if you have the financial resources to do so. Many people find being online more interesting and useful than television but obviously everyone's opinions differ. Internet activities involve other people and the can be real. Participate in sites like wikiHow and other online communities. Not only will you meet friends and build a social life, your contributions are real and your social life will include areas that your disability doesn't impact.
- After a while, people you connect with regularly online or offline will get used to your disability, you can even not tell them you are differently able. The internet has lots of sites for just chatting with other people about all kinds of thing so if you don't feel your being differently able makes any difference to how you contribute, only share what you want to about yourself. Other sites allow role play where anyone can be anything, or a cat, or a penguin, you know the sort of site. Since no one on role playing sites is being themselves, you might like to try role playing yourself. People online very just like in the real world, most of them will stop treating you any differently or may never treat you differently. The hardest time is at first when you find out who your real friends are. Building a solid social network, online or in the real world, is essential to living well, disabled or not. This is something the able bodied might learn from you.
13
Remember that money isn't the only measure of success in life. If your time is useful to other people and the things you do are genuinely appreciated and used, that matters to self-esteem. Some types of disability benefits won't let you earn money without taking it out of your check and you might lose health care benefits if you earn.^{[8]
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Research source} If you're in that situation, consider volunteering your time to causes you feel passionate about. More than the cash itself, people work because they need to feel needed and useful. You can be needed and useful no matter what your physical limits are. So don't look down on yourself or think that volunteering is somehow less important than paid work. It's more important and many people who don't have time because they're struggling to make a living will be grateful you gave what you can - your time and expertise.
14
Do your best. You didn't have a choice about being disabled but how well you live with it is a choice, every day. It's much more important to pat yourself on the back for your successes than to beat yourself up for failures. Don't judge yourself by other people, learn what you can really do and take any progress as something to build on.^{[9]
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Trustworthy Source
HelpGuide
Nonprofit organization dedicated to providing free, evidence-based mental health and wellness resources.
Go to source}

Warnings

If you're in an abusive situation, seek help. Do your best to keep open communications with the rest of the world. There are resources to help people deal with abuse and you have a right to live free of abuse even if that right is sometimes hard to defend.^{[11]
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Trustworthy Source
National Domestic Violence Hotline
Organization providing lifesaving tools, support, and resources for victims and survivors of domestic abuse
Go to source}

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