In the paper on self-image and adjustment to disability, the folk listed four types of adjustment to disability. I’d say “stages”, since they’re often consecutive:
- Holding onto non-disabled standards while not feeling that one’s disability is limiting: the writer calls this naive, as it is the view that children who are disabled from birth often hold, not yet realizing that they’re different from their non-disabled peers. I cannot remember having this view for a long time, even though when I read about people’s process of becoming aware of their disabilities, I tend to think I was late to realize I was visually impaired. Yet when I did realize I had a disability, I pretty quickly “progressed” into something more like the second stage of adjustment.
- Holding onto non-disabled standards while feeling limited by one’s disability: I don’t see the progression into this stage as quite positive, as I felt much better in my naivety than when I did realize how blindness was limiting me. I think, however, that there is no strict borderline between these two stages: when at the school for the blind, I did feel my disability was limiting, but I was still pretty unaware of issues relating to, for instance, dependence. I resisted alternative techniques and competed on who could see best, but my negative feelings about being different from sighted people came much later. They started as I went to public school in 1999. I am probably still stuck in this stage, feeling bad about being different and needing adaptations. There is something strange about this, where the way I act is different from how I feel. This is because I cannot avoid using equipment like the white cane - I need it for safety reasons -, but would if I could.
- Putting non-disabled standards into perspective while feeling limited by one’s disability: this is the way I come across to people who don’t know me well. They see I use alternative techniques and assume that I don’t need adaptations that I dn’t get or ask for, while in fact I’m avoiding them. Even some people who know me well think I’ve made quite an adjustment to my disability, but that may be cause they’ve known me for a long time and have seen the progress I’ve made. For example, when telling Mr. De B. about the rehab folks’ concluding that I’d poorly adjusted to my blindness, he reacted like: “But I guess no-one likes their disability.” I know, but it should be possible to make peace with it, somehow.
- Putting non-disabled standars into perspective while not feeling that one’s disability is limiting them: I can hardly imagine being in this state, but, as I wrote earlier today, it seems like the idea many people who claim to hold a positive philosophy of blindness hold. I sometimes can’t get past the rigid opinions some people have on what adaptations we do and do not need, but in essence it’s what the “blindness is only a characteristic” view is all about.
