The Myth of “Disability” with BJ Miller
Our podcast is hosted on Spotify and Anchor.
“Disability” covers an enormous range of conditions. It is a dramatically diverse group though you wouldn’t know it from how we talk about it. Despite advances in the last 30 years, society continues to struggle with this issue, which means the people actually living with disability suffer much more than they need to. In this session BJ explores different ways to frame and understand disability, how to manage the projections of others, and how to arrive at a sense of acceptance and creativity.
Show Notes:
0:00 Introduction
3:09 Defining “disability”
3:41 Statistics around disability
6:29 History of disability rights in the United States
11:15 The projections of others
16:23 Disability and the medical system
17:55 Being pathologized by the medical system
18:29 Being compared to a “normal” body and bumping up against the idea of needing to be “fixed”
19:59 Identity, and who’s to say who you are and what’s important to you.
23:35 Observations on the progress of society as relates to disability
25:38 Managing medical professionals as a person living with a disability, many times having to be the teacher to doctors
28:54 Priming clinical teams on what they need to know about your body, especially in a hospital situation
35:04 Importance of having an advance directive plus special instructions for bodily care and naming a healthcare proxy
38:46 Advice for someone who has an abusive family as relates to disability
41:50 How do you deal emotionally with people’s reactions and projections?
44:48 Observations on dealing with the medical profession/model and needing to educate doctors on what disability is
49:10 Emotional aspects of threats to sense of self
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