People With Disabilities Have A Complicated Relationship With Positivity – Forbes

Positivity

The only disability in life is a bad attitude. - Attributed to figure skater Scott Hamilton.

When you search this quote on Google the first thing you will see is a collection of pictorial memes, featuring the quote, most of them alongside images of visibly disabled people in some impressive activity usually some kind of athletics or physical feat. Whether or not it was originally meant as a comment about disability and disabled people, the quote has been widely used to promote the idea that adopting a positive attitude can overcome a disability or the problems of having a disability.

On the other hand

You know, no amount of smiling at a flight of stairs has ever made it turn into a ramp. Never. Smiling at a television screen isnt going to make closed captions appear for people who are deaf. No amount of standing in the middle of a bookshop and radiating a positive attitude is going to turn all those books into Braille. - April 2014 TED Talk, Im not your inspiration, thank you very much, by Stella Young.

One of the hardest things for disabled people to explain to people who arent disabled is our frequently negative reactions to positive sentiments and approaches.

There is already a more general objection that the common-sense values of optimism and everyday kindness too often become a more explicit and specific system of magical thinking like the idea of manifesting what you want or need in life purely through thought exercises. You dont have to be disabled to take some of the more extreme wellness and motivational fads with a shaker full of salt.

But for disabled people in particular, positivity is an especially mixed bag.

Of course, the advantages of positivity are obvious next to the implied alternative.

While persistent pessimism can easily lead to depression and a debilitating sense of futility and nihilism, optimism can be energizing and motivating. When enough of your goals come to seem impossible, its easy to lapse into emotional depression, and even nihilism, the belief that nothing really matters. If you believe you can accomplish something, its easier to work through the efforts needed to succeed. If you fundamentally feel that your efforts are futile, its harder to maintain the effort.

Positivity is also just a more pleasant mindset to have, at least superficially and temporarily.

Most people prefer a positive, hopeful mood over depression, hopelessness, or unhappiness. And some people do find that they can will themselves into a more positive mindset, or at least fortify their mood to better face hard tasks or difficult situations.

Its also usually easier to get along with people, and be accepted and liked, if you have a positive outlook and cheerful demeanor.

Just as people generally prefer to be happy, most find it more pleasant to be around other people who are happy, or at least kind, upbeat, and easygoing. And one way a disabled person can put non-disabled people who are uncomfortable with disability at ease is to come across as least superficially nice and unbothered.

Finally, some disabled people coming from especially dire and debilitating situations do find a conscious philosophy of positivity to be liberating, even life-saving.

If you have been ridiculed, bullied, and abused for much of your life, adopting positive thinking as a conscious strategy can be an effective lifeline. If you are coping with a new and sudden disability like spinal cord injury or the onset of vision or hearing loss then it can be essential to keep your spirits up and, if necessary, force yourself to envision a happy and independent life ahead.

But despite all of these advantages, the limitations and drawbacks of making positivity a deliberate stance are significant. The limitations and possible harms of certain kinds of positivity have even acquired a name: toxic positivity. When twisted and elevated over all other values and approaches, relentless positivity can be especially insidious for people with disabilities.

Most obviously, positive thinking and self-affirmation does little to confront the uniquely concrete, physical barriers people with disabilities face.

This is the root of Stella Youngs TED Talk assertion. Disabled people face barriers that are physical, not just emotional or attitudinal. We face stairs, curbs and narrow doorways, speech we cannot hear, text we cannot read, information we cant fully decipher. Positivity and optimism may sometimes help remove these barriers, but the right attitude alone is never enough. Barrier removal and accommodations require expertise, collaboration, technical means, legal backing, and resources.

Positivity is also often entirely inadequate in the face of serious material deprivation, discrimination, and abuse.

Beyond more obvious physical barriers, many disabled people also experience severe poverty, loss of opportunity, and both physical and emotional abuse. Such circumstances make it exponentially harder to cultivate and maintain a positive outlook. And even when a disabled person in situations like this does manage to muster some hope and optimism, they are unlikely to alter the underlying circumstances.

Even worse, overzealous pursuit of positivity places too much responsibility on the individual disabled person, and takes it off other people and unjust systems.

One of the most toxic side effects of a philosophy of positivity is that when it fails, the implication is that you are to blame. If your positivity didnt bring positive results, then you werent being positive enough. If, for instance, tending to your mental health and consciously choosing a more healthy mindset doesnt cure your chronic illness, then there is a strong implication that you have failed. This feeds into one of the core elements of ableism that people with disabilities are somehow to blame for their conditions, for not sufficiently fixing themselves.

The problem is that many of the people who tout positivity and similar ideas most aggressively seem to take it much too literally. For them its more than a reminder to guard against despair. It is a discipline, a prescription for wellness. And for disabled people it takes on the rigidity of a moral mandate, and the false promise of snake oil.

If youre disabled and dont maintain that positive attitude, you wont succeed. And if your condition is at all ambiguous or emotional in nature and you dont adopt some specific and detailed version of positivity and wellness, then you are malingering and therefore less deserving of compassion or accommodation. It doesnt even have to be explicitly said. Once you believe that positive thinking will fix your problems, then still having problems means you have failed.

Positivity can also be a distraction from necessary and more consistently effective approaches.

If you take the power of positive thinking too literally, you may overlook or even disdain more concrete and immediate steps to improve things, for yourself and others. Sometimes, a bit of seemingly negative advocacy can make a real, positive difference. Sometimes, holding back judgement and being nice means giving up real opportunities to do some good. Its almost always better to treat people with care and basic human respect. But thats not the same thing as tolerating ableism, especially when pointing it out has the potential to correct it.

Finally, positivity is often weaponized to shame and discredit disability advocates and activists.

Almost every disabled person who has ever called out problematic behavior or engaged in advocacy knows what it means to be labeled as angry or negative. Disabled people are especially vulnerable to this. Anger and criticism of inaccessibility, ableism, and injustice is often dismissed not only as counterproductive, but as coming from grief and resentment of our disabilities themselves. In addition to being fundamentally wrong in most cases, branding a disabled person angry and critical, and urging them to be more positive instead is an effective way to silence disabled people and doge the problems we rightly complain about.

So while positivity can certainly be an asset, it isnt a superpower. It cannot by itself create positive outcomes. Disabled people know this better than most. How then should disabled people and our allies approach the allure of positivity and the almost evangelical fervor of its adherents?

1. Be wary of any approach to disability that amounts to little more than a slogan or simplistic meme.

2. Remember that a disabled persons negativity is often a rational response to real problems.

3. Be aware that telling a disabled person they should look on the bright side, stay positive, or even just smile more may actually be more debilitating than encouraging.

3. Dont take ideas like the power of positive thinking too literally, especially when so many of the barriers disabled people face can only be removed with wood, concrete, and persistent advocacy.

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People With Disabilities Have A Complicated Relationship With Positivity - Forbes