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Mental Health
I think it’s easier to be kind to people who are obviously impaired. Few people are going to disparage a person in a chair or using crutches or is blind and navigating with a stick. There are some disabilities that are invisible. Subtle. They are not seen. Someone with a traumatic brain injury, for example, might have recovered walk and speech and you might think in conversation they’re on the same page in the moment, but over time you will find yourself repeating instructions or statements and then you might finds yourself getting irritated with them…
Subtle handicaps are very real, and they come in a variety of flavors. They can be learning disabilities. They can be brain injuries. They can be the after affects of trauma, mental health issues, past drug use, dysfunctional families, or complications of medical illness and or the drugs we use to treat them.
The wall experienced by those with these subtle disabilities is that people assume normalcy because person appear normal in any other respect. And I would argue they are. A person isn’t abnormal for having a condition. Expecting them to process in the same way, as quickly, and come up with the same answers- not a fair thing at all. The only malfunction is when ‘normal’ people expect experiencers of subtle disability to function as they do. Or worse, when a subtle disability…
