Maybe You Can & Maybe You Can't: The Problem Is Believing You “Should”

Welcome back, my friends. Today I'm jumping into a topic that I've found is central to the struggles many neurodivergent adults face, but that is rarely discussed: ableism and, specifically, internalized ableism. If you're neurodivergent and have no idea what that is and don't really care, but also know that something is in your way and always has been, don't click away, because I put this episode together specifically to help neurodivergent adults see how misunderstanding what's in our way has caused many of us to feel that we've spent our entire lives trying to get things right, working harder than anyone we know to be successful, or be happy, or to feel just once in a while that ease it seems like everyone else figured out years ago, but we haven't made it there yet, and we're starting to worry that we won't. That's where many neurodivergent adults find ourselves, and it's not because we weren't trying hard enough, but because we we're addressing the wrong issues, often because we have no awareness that internalized ableism is operating under everything that's making our lives hard.

I'll start by giving some background so that internalized ableism makes sense, then I'll talk about how ableism and internalized ableism impact neurodivergent people specifically, and how that comes to happen. Lastly, I'll go through the common ways internalized ableism shows up for neurodivergent adults and give you strategies for recognizing when it's impacting your life and for changing the way you respond to it so you can get it out of your way. Before you skip ahead, try to give the first half of this a chance. I know you want the skills and strategies most, because so many of us are excited about things being better or easier for us, or we're desperate for that, but studies show that tips without context don't help very much or, more accurately, complicated problems need to be understood to be solved. So bear with me and let the context sink in, because it truly impacts what we all experience. If you already know what I'm saying, focus on how it affects or applies to you personally and uniquely, because that will make the strategies easier to apply and more effective.

First up is a little history and terminology to lock in our understanding of ableism. Are you ready for it? It's not boring, but I'll see if I can work in some swearing to spice it up. We don't fucking know exactly how people who were different were treated or described in early history, especially before history was recorded. But given what is known about the conditions of those times, people who were physically, cognitively, or otherwise different, probably didn't live very long or have many offspring, so most genetic differences weren't passed on. As civilizations developed, everything became more complicated. People who were different were thought to be demons, possessed, or just abhorrently imperfect, and were cast out of societies or killed — even in infancy.

As science and medicine advanced, differences began to be seen as things that might be able to be fixed, so they should be fixed, and if they couldn't be fixed, there definitely had to be a disparaging term the non-different could use to describe the unfixable differences and to classify the people who were different. There are disputes about the origin of the term "handicapped," but either way, it referred to a person who was given some advantage or privilege to compensate for a weakness or defect. If that made you cringe a little, I'm right there with you. That term emphasizes competitiveness and the importance of winning over humanity, so it's no longer used to describe people, thankfully. " Disabled" has been used more recently because it simply means someone is not able to do something. That's more neutral, right? More black and white. You're either able to do something or you're not. But we're still talking about people, and people are complex, so words we use to describe people are, too. From a legal perspective, a "disability" — which is a lack of ability to do something — can entitle a person to certain benefits or accommodations, so it's really just a subtle shift from the "disadvantage" of being "handicapped," and there's still an overarching framework of what people should be able to do and how they should do it, and even more implicitly, what people should value and want to do.

That leads us to ableism, a term that was coined about 40 years ago to describe advantages afforded to people who are able to meet the demands of society as expected, given that people who are NOT are marginalized and undervalued by society. The premise of ableism is that people with disabilities are inferior, should be fixed if possible, and should want to be fixed. And underlying that premise are rigid, society-specific expectations about what's important to be able to do, and how it should be done. I'll give you my favorite example that illustrates what I mean. The Rarámuri a semi-nomadic people who live in the mountains of Mexico and run — sometimes 75 miles or more in a day. An American adult who is not able to migrate to a different region every winter, survive living in caves, and run for hours without stopping would not be considered disabled because what the Rarámuri are able to do does not align with U.S. expectations for what's important to be able to do and how it should be done. However, a 5-year-old who isn't able to sit still and silent in 10- to 60-minute intervals over a 6-hour school day, during which he must focus exclusively on — and fully comply with — whatever he's instructed to do, could be considered disabled in the U.S. That hypothetical kid's brain and body could make him a very able Rarámuri person, but American ableism places high value for a 5-year-old on something that kid can't do, or can't do the way he's expected to, or that's not important to him the way it's expected to be.

For those of us who are different — in that we aren't able to do what our society expects, or can't do it the way it's expected to be done, or don't see the importance of doing it — being immersed in ableism causes internalized ableism. Internalized ableism describes a person's subconscious biases against themself based on deeply rooted beliefs that their abilities fall short. In the U.S. and other European-influenced cultures, neurodivergent people's subconscious biases stem from societal expectations that largely don't allow for the ways our brains function, either in that we aren't able to meet an expectation at all, we can't meet it the way we're expected to, we don't see meeting the expectation as important, or we can and do meet the expectation, but only by rejecting our authentic ways of seeing and doing things. Sound familiar? As we continue to experience that over time, internalized ableism shapes how we subconsciously evaluate our abilities, our worth, and whether or not we need to be fixed, even if we don't consciously agree with the expectations of ableism. In other words, you could consciously reject those rigid standards, value people who march to the beat of their own drum so to speak, and tell yourself, "I know I'm smart and capable," but still feel deep shame when you struggle to do things others seem to handle easily. That's internalized ableism, and it's insidious because it profoundly affects how we see ourselves and how we treat ourselves — usually without us even realizing it.

To understand how this happens, we need to look at the environments and experiences that teach us to believe differences in our abilities reduce our inherent worth. The process begins in childhood and is reinforced over time by the relationships and systems we're in. That is, until we learn to recognize internalized ableism in ourselves, challenge it, and change the way we respond to it. We'll get to that, I promise. But first, let's explore how internalized ableism takes root, starting with early experiences. Neurodivergent children often receive negative messages about their differences beginning very early on, which means this happens in relationships and environments that are meant to nurture us, like with our parents, siblings and extended family members, and in school and other community settings. The messages might be explicit, like another child's parent yelling at you to stop running on the church playground, or a teacher saying, "You need to hold your pencil the right way, like everyone else," both of which clearly indicate you are not meeting others' expectations. But sometimes the messages are harder to interpret, like an older sibling saying, "You better finish your chores so dad doesn't get mad at you," or a friend telling you, "You'd look prettier if you wore dresses," both of which are delivered in the spirit of helping us, but are actually meant to correct, change, or fix us.

As another example, one of my coaching clients told me that, when he was young, his mother often said, "I don't like the way you're acting right now," which sounds like a mother following pretty well-respected parenting advice by commenting on her child's behavior, not his character. But it's many years later, and my neurodivergent client still feels his mother's comments were directed toward who he is, not what he was doing, because in his mind, he should have been able to act the way his mother wanted him to. Keep in mind that neurotypical children are also corrected when they fail to meet societal expectations, but for the most part, they're able to meet the clarified expectations with relatively minimal effort and time, and without compromising who they fundamentally are. Since that's not the experience for most neurodivergent children, even loving, supportive corrections, delivered with the intention to help us, carry the underlying message that we don't measure up, we're not trying hard enough, or there's something wrong with us that needs to be fixed. Part of what makes this so complicated is that neurodivergent differences are often seen as preferences or choices, and the implication is that a "good" kid, and later a "good person" in general, prefers and chooses to do the "right" things, or what is expected by most people in most situations.

In contrast, a blind child learning to read braille would never be seen as rejecting print reading or refusing to learn to read print, nor would there be associated character judgments, like that their refusal to read print means they're defiant, bad, or aren't consistently disciplined by their parents. I know that example is extreme, even preposterous, and I don't mean to imply that a blind child can't develop internalized ableism, but subconscious biases are significantly intensified in neurodivergent children by, for example, expectations that "good" children want adults' praise, and behave and perform accordingly, so those who don't are "bad," and certainly inferior. And I know I don't have to tell you this messaging doesn't end with childhood for most of us. As our worlds expand beyond our families and communities, we may find paths with expectations that fit us better — within our society or in another one — but the majority of us find ourselves in an even deeper sea of the same narrow, rigid standards of what people see as important to do and how those things should be done.

In the U.S., conformity, compliance, productivity, and achievement — based on neurotypical standards — are expected and highly valued in essentially every setting. And there are expectations about how people adhere to those standards, which usually emphasizes efficient multitasking, quick decision making, conscientious risk taking, and a complicated intersection of individualism and extroversion. As neurodivergent adults, we're more likely to struggle with meeting any of those individual expectations, and even more so when the expectations are combined, as they almost always are. Some of us are successful in traditional settings, but that generally comes at the price of considerable compromise of our authenticity. In either case, the experiences increase internalized ableism by strengthening the subconscious biases that cause us to see ourselves as unable to do what we should be able to do the way we should be able to do it. As a result, internalized ableism has both broad and profound impacts on our lives as neurodivergent adults.

Outwardly, internalized ableism underlies people-pleasing, perfectionism, and avoidance as we desperately attempt to meet expectations that don't align with our true abilities, or to escape the consequences of our self-perceived failure, because our subconscious biases relentlessly insist that we can and should do what's expected, how it's expected, and that our difficulties are evidence of our personal flaws and failings rather than the incongruities between rigid societal expectations and our authentic abilities, interests, needs and priorities.

For many of us, internalized ableism also causes us to be in constant conflict with ourselves as we're repeatedly faced with the contrast between what we think we should be able to do and the reality of how we actually function. The resulting frustration and disappointment is deeply unsettling and can result in chronic exhaustion, hopelessness, a persistent sense of inadequacy, and many other problems for which society gives us very different explanations that all center around how we can and should fix ourselves so we can achieve, and deserve, the success, happiness, and ease that continues to evade us.

Overall, that's where U.S. and other European-influenced countries are today, though there's a growing wave of voices like mine shouting to anyone who will listen that differences are valuable, and that people who are different shouldn't be expected to want to be fixed, or to change or pretend to be more like the majority. And instead, the majority should, at a minimum, allow people who are different to live in peace, freedom, and safety. Or, if we hold ourselves to the standards of the incredible advances in human consciousness over the past 2 million or so years, those in the majority should appreciate and value differences for the amazing ways they enhance and advance humanity, and strive to create and uphold societies, institutions, systems, and even relationships that purposefully provide opportunities to thrive for all ways of being and doing.

We're getting there. Societal change takes a long damn time, largely because ableism is embedded into our culture, so it takes conscious effort to be aware of all the ways it impacts our perceptions and then to go against them. Internalized ableism is even harder to recognize because it's fused into our subconscious processes. It's below our awareness, so it causes neurodivergent people to see ourselves as needing to change to meet ableist cultural expectations, even when we consciously believe that our ability to do something, how we do it, and whether we care about doing it at all, are all absolutely fine. Without us even realizing it,

internalized ableism causes us to judge ourselves harshly and treat ourselves poorly, which again is why I wrote this episode with the hope that it will help some of you understand why it feels like you just can't get out from underneath the frustration, overwhelm, and even hopelessness and grief, that comes from the constant sense that you need to get your shit together, figure something out, climb the ladder, live up to your potential, try harder, do more, do better, be better. I know what decades of that feels like, what it does to a person, and I don't want that for myself, or for you, or for any neurodivergent person, so I figured out how to get out from under it, and we'll go into that now. Let's start by looking at four of the most common ways internalized ableism is experienced by neurodivergent adults, but is almost always misinterpreted — by other people and ourselves. For that reason, I'll give you a strategy for identifying each manifestation of internalized ableism, and another one for challenging and eventually replacing the subconscious biases of internalized ableism that underlie the self-defeating tendencies that developed from, and continue to be strengthened by, all the times our abilities didn't match what was expected.

The first is perfectionism. Perfectionism arises from repeated experiences of our genuine attempts to do things well falling short because what we did, or how we did it, didn't produce results that met others' expectations, or our own, and we don't know why, but believe we should. Perfectionism is internalized ableism subconsciously holding you to standards that you can't trust yourself to meet, so you do every single thing you can think of for a task as a strategy for increasing the odds that you won't fail. It's an unwinnable battle, but perfectionism seems to develop a mind of its own, because even when we're doing something we know doesn't require perfection, many of us can't stop until we've done everything we possibly can.

It is frustrating and exhausting, but it's also what parents, teachers, employers, and even friends and partners seem to want. Perfectionism is misinterpreted by others and ourselves as being goal- and achievement-driven, which are highly valued in the cultures most of us are in. So perfectionism is reinforced as what we should do, keeping us locked in the subconscious belief that the only truly acceptable way to do something is flawlessly. You can identify internalized ableism in your perfectionistic behavior by asking yourself what would happen if you didn't do something perfectly, then exploring your honest answer for evidence of internalized ableism, such as the belief that doing something imperfectly will cause others to see you as less desirable or less valuable, or the conviction that it's totally worth it to relentlessly pursue perfection in certain areas of your life, even though other areas, and you yourself, are suffering.

You can then challenge perfectionism with beliefs that emphasize what you CAN do and the value in doing what matters to you the way it works best for you to do it. Think of your time and energy like the prized collection of something very beloved by a precious child. The same way that there are benefits to a child sharing from their collection with their very best friend, it makes sense for you to give some of your time and energy to pursuits that are important to you. It does not make sense for a child to give away every piece of a collection they love, or to give it to someone who doesn't matter to them, and it does not make sense for you to spend more of your precious time and energy than you need to leaving you without enough for other things you need and want to do. And it makes even less sense — in fact, it's ridiculous — that you would give your limited time and energy to anything you don't find important. The challenge, then, is to see the cost of holding yourself to standards of perfection by measuring the time and energy you invest in doing things flawlessly against the time and energy you don't have for what you care about, what energizes you, and what brings joy and meaning to your life. That process cannot coexist with internalized ableism, so the more you focus on it, the less internalized ableism will guide the way you evaluate your abilities and your worth.

Another way internalized ableism is commonly experienced by neurodivergent adults is avoidance. Avoidance is simply not doing something when you can, and it's often misinterpreted as laziness, not having our priorities straight, not caring about something, or not caring about people who are involved. Sometimes one of those explanations may fit, but if any of them were accurate interpretations, most people would arrange their lives so they rarely encountered things they'd rather avoid. Think about it: Lazy people with mixed up priorities, who don't care about anything or anyone, don't strive endlessly for some solution that will make them into someone who can just do what they need to do, right? When neurodivergent people are avoiding things, most of us care a lot about all of it — even the situations and relationships that are really hard, and even harmful, to us.

We've been convinced that we're the problem, so we keep trying to fix it by fixing ourselves. We keep trying to become people who do what everyone says we need to do. We keep trying and failing and thinking, "What is wrong with me? I should be able to do that like everyone else." That is internalized ableism. If you struggle with avoidance, think about the types of things you tend to avoid. Keep in mind that avoidance is not doing something you can do, so it's not about forgetting, or running out of time, or not wanting to do things that are actually difficult for you. Maybe it's calling to schedule an appointment, replying to a work colleague's long email, or replacing the broken paper towel holder with the new one that's been sitting in the box on your kitchen table for two weeks. You know, the one that just sticks to the wall, so you don't even need tools to switch out the one that sits on the counter for this one. Those tasks aren't technically difficult, so avoiding them is almost always rooted in internalized ableism and our subconscious belief that we can't do things the way we're expected to. Our avoidance may be couched in legitimate concerns that we don't fully understand what's being asked of us. Raise your hand if you've ever put off starting something until you knew precisely what the assignment, task, or project entailed. Not only have I done that for as long as I can remember, I am currently doing it on a number of things...

Avoidance and perfectionism can overlap, but both are manifestations of internalized ableism, and undoing that takes time. It's hard to undo anything that developed to protect us, because it's usually activated without our awareness, and if we're in the same setting or society where we first needed it, it probably still serves us in some ways. So those subconscious mental processes have gotten stronger over all the years they protected us in some ways, but harmed us in others. It's complicated, and like I said earlier, complicated problems need to be understood to be solved.

If avoidance is causing you problems, the first step to solving them is understanding your avoidance. To determine if avoidance is the result of internalized ableism, ask yourself these two questions: "If I could do this task however I want, over as much time as I want, with whatever resources I want, would I start today?" and "Is this something I would do if I didn't feel I had to? If the answer to one or both of the questions is yes, the task itself is not the problem, and your avoidance is likely the product of subconscious fears about your ability to complete the task, or to complete it in the expected way, or it arises from a task you're expected to prioritize being unimportant to you. You can challenge this internalized ableism and reduce instances of avoidance by reframing tasks in ways that emphasize your values and what truly matters to you. This is a fairly simple adjustment to the ways you think and speak about, as well as list and record, the tasks you want to complete without avoiding them.

As an example, let's say you've been avoiding scheduling your annual mammogram because your sensory sensitivities cause you to need breaks during the course of the procedure, and because you feel guilty about slowing down the technician's day, you always find that you can't stop talking, and sometimes say embarrassing things. Despite the experience being unpleasant, you're grateful that you have access to routine mammograms, and you wouldn't dream of skipping it, which is why you get so frustrated at yourself for letting it loom over you for weeks or even months before you schedule it.

In that case, or any other situation when you're avoiding something you can do and want to do, take just a moment to identify why it matters to you, then incorporate that into the way you refer to it. In the case of the mammogram, it might be, "Staying alive and healthy to have more time and experiences with my family means scheduling my mammogram today." Yes, I do realize how long that is as a calendar entry, but it won't take very long to type it into a digital calendar or reminder app, and you can do it even faster using voice-to-text. If you use a paper calendar, lists, a journal, or Post-It notes, maybe splurge on a nice pen that writes smoothly or has beautiful, glittery ink, so it's a treat to write it out. Without a doubt, the time you spend typing or writing will be far less than the time you spent in previous years berating yourself for not making the call the day you got the email reminder from your doctor, or the next day, or the next, for several months.

And don't lose sight of the point here, because giving into that is internalized ableism at work. If you've always had clear mammograms, you might be thinking that it didn't make a difference that you got last year's mammogram in October, when it was due in July. Those 3 months could have made a huge difference — a life-or-death difference — but the point is the 3 months you spent beating yourself up for not doing something you could do and wanted to do, but is different for you to do for valid reasons that you don't acknowledge or valid. And that's just one thing — likely of very, very many — that internalized ableism subconsciously causes you to waste your precious time and energy judging yourself harshly, treating yourself poorly, and trying to fix yourself about. When you refer to a task you're likely to avoid by its personal importance to you, your brain responds to the description of something that matters to you, instead of to the quiet, nagging, nasty nudge reminding you that you can't do things the way everyone else does, but you should. That is internalized ableism.

The next manifestation of internalized ableism I'll cover today is people-pleasing. People-pleasing is an adaptation that develops from repeated experiences of our authentic efforts falling short of others' expectations. Usually below our awareness, we develop an understanding of ourselves as being unable to do what others expect from us, the way they expect us to do it, when we're being fully ourselves. So we say "yes" to things we don't want to do, refrain from behaviors others don't want to see, and learn to do things when and how others expect us to, rather than in accordance with our strengths and preferences. In this way, we can see masking as a form of people-pleasing, since both involve suppressing aspects of our authentic selves to avoid social consequences. Both people-pleasing and masking are often misinterpreted as typical adaptation to social circumstances. That false assumption can come from others or ourselves, and typically includes messaging like, "Everybody wears different hats." In fact, people-pleasing and masking are quite different from the ways neurotypical people alter their behavior in specific situations, like a teenager who speaks one way to his friends, another way to his favorite teacher of the past 3 years, and yet another way when greeting executives at his mother's company during a formal recognition ceremony.

As a reminder, healthy adaptation to a social situation involves engaging specific aspects of your authentic self — by choice — in order to meet a specific goal in a specific situation. Whereas masking involves the engagement of inauthentic aspects of yourself — reflexively — in order to protect yourself in situations in which you anticipate risk of emotional or physical harm should you present yourself authentically. So even if the teenage boy in my last example tells his mother he "was hella fake" when speaking to her boss at the event, if he was able to speak more formally and politely and refrain from using slang or profanity without compromising his authenticity to honor his mother's accomplishments — or because he hopes his mother's boss invites him to sit in the company box at a Niners game again this year — he's adapting his behavior to a situation, not masking.

In contrast, let's walk through an example of an AuDHD woman who's had the same job for 22 years. She loves her work and she's great at it, but she dreads her department's daily morning meetings because that style of talking things out doesn't help her clarify her responsibilities, so she endures the required gatherings with considerable distress. Now she gets an email from a colleague asking her to take over his responsibility of attending another department's daily afternoon meeting for the rest of the year, and she meticulously crafts a very detailed response that politely declines his request, which he misunderstands because he writes back only, "Thanks. I owe you big time. I'll let the department chair know you're taking my place for the next 5 months." She has every right to write back and clarify that she will not take his place at the meetings, but internalized ableism causes her to be ashamed of her discomfort in meetings and of writing an email that was not clear enough to be understood by her colleague. Since she sees those as personal flaws, she defaults to people-pleasing and writes back, "No problem. Glad I can help you out."

If you recognize people-pleasing in your own behavior, you can identify underlying internalized ableism by asking yourself a kind of silly question that I doubt you'll be asking yourself about anything else: "If someone cast a spell on me, and I had to be 100% completely honest, transparent, and authentic at all times, would I have said or done anything differently in the situation that just occurred?" Even if you're not very imaginative or you can't confidently tell the difference between being authentic and inauthentic, your answer to that question should at least lean more toward "yes" or more toward "no," and any indication of inauthenticity suggests internalized ableism, especially if you ask that question a lot and your answers often lean toward "yes." The good news is that, when you're aware of internalized ableism in your own people-pleasing, you can challenge it. Start by acknowledging situations with compassion, not judgment, for yourself.

In the work example, you might say something to yourself like, "You worked really hard to answer his email clearly, but he still misunderstood. In that frustration, it just felt easier to take on the afternoon meetings than to keep trying to explain, it's okay that you did that, but what you really think and feel are important." After that, take a moment to reflect on what you would have said or done differently if you were being fully authentic. You don't need to do anything with that; just think about it. Brain imaging studies have demonstrated that our brains respond to situations nearly the same whether we experience them in real life or imagine them, so when the woman in that example thinks about herself responding authentically when her coworker assumed she had agreed to take over for him in the afternoon meetings, her brain is learning what she is able to do when she's authentic, and internalized ableism is forced to loosen its grip.

The last, but certainly not least, of the ways I'll cover today that neurodivergent adults commonly experience internalized ableism is a phenomenon I call self-conflict, meaning conflict with ourselves. Self-conflict arises when our internalized beliefs about what we should be able to do clash with the reality of how we actually function, resulting in frustration, disappointment, and self-blame that can impact every aspect of our lives. Self-conflict is different for each person, and it's different over time and in different situations, but if you're a neurodivergent adult, odds are you've experienced it. It can be an endless cycle of mustering what you need to do something, only to be repeatedly frustrated with the outcome, and with yourself. It can be constantly second-guessing if you can do something, how you should do it, and whether you should do it at all. It's spinning out over endless unclear options, not trusting your instincts and, losing hope that you'll ever figure it out. It is seeing paths, strategies, and solutions everywhere, finding they don't work for you, and blaming yourself for all of it. Of all the ways internalized ableism can underlie neurodivergent people's struggles, I believe self-conflict is the most destructive, because it erodes the foundation of our self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is the belief that you can take action to purposefully impact your life.

By definition, every aspect of internalized ableism can cause us to evaluate differences in our abilities against narrow standards by which we inevitably fall short, but self-conflict's capacity to reduce our self-efficacy means it can cause us to believe we have no power at all to impact our lives, and that it's our own fault, because we haven't done enough to fix ourselves yet. From my perspective, the ways self-conflict are most often misinterpreted have created a crisis for neurodivergent people, but I don't mean RFK, Jr.'s "epidemic" caused by "environmental toxins." I'm talking about the pervasive and even debilitating distress caused by chronic self-conflict, which is frequently misinterpreted as symptoms that result in over-diagnosis — not of ADHD, autism, or other neurodevelopmental differences, but of depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, and disorders marked by significant emotional and behavioral dysregulation, including bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and antisocial personality disorder. While those diagnoses may be accurate for some of us, many of us are misdiagnosed, and received years or even decades of treatment for conditions we don't have, so of course it doesn't work, and guess who takes the blame for that? (We do.)

But, we can identify internalized ableism in our self-conflict. Start with a specific situation that causes you considerable conflict with yourself — because you're frustrated with yourself, angry at yourself, heartbroken over the loss of something you let slip through your fingers, or whatever the case may be. Then, consider the situation as objectively as possible and distribute the responsibility for the outcomes, or current state of the situation, between yourself and any other people or circumstances involved. If you like numbers, have the values add up to 100. If you're more visual or abstract, draw a large circle and then use different colors to represent responsibility broadly without worrying about the numeric value of each.

I'll give you an example using numbers, but let me know in the comments if you want to see an abstract pie chart illustrating this example, and I'll get one up there. So in this example, you are really upset about having hit a deer with your car. You were driving at night after a long day, and you were really tired, and your car started sliding on black ice right when a deer darted across the highway right in front of you. You can't shake the intense guilt about having harmed an innocent animal, and you're experiencing intense self-conflict around how you should have driven more carefully, and could have gotten a coffee before you started driving, and you wouldn't have even needed the coffee if you'd gotten more rest the night before, and if you're being honest, you really should have taken better care of yourself over the last year.

Holy shit. That's a lot of evidence that it's all your fault, but is it? So take a step back and think about the situation objectively. Would the outcome have been the same if the temperature were above freezing, or it hadn't rained earlier that evening, so there was no black ice? What about if the deer hadn't darted out, or hadn't darted out at that exact time in that exact spot? When you consider those variables objectively, you see that external factors actually may have played a significant roles in the outcome — maybe even more significant than your role. So how might you assign responsibility out of 100? Maybe you give yourself 40 out of 100 because you were operating the car. Being tired? You weren't asleep, so maybe 10? The black ice? How about 30? And the deer? Maybe 20. The numbers are totally up to you, and if you were doing something more like a pie chart, you driving the car and being tired would be two colors that, together, took up about half of the circle, while the black ice and deer's actions would be two colors that, together, took up roughly half, too.

For most of us, the responsibility we've been taking on will be a lot greater than the responsibility we can reasonably accept when we look at the situation objectively, and that means internalized ableism is likely hard at work telling you that you should have been able to do something differently or better. When you identify internalized ableism as underlying your self-conflict, there's an easy way to challenge it using a time-tested strategy for reframing your perspective with this question" "If a good friend came to me with this situation and these feelings, how would I respond?" Chances are you wouldn't judge your friend as harshly as you're judging yourself. You might say, "That sounds really awful, but it wasn't your fault. You can't control black ice or a deer darting into the road." Sit with that response for a moment, then go a step further by considering what you would think and feel if your friend told you this story. Would you think they were a horrible person who deserved punishment, or that they were being kind of irrationally hard on themselves? Would you feel contempt towards them, or compassion? Even if your thoughts and feelings would be somewhat mixed, could you give your friend the benefit of the doubt and acknowledge that they did the best they could in that moment? I bet you could and you would, so give yourself the same grace. Say to yourself what you would say to a friend, because you deserve the same compassion and understanding you'd offer someone else. 

Like with the other manifestations of internalized ableism, using this process of reframing self-conflict will weaken the hold of internalized ableism on your subconscious thoughts and beliefs. Over time, this practice helps rebuild your trust in yourself and your ability to navigate life as your authentic, neurodivergent self. Through whatever approach you take to identifying and challenging internalized ableism, don't forget that it can be alive and well in you without you even knowing it. That's because it's a learned, automatic response that developed to protect us, but unlike our automatic protective responses to pain, loud noises, or an unexpected person in our line of sight, internalized ableism is informed by cultural standards, so we get to choose if we accept them, and even more than that, we get to set them, or help set them. As you understand, identify, and challenge the internalized ableism beneath your own struggles, you're truly contributing to advancing the history of how humans treat other humans who are different. That is so much more than a win-win. You win because you gain a real understanding of the internalized ableism that causes you to struggle, and strategies to disarm it and get rid of it for good. And doing that will change the way you, and people you know, and people who see you, and people in general think about differences, so we all win. It's going to take time, but if the only options are winning and losing, why not use your time and energy and efficacy in the best ways, for the most good, for yourself and for everyone? Until next time, remember: You don't have to change yourself to deserve happiness or success. Being who you are isn't the problem; it's the solution. I'm rooting for you — exactly as you are. Let's all root for each other. I'll see you next week.

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The Gaslit Majority: How We Take Back Our Freedom & Change the Systems That Marginalize Us