Conversations around disability feel very different today than they did when I was younger, partially for the better and partially for the worse. Growing up, I believed that the only disabilities that existed were clearly visible: the need for a wheelchair, blindness, and maybe mental or developmental disabilities, but only insofar as they were severe enough to prevent you from living independently. And the main message, at least from the ‘90s media I consumed, was that people with disabilities might not be able to do everything, but they were determined to do as many things as non-disabled people do, and we should accommodate them but never underestimate them. I was shown media of kids in wheelchairs nevertheless playing basketball, and I made sure to include the girl with cerebral palsy in our Spice Girls dance performance at recess, modulating the dance moves so that she could do them.
It definitely did not occur to me that *I *was disabled.
But, alas, I am, at least by the 2026 definition. I have ADHD (diagnosed as “ADD” in the ‘00s), OCD, and I come across as autistic enough to be referred to as “that autistic woman from Substack” but for full disclosure I’ve never actually sought a diagnosis for autism, so I’m not counting that one.
It wasn’t until my twenties when my disabilities began impacting my employment that it occurred to me that I was disabled at all. It all started when a travel requirement was foisted upon me after working at a company for a year. Traveling alone was (and still is) a huge trigger for my OCD, and I had kept this under wraps to avoid looking crazy, simply avoiding roles that required it. When I finally opened up about it to my boss, his entire demeanor changed. Suddenly, I wasn’t just difficult, I was disabled, and I could be accommodated by the ADA. Perplexed by this description, I found myself blurting out, “What? I’m not like, crippled or something.”
But my disabilities have impacted me in a bunch of ways I initially disregarded, either as bad luck or just being a loser. My childhood was marred with memories of being yelled at for things I didn’t remember doing, often being admonished for “not listening” when I had no memory of what I was supposed to have heard. In school, I was constantly in detention for boring things like being late and forgetting my homework, never for deliberate delinquency. I scored very well on tests and repeatedly won awards for writing, but had a hard time getting grades higher than a B+, and in math I was lucky to get a C. I graduated college with an embarrassingly low GPA. I was unable to keep a job for more than two years. I attempted, and failed, to learn to drive. Up until recently, after deliberately teaching myself social skills, I was unable to hold onto friends.
People like me are in a particularly precarious spot in 2026 disability discourse, which seems to be ruled by our echelon of disabled people—terminally online people with invisible disabilities. Our dominance in online disability conversations probably exists just by default, because, as said on the podcast, we are the most likely to be able to have a platform in the first place, certainly compared to someone who is non verbal or unable to use social media. And even among the people who are technically capable of building a platform, attractive and likable people—typically women—will have the easiest time gaining followers and spreading their opinions. This means that, even with good intent, one group of people dominates the discourse. It also means that the people who lean furthest into their identity as a “disabled person,” even when their disabilities, like mine, are treatable, can push others toward leaning into their disabilites, believing themselves to be less capable of daily life functions than they are, and rejecting treatment even when it’s available to them.
Because my disabilities aren’t extreme and binary enough to physically prevent me from doing something (walking, seeing, etc.) there is a lot of gray area between what I am unable to do, versus what I am choosing not to do because it would be emotionally or mentally more difficult for me than it would be for someone else. For example, if I got on an airplane without my husband and kids, I would not explode. I would not vanish into a separate entity a la Severance. Unlike a blind person driving a race car, I am completely physically capable of doing this! It would just cause me intense emotional distress, and I’d likely be sobbing my way through those olives and almonds they hand out, although arguably it might serve as exposure therapy and be good for me long-term. (More on that later.)
But because people like me are technically disabled, it’s easy to identify with our disabilities, lean into what we can’t do (think, the opposite of those ‘90s documentaries about amputees who, nevertheless, can do anything) and declare that because we have a disability, nothing can be done about it, and any attempt to push treatment on us is ableist. Otherwise known as the “You people can’t do anything” effect per this viral tweet:
