And if you're disabled, you've probably learned that advocating for yourself is often part of daily life.

Advocating for accommodations.

Advocating for access.

Advocating to be believed.

Advocating to be included.

Some days, that can feel exhausting.

It can feel unfair that on top of managing your health, your energy, and everything else life demands, you're also expected to educate, explain, and push for change.

But you're not alone.

One of the saddest things I hear in therapy is a disabled person wondering if they're the problem.

Not because they're difficult.

Not because they're asking for too much.

But because they've spent years adapting to barriers that were never theirs to carry.

They're exhausted.

Burned out.

Questioning themselves.

Wondering why everything feels so hard.

And often, they've been told—directly or indirectly—that this is simply what comes with being disabled.

But what if that's not the whole story?

What if some of that distress isn't coming from disability itself?

What if it's coming from living in a world that wasn't built with disability in mind?

Most people think medical trauma starts with an emergency.

A frightening diagnosis. A major surgery. A trip to the ER. 

But for many disabled people, medical trauma develops in much quieter ways.

It can happen after years of being dismissed. After explaining the same symptoms over and over. After being told it's stress. After being told you're too young. After being told the test results look normal.

Sometimes the trauma isn't one catastrophic event.

Sometimes it's spending years trying to convince people that what you're experiencing is real.

Imagine you walk into an escape room.

The clock starts ticking.

The instructions are unclear. Some clues are out of reach. The lighting strains your senses. The puzzles assume abilities you may not have.

Someone watches and says:

"Try harder."

"Think differently."

"Come on, I thought you were supposed to be resilient."

For many disabled people, this is what therapy can feel like when it is not disability-affirming.

A therapist might hear that a client:

• rarely goes out,

• feels anxious and exhausted all the time,

• struggles with emotional regulation,

• or seems “withdrawn,”

and quickly conclude the client is depressed, avoidant, resistant, or engaging in distorted thinking.

But often, those interpretations completely ignore the context these experiences are happening within.

And context matters.

If you live with a disability or chronic illness, you’ve probably had countless appointments where you learned to summarize your condition quickly:
diagnoses,
surgeries,
symptoms,
treatments,
outcomes.

But those conversations often leave very little room to talk about what daily life actually feels like.

That’s the part I care about understanding.

Not all therapy is created equal.

And if you’re a person with a disability looking for mental health support, that matters more than people realize.

Because finding a therapist isn’t just about finding someone “nice” or someone with availability. It’s about figuring out whether the person sitting across from you understands disability in a way that won’t leave you feeling misunderstood, pathologized, or quietly blamed for struggling in a world that often wasn’t built with you in mind.

A lot of people assume that if a therapist takes disabled clients, they must already understand disability.

That’s not necessarily true.

Disability isn’t understood in just one way. Over time, different models of disability have shaped how society explains disability, who is responsible for change, and what support should look like. These models influence everything—healthcare, therapy, education, and policy.