What If Disabled People Aren't Allowed to Feel the Full Range of Human Emotion?

One of the things I find fascinating about disability is how quickly emotions get interpreted.

A smile can be taken as acceptance.

Anger as a bad attitude.

A lack of grief as denial.

Gratitude as evidence that nothing needs to change.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized something.

The emotion isn't usually what gets judged first.

It's what other people believe the emotion means.

Psychologist Dr. Rhoda Olkin challenged these assumptions years ago. She observed that disabled people are often encouraged to be cheerful, discouraged from expressing anger, and expected to mourn their disability.¹

These expectations aren't simply about emotions.

They're about deciding whether someone is responding to disability the "right" way.

And once we've decided what the "right" emotional response looks like...

every other emotion becomes easy to misinterpret.

Sometimes Cheerfulness Is Joy

Let's start with something that's easy to overlook.

Disabled people experience joy.

We laugh.

We celebrate.

We have ordinary days.

Wonderful days.

Boring days.

Funny days.

Days when everything goes wrong before lunch.

That's part of being human too.

Sometimes we're cheerful because we're genuinely happy.

Because too often disability is portrayed as though joy and disability can't exist together.

They can.

But I also think there's another side to this conversation.

Sometimes cheerfulness becomes protective.

Not because someone is pretending.

But because experience has taught them that a smile can sometimes make difficult interactions a little easier.

It may reassure a healthcare provider.

Help an employer see someone as a team player.

Make strangers feel more comfortable starting a conversation.

Over time, a smile can become more than a reflection of happiness.

It can become one way of moving through environments that weren't designed with you in mind.

A disability-affirmative therapist becomes curious:

Is this simply joy?

Or has cheerfulness also become one of the safest ways to move through the world?

Perhaps it's both.

Gratitude Can Be Genuine—And Complicated

When disabled people express gratitude, it's easy to assume we know what it means.

Sometimes we do.

Sometimes we don't.

Many disabled people genuinely feel grateful for the people who support them.

Those relationships matter.

Acts of kindness matter.

Good healthcare providers matter.

Friends who understand matter.

Gratitude is real.

But gratitude can also become something people feel pressure to demonstrate.

If your access to healthcare, personal care, accommodations, or daily support depends on other people, appearing ungrateful can feel risky.²

You may worry about being seen as difficult.

Demanding.

Or undeserving of help.

Disability rights activist Judy Heumann challenged the expectation that disabled people should be grateful for basic access.

She put it this way:

"If I have to feel thankful about an accessible bathroom, when am I ever gonna be equal in the community?"³

Her question goes far beyond accessible bathrooms.

It's about whether disabled people are expected to be grateful for the same basic access, opportunities, and participation that everyone else has every reason to expect.

When access is treated as something disabled people should be thankful for, rather than something they should be able to expect, equality begins to feel like a favour instead of a right.

That's what makes gratitude so easy to misinterpret.

Gratitude is meaningful when it's freely given.

But when it becomes expected, it can become part of the emotional script disabled people are expected to perform.

When gratitude becomes part of that script, we can't assume we know what it means.

A disability-affirmative therapist becomes curious:

Is this appreciation?

Or has gratitude become intertwined with dependence, power, and the fear of losing support?

Perhaps it's both.

Gratitude hasn't changed.

Our interpretation of it has.

When Anger Is Seen Without Its Story

Anger can be misunderstood just as quickly.

When disabled people express anger, it's easy to assume we know what it means.

Sometimes we do.

Sometimes we don't.

Someone advocates for an accommodation.

Questions an inaccessible policy.

Pushes back after being dismissed.

Raises concerns about a preventable barrier.

It's easy to see the anger before we see what came before it.

To wonder,

"Why are they so angry?"

Dr. Rhoda Olkin encourages us to ask a different question.⁴

She argues that disabled people's anger is often separated from the social context that gives it meaning.⁴

Instead of being understood as a response to accumulated barriers, prejudice, or discrimination, the anger itself may be interpreted as poor adjustment, denial, or even pathology.⁴

The emotion hasn't changed.

Our interpretation of it has.

And sometimes that anger isn't expressed at all.

Not because it isn't there.

But because experience has taught someone that expressing it doesn't always feel safe.⁵

A disability-affirmative therapist becomes curious:

What happened before this moment?

What barriers has this person been navigating?

What experiences make this anger understandable?

Because anger rarely appears without a history.

The more I thought about it, the less this felt like four separate conversations.

The problem isn't that disabled people experience different emotions.

It's that society often decides which emotions are considered acceptable.

Once we've decided how someone is supposed to feel,

we stop asking one of the most important questions.

What has this person lived through?

When Grief Is Expected

There's another expectation that often goes unnoticed.

Many people assume disability automatically means grief.

Sometimes it does.

Sometimes it doesn't.

For some people, grief follows illness, injury, or significant changes in health.

Dr. Rhoda Olkin makes an important distinction between the possibility of mourning and the requirement of mourning.⁶

Those are not the same thing.

Some people grieve.

Some don't.

Some grieve inaccessible opportunities rather than disability itself.

Some move between grief and joy.

There isn't one emotionally correct way to live with disability.

Grief hasn't changed.

Our expectations about it have.

The question changes.

Not,

"Have you accepted your disability?"

But,

"What has this experience actually been like for you?"

Why This Matters in Therapy

Many disabled clients come to therapy wondering whether they're overreacting.

Whether they're too sensitive.

Too emotional.

Or simply not coping well enough.

Not because those things are necessarily true.

But because they've spent years receiving messages about which emotions are acceptable...

...and which ones aren't.

Some emotions are rewarded.

Others are questioned.

Others are dismissed.

Over time, some begin to wonder whether the problem is their emotions...

...or whether the problem is them.

When you've spent years wondering whether your emotions are the problem, it's easy to wonder whether you are too.

Disability-affirmative therapy begins with a different conversation.

Not by deciding whether an emotion is appropriate.

Not by asking whether someone has accepted their disability.

Not by encouraging them to be more positive.

It begins with curiosity.

What has this person lived through?

What barriers have shaped this emotional response?

What assumptions have they been carrying?

What has the world been teaching them about which emotions are safe?

Those questions don't tell someone what they should feel.

They create space to discover what they already do.

There Is No Emotion You're Supposed to Feel

Disabled people aren't a different kind of human.

We're human.

There isn't one emotionally correct way to live with disability.

There never has been.

Maybe the question isn't whether disabled people are feeling the "right" emotions.

Maybe the better question is:

What has happened that makes these emotions make sense?

Because when we stop asking disabled people whether they're responding to disability the "right" way...

Because when we stop asking disabled people whether they're responding to disability the "right" way...

we can finally begin listening before we start interpreting.

Footnotes

1. Rhoda Olkin, What Psychotherapists Should Know About Disability (New York: Guilford Press, 1999), 76–80.

2. Olkin, What Psychotherapists Should Know About Disability, 78.

3. Judy Heumann, quoted in Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution, directed by James Lebrecht and Nicole Newnham (Higher Ground Productions and Netflix, 2020), 1:31:00–1:32:09.

4. Olkin, What Psychotherapists Should Know About Disability, 76–79.

5. Olkin, What Psychotherapists Should Know About Disability, 79–80.

6. Olkin, What Psychotherapists Should Know About Disability, 77–78.

References

Heumann, Judy. Quoted in Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution. Directed by James Lebrecht and Nicole Newnham. Higher Ground Productions and Netflix, 2020.

Olkin, Rhoda. What Psychotherapists Should Know About Disability. New York: Guilford Press, 1999.

If you're looking for disability-affirmative therapy in BC, I provide virtual counselling for teens and adults with physical disabilities, chronic illness, medical trauma, and advocacy fatigue. Learn more about Disability-Affirmative Therapy