- My name is Laura Rauscher and I am adjunct faculty here
and teach a course in Disability Policy.
I'm teaching a course in Intro to Racism this term.
I am also the Disability Services Director for Smith College
and really thrilled to see so many people here tonight.
I'm really looking forward to this special opportunity
to have a time to focus on issues of disability and ableism,
something that many people have asked for more
opportunities to consider, more spaces where we can
think about those issues and think about the
intersectionalities of so many issues
that we're all dealing with and sometimes this is
a slice of it that doesn't have enough focus.
We're very thrilled to have this opportunity with
our special guest tonight.
I'm going to introduce our guest speaker
and we will have a presentation and then
we have a few minutes for questions afterward,
did we do that?
- [Offscreen] Yeah.
- Okay.
So, our topic tonight is
A Clinically Meaningful Understanding
of People with Disabilities and the Impact of Ableism.
Our guest speaker Andrea Neumann-Mascis, PhD
is a clinical psychologist with area of specialty
that includes gender variance, trauma
and physical and psychiatric disability.
Dr. Neumann-Mascis has been working as a provider,
educator and an activist since 1992 and has had
access to working with people in a wide range of settings
including in-patient hospital units, community mental health
settings, and street level outreach and shelter programs.
Dr. Neumann-Mascis founded and developed The Meeting Point
a Multidimensional Center for Healing and Growth
in Jamaica Plain, MA.
The Meeting Point serves the LGBTQ community,
survivors and the disability community
and is growing to meet the unique strengths and needs
of queer people and their allies through community activity
and personalized approaches to wellness.
I really want to welcome you here tonight
and thank you for coming.
Go ahead.
(applause)
- I'm incredibly excited to be here.
I am a huge fan of Smith and I'm a huge fan of
the work that happens here and I want to acknowledge
that this is happening at probably the worst possible time
for a lot of you.
So I appreciate the extra effort that it took
to want to be here tonight when there is so much pressure
on you right now.
I also want to thank the disability awareness group
that had a great deal to do with my being here tonight.
I want to thank Samuel and Taliyah
(applause)
and also Laura and I know that making space
for this topic is, itself kind of parallel process, right?
The struggle involved in making space for this topic
reflects where we are in our relationship to ableism
and our understanding of ableism.
We are all manifesting that struggle right now together.
What we're going to do tonight is we're going to
talk about disability and our understanding about
disability across time.
I'm going to talk about that in a couple different contexts,
we're definitely going to talk about intersectionality
and for those of you who are doing social justice work
of your very own, you have transferable skills
for the conversation that we are about to have.
And then we'll also talk about, sort of,
the meaning of all of that clincally and what
the clinical implications of that are.
So that's what we're going to do.
Where we're going to start is,
this is actually a really exciting time to come into
an understanding of disability because we've
traveled, kind of an incredible arc.
It's an arc that you may or may not
have direct awareness of.
Where disability starts, where our understanding
of disability starts is really in the Medical Model
of disability.
The medical model of disability is all about location.
The medical model of disability locates disability
in the body, it says that if you are
having a disability
it's because you are having a medical problem
that needs to be fixed or cured.
Fixed or cured means that you are aspiring to be
more like the category of "Able Bodied Person".
You are aspiring to a standard of abilities that we have
defined as the abilities required to be human.
That's where the medical model starts with disability.
Where we go from medical model of disability
is something called the Social Justice model of disability.
The social justice model of disability is a model that says
"Actually, we, all of us, are part of the human community.
"And, if as part of the human community we are all
"not able to participate in the human community
"the problem is actually not with our bodies
"but in fact the structures that prevent us from being
"active and involved in being part of the human community."
It's a conceptual shift that's simple
and yet really profound.
The conceptual shift says, very simply,
if I come up to a flight of steps and I can't
get up that flight of steps the medical model would say
it has to do with my motor skills.
The social justice model of disability says
it has to do with the presence of the steps.
That's an enormous shift in how we begin to conceptualize
differently what it means to be part of the
human community in that way.
From the social justice model of disabilty
we move to what some people call the
Human Variability model of disability.
Human variability actually came out of
a lot of research being done about the difference in
people's relationships to machines.
What that research discovered is that human beings
are variable.
And, in fact, demonstrate a scope of abilites
that are worth understanding and the differences
in those abilities not only are worth understanding
but are themselves beneficial.
Human variability model says "Well, the way that we're
"conceptualizing this altogether is problematic
"because we are conceptualizing a mythological category
"that, not only does not include all human beings but
"actually actively excludes the ability of
"a lot of human beings."
Again kind of a profound conceptual shift.
For those of you who are big fans of disability studies
research, this is the time that you might be channeling
Garland-Thomas.
For those of you who are big fans of queer theory
this is the time that you might be channeling Foucault.
The concept here is basically that if we have
a categorization of human beings, we have inherently
a dichotomy of that categorization.
If we divide the world into able bodied and disabled,
if we divide the world into straight and gay,
if we divide the world into people of color
and not people of color,
then the function of that division is really about
creating a stratification.
It's really about creating a categorization
of human beings that defines what people have access
to what resources in the world.
Human variability says we want to obliterate that,
we want to say that we are all part of the
human community, we want to say that we are all
people who have resources.
That's a really, really exciting idea
except that we also live in this world.
While I, and some of you would want to join people
in sort of obliterating categorization,
we are all actively in a system of categorization
and we are all actively in a system of categorization
that is inherently oppressive.
Not acknowledging that actually serves no one.
Enter the disability justice movement.
The disability justice movement is phenomenally exciting
because the disability justice movement now sort of
conceptually re-embodies disability.
It says, in fact, we are more than the sum of our parts
and all of our parts count.
Disability justice says that the experience of
being a person with a disability is radically different
and radically impacted by complicating identities
including race, including class, including gender,
including heterosexism.
That all of these factors that define membership
in various communities have an enormous impact
on the ways in which being a person with a disability
is experienced and expressed.
Is that making sense?
By way of illustration, I am a person who is
visibly queer, I am also a person with a visible disability,
I am also white, I was also raised in a middle class family.
Part of what that meant was that I was mainstreamed
before it was legal or cool.
I was maintained in regular education settings.
Beyond that, because I was conditioned to believe that
these systems were meant to work for me,
I knew how to advocate for myself in those systems.
So that every time we moved, when I was then relocated
into special education I could advocate my way out of
special education and into advanced placement classes.
The trajectory of my life experience and my experience
specifically with disability and the fact that I
am sitting here in front of you is entirely defined
by those factors.
It is entirely defined by those identities and
it is entirely defined by my location within
that larger system.
I could sit here and sort of say "Isn't that amazing
"that I did all those amazing things?"
Except that in doing that, I would have to divorce
myself from a system of privileging that has,
in and of itself, profoundly informed my relation to
disability and my experience of disability.
What disability justice says is not only do we have to have
that level of consciousness but, in fact, our ability
to respond to disability has everything to do with
a conceptual shift on a social and emotional level
to collaboration.
That it is in collaboration and in an understanding
of ability exchange that is the answer to allowing
everyone to be part of the human community in that way.
I'll say more about that in a minute
and it'll make more sense.
But first I'm going to drink, pardon me.
How's all this going?
Am I going too fast?
Everybody Okay?
(murmurs from the audience)
Are you coming with?
(Andrea laughing)
Excellent.
So, from that trajectory and from that location
that I mentioned earlier, what we now, I think
understand together is that there is no way to
meaningfully understand the clinc-
meaningfully respond to the clinical needs of
people with disabilities without having that
social justice framework in place.
That you have to have an understanding of someones
location and an understanding of someones experience
of oppression in order to meaningfully understand
their experience of being a person with a disability
and living in disability identity.
From here I'm going to talk a lot about social justice
and the way that we're going to define social justice,
it means a lot of things to a lot of people,
but the way that we're going to define social justice
for the purposes of our conversation today is in two parts.
The first part of social justice, as we're going to define
it today is that we believe that all people have the right
to have access to the resources that they need
to make a life.
We believe that all people have the right to have access
to the resources that they need to make a life.
What do I mean when I say that?
I mean housing, I mean health care,
I mean education, I mean access to a spiritual community,
I mean all of the things, if you think about the fundamental
components that construct the life that you have,
all of us need access to those resources.
The second part of social justice is that we recognize
that access to those resources is stratified
based on identity membership.
In this culture which is the culture I'm going to speak from
in this culture we know that peoples access to housing,
that their access to health care, that their access to
transportation, that all of that access is stratified
based on identity membership.
That's a big deal.
It changes, fundamentally, the access that people
have to create a life.
We all have that, right?
This is Smith.
(Andrea and audience laughing)
But, what does that have to do with, kind of
the intrapsychic experience of people with disabilities?
Where I want us to shift together
is really into an understanding of the self.
So we have this social justice framework,
we understand that there are systems
of oppression in play, we understand that
those systems of oppression are defined
based on identity membership.
Now what we're going to do, is we're going to
look at that from an intrapsychic perspective.
Fun, huh?
(audience laughing)
The way that we're going to look at that from an
intrapsychic perspective is through self psychology.
If you are not currently lovers of self psychology
please read a little Kohut, it'll make you feel better.
(audience laughing)
Self psychology basically says that we, all of us
have a self and that that self is constructed
and reconstructed and reconstructed
based on our significant relationships
and based on the experiences that we have in our lives.
So we have a self, that self needs food,
that food is relationships.
Self psychology also talks about the way in which
those relationships impact how we then perpetuate
ourself in the world.
(gesturing but not speaking aloud)
See, I have these two paths going in my brain
and I can't decide which one to go on.
I'm going to go on this one!
Self psychology says we have a self,
that self is constructed by relationships,
those relationships are meaningful in moving us
through the world.
The way that self psychology talks about those relationships
is that we, all of us need three things in life.
The first thing that self psychology says that we all need
is something called mirroring which is what it sounds like.
Mother smiles, baby smiles, mother smiles, baby smiles.
We need to have an accurate reflection of our
emotional experience in the world.
Oh, you look really anxious?
Oh, you look really sad.
You look really, really like you have a lot to do.
But thank you for being here.
(Andrea and audience laughing)
That is the reflection of mirroring, right?
What happens in mirroring is an experience
of validation.
In validation we have an accurate and meaningful
sense of ourselves.
That's the first thing self psychology says we need.
The second thing that self psychology says that we need,
and this one is my favorite,
it's called idealization.
Idealization has two parts.
The first part of idealization is that we all need
someone to look up to and aspire to.
I want to be just like you when I grow up!
You're amazing!
We all need that experience.
We also all need someone who makes safe for us,
someone who has our back, someone that we turn to
in a moment of anxiety who is able to give us what we need.
The third that self psychology says that we all need
to survive and thrive is something called twinship.
You're a Smithie!
Twinship.
It is the experience of a likeness and belonging.
That experience of "I identify with you, you and I
"are the same, we have that experience of a likeness
"and belonging."
What happens when we have a rich relational environment
in which we get all of those things, and if you think
about it, it's not that hard, I bet you could think of
the last interaction you had today in which you felt
adequately mirrored.
The last interaction you had this week in which you felt
adequately a sense of identification and belonging.
These things are fundamental to the core of ourselves.
And, they are fed to us in our relationships all the time.
The good news about that is that even if we didn't get it
to begin with, we can get it now.
That is where healing occurs.
So, what happens is we, all of us need these things
to survive and thrive, these things become internalised
through a process of transmuting internalisation
and become fundamentally a construction of the self.
So, that's self psychology, we're going to put that
right here.
Along side self psychology, we're going to look at,
just for a second the exciting things that are happening
about the brain.
For those of you who are not, at this moment
looking at everything that's happening with the brain,
please do.
(audience laughter)
We have the technology, ladies and gentlemen
to see things actually happening in the structure
of the brain in some really profound and meaningful ways.
What's vital about that and what's exciting about that
is that the brain, also, not shockingly,
constructs and reconstructs and reconstructs
and reconstructs itself based on it's experiences
and based on, specifically it's relational experiences.
The neural connections that we make in our brain
are an active reflection of what we are feeding our brain.
So the self health is impacted.
We can articulate that through self psychology,
we can articulate that through those self object functions
that we talked about.
We can also articulate through what we know in neuro science
the brain is shaping and reshaping and reshaping itself.
But what we have together in that body of knowledge
is something that's pretty profound which is that
who we are as human beings,
the construction of ourselves,
is getting fed and refed and refed all the time.
If we go back now, to the earlier part of our conversation
and talk about the social justice piece of that
it changes a little bit how we think about
micro aggressions, right?
It changes a little bit how we think about the impact
of being a part of an identity membership in which
your access to the human community is made different
from everyone around you.
It impacts the structure of the self.
Well, what does that mean,
it impacts the structure of the self?
What we're talking about when we're talking about
the construction of the self is things like resiliency,
and affect management, and the ability to attach,
and the ability to form relationships,
and the ability to connect.
All of those things, if you think about all the things
that you've been learning, that's where personality
disorders come from.
All of those things are fed and refed and refed
based on relationship.
So now if we're talking about having an identity
that removes you systematically from the
experiences of being in the human community
when we're talking about resources,
when we're talking about access to resources,
we're no longer just talking about whether or not someone
can get up a flight of steps.
We're actually talking about what it means,
on a structural level, to have access to participation
in the human community.
What it means to have access to a rich
relational environment.
What it means to feel seen and understood and
have a sense of belonging and a likeness.
What it means to have someone and something
to aspire to.
That's actually what we're talking about
when we're talking about an identity that disenfranchises
you from full participation in the human community.
Is that making sense?
That's kind of profound, right?
Because now the question that we have to ask ourselves
is "Well, if I'm sitting with someone and they're
"experiencing anxiety, how am I going to
pathologize that?
"How am I going to understand that?
"How am I going to conceptualize that?
Am I going to conceptualize that as something that is
"fundamental to how they function in the world?
"Or, am I going to conceptualize that as something that's
"fundamental to how the world is functioning for them?"
But there's another piece of this that's even
a little bit more insidious.
The piece of this that's even a little bit more insidious is
if you think about everything that you have learned
in your classes about healing, and about psychology,
and about understanding, and assessing people who
come in and sit across from you,
it's all fundamentally based on autonomy.
We have an entire system that is fundamentally,
that defines health based on autonomy and differentiation.
Think about what you ask for in an intake.
When you ask someone what's happening for them in an intake
you want to know something about their living situation,
you want them to be living independently.
You want them to have a close, but not too close
relationship with their families of origin.
You want them to have some kind of romantic relationship
and you want them to have a job.
65% of people with disabilities are unemployed
but the number one reason for that unemplyment
is lack of transportation.
Is that a mental health issue?
So think about that.
Think about the ways in which we create the social context
that says your health, your emotional health,
your well being, your autonomy
defines your self.
And, defines the way that we value what is happening for you
defines how we decide that you're healthy or not.
That's a big deal.
That's a really big deal.
There's something else that is also a big deal in that
and that is that we know that people with disabilities
are profoundly, disproportionately impacted by trauma.
We know that people with disabilities are about
twice as likely to be victims of violent crime.
We know that people with disabilities are profoundly
disproportionately impacted by sexual and physical
abuse in families.
One of the reasons that we could extrapolate
that that is likely to be true has to do with the ways
in which someones personhood can be distanced from them.
What we know about who perpetrate violence against
other people is that they perpetrate violence against other
people who are not likely to be believed.
People are picked if they are not likely to be believed,
they are picked if they are perceived as disenfranchised.
If they are perceived as removed from the human community
they are substantially more likely to be picked
as someone to be victimized.
So that's how some of these things begin to then play out.
So what does that mean?
What does it mean in the therapy relationship?
Actually, I know that I'm supposed to talk
and then we're supposed to have questions
and what I want to do is shift into talking about
what that means in terms of clinical work.
But, before I go on I just kind of want to stop
and see where we are.
Can we do questions now?
Can we do a little bit of conversation now?
What are people thinking about?
Are all these pieces making sense?
Yeah?
Any questions or thoughts right now?
Yeah?
- [Audience member 1] Who's responsible for making sure
there's transportation?
Is that state by state, or is that federal?
- That's a great question, do you know the answer
to that question?
- [Laura Rauscher] I don't think it can be that simple,
because, who's responsible for anybodies transportation?
You know, we have private transportation,
we have public transportation, who's responsible for
making sure that the bus system is accessible?
We all are.
It's a complicated answer.
- [Andrea] Yeah?
- [Audience member 2] I'd just like to chime in on
that (too low to understand)
I work on (too low to understand)
currently and transportation
is an interesting subject because you can get something
called a PT-1 which is where your health care will actually
pay for the transportation.
But, there are very strict guidelines as to what qualifies,
one of them being a visible (too low to understand)
a "visible" disability that prevents you from using
public transportation.
So, a client who presents with social phobia,
where getting on the bus is not really going to
work for them won't actually qualify for a PT-1.
- [Andrea] Uh huh.
- [AM2] You have to work really hard to make that
(too low to understand)
But a PT-1 will happen because I fill it out
when that person comes to be because
"they have a mental health issue" when maybe that's not
always true.
- Right.
Right, and that's a really simple example of the ways
in which we, even within the systems that are designed
to facilitate, we stratify.
We stratify, we decide who's deserving.
And, who is it that decides who's deserving?
It's not actually the person who has the need.
That's actually a part of what's built into that system
is that it is not the person with the need that decides
who gets to have access to that resource.
Who gets to have access to that change.
What else?
Yeah?
- [Audience member 3] (too low to understand)
I am so, so, so grateful for this talk.
You're such a great person to speak about this.
As far as I know, ADA regulations,
in response to that question,
are federal level regulations in terms of transportation.
But they only pertain to public transport.
- What's also true about the ADA is it has absolutely no
enforcement structure.
There is no way to enforce what is written in the ADA.
- [AM3] (too low to understand)
...at a very local level.
- Right.
Yeah?
- [Audience member 4] This is slightly away from the
transportation conversation but I'm just really
thinking how profoundly I feel like for the first time
someone has so beautifully connected social justice
psychoanalytic theory and really personal stories.
I just want to thank you for that and I think I'm just
really (too much background noise) with all of that
and seeing how all of these things fit together
and hearing that explained in such a
really moving time.
- Oh, good!
I'm glad, I'm glad that's working out.
That was part of why I wanted to stop is
I just wanted to make sure that everybody was
coming along and we weren't getting too lost.
I know that conceptually it's a lot to take on.
Any other thoughts that people want to share right now?
- [Audience member 5] I just, you mentioned several
times participation in community and I was just wondering
(too low to understand)
that means with respects to the access and challenges.
- Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of different ways to
think about that.
One way to think about that is incredibly literally.
One of the things that we know that is true is that
being part of a stigmatized identity is stressful.
What we also know is that our greatest source of
compensation for that stigmatized identity
or for navigating that stress is community.
Having access to like community is a huge source
of navigating oppression and navigating the
stressful impact of stigma.
If you are someone who is systematically
removed from access to community events, for example,
many community events that happens for queer folk
happen in spaces that I can't enter.
If I'm not then able to participate in the community
that would allow me to mitigate the impact of stigma
then the way that I experience that stressor
is going to be really, really different than the way
that someone experiences that stressor who does
have access to that compensatory emotional resource.
If I am literally not then able to participate in the
human community I am going to be impacted
and I'm going to be impacted emotionally.
If I then go into a mental health system and I say
"Wow, I have a great deal of anxiety,
"my stress level is really high, I feel really isolated."
I want to challenge us all to think about the ways
in which we reflexively pathologize that.
Think about the ways in which we locate the problem
within the body of the person.
When what is actually toxically impacting that person
is a system of oppression.
Is that making sense?
Other questions or thoughts right now?
Where I want to, yeah go ahead.
- [Audience member 6] Just, going from that
reflex in pathologizing of certain
abilities or of individuals
Could you speak to that function in a larger human
community of stratification?
Can you speak to, even in a community where we are
having these dialogs, what is, what creates that
reflexive pathologizing?
- Well, Audra Lorde says it this way.
Audra Lorde says, "When we perceive someones
"place on the food chain as advantaging,
"we replicate it.
"When we perceive it as neutral, we ignore it
"and when we perceive it as disadvantaging,
"we seek to destroy it."
What's important about that idea is that we
have a tendency to think about ableism, specifically
and other experiences of oppression as well,
as somewhat passive acts.
I'm a fundamentally good person, I would never
hurt anyone on purpose, it is a fundamentally passive act
that people are experiencing ableism.
What I want to suggest to you is that that's
actually not true.
It's actually not true that ableism is a passive act,
it's actually not true that it is a lack of understanding
or insight or education and that perpetuates that disparity.
We have the ADA, we don't have the cultural will.
We don't have the systems of enforcement.
We are under motivated to include people with disabilities
in the human community.
The best way to see that, if you want to see that for real,
is really to follow the money.
In 48 states now, 47 states,
priority is given, Medi-Care will prioritze
institutionalizing someone over
facilitating their ability to live in the community
even though facilitating their ability to live
in the community is substantially less expensive
than keeping them housed in nursing homes.
That's one example, and there's lots of them,
that on a systemic level we're really, really ambivalent
about people with disabilities and we're really ambivalent
about including people with disabilities in community.
And, in some way we're sort of unwilling to acknowledge that
we're sort of unwilling to acknowledge that that's the case
because part of the way that system of oppression works
is that we actually actively infantilize people with
disabilities in the sort of a context of a charity model.
To say "Oh, I am helping you.
"Oh, isn't it nice that you got to be here?"
"Isn't it nice that we created this ramp for you?"
There's this way in which that power differential is
articulated and re-articulated and re-articulated
and has a huge impact on your clients.
Yeah?
- [Audience member 7] What you just said about
Medi-Care only choosing to pay for
(unable to understand)
facilitating their better ability to move through
their environment (unable to understand)
Can you talk a bit more about what some of those things are
that Medi-Care won't pay for?
- Personal care attendants, is what I'm talking about.
So I think where I want to go from here is
kind of into the clinical relationship specifically.
Are we ready for that?
(crowd murmuring and agreeing)
Excellent
(Andrea and audience laughing)
So what does it mean to function from a clinically
informed position?
Now that you have this mantle behind you.
Now that you have an understanding that
having a clinically meaningful perspective on disability
requires a social justice positon.
Now that you understand that that impacts the construction
of the self and impacts the brain.
What does that mean in real life?
Part of what it means in real life is a recognition
that ableism is in the room.
Whether or not you are a good person is not at stake.
You are absolutely a good person, I swear.
(audience laughter)
That's not at stake.
You are, however, a person who is the product of a really
ableist culture.
You do have, within you, all of the bigotry
and the biases that being a product
of an ableist culture also imbues.
Ableism is in the room when you are in a therapy
relationship with someone.
Now, the way that that manifests is going to depend a lot
on the context of safety that's created in the room.
Some of what that means in, sort of real life,
is being willing to dimensionally understand
the life experiences of your clients.
That means, often times when people are trying really
hard to be good people and trying really hard to not
respond badly to difference the way that they go about
doing that is by ignoring difference.
Or distancing themselves from distance,
or being over inclusive in the way that they
think about difference.
That's going to quell your anxiety as a provider.
It's not necessarily going to be the thing that's most
helpful to your client.
Where that starts, then, is having a really dimensional
and meaningful understanding of what your clients
experience is.
What I can tell you for sure is that ableism impacts
every aspect of their life.
Ableism impacts their home.
It impacts their work.
It impacts their relational choices.
It also impacts every decision that they have made
about the significant choices that they have in their lives.
The decision about where to go to school.
The decision about where to work.
The decision about where to live.
The decision about who to engage with or not engage with.
All of these things are informed by experiences of ableism.
Beginning to understand that in real time
means beginning to understand dimensionally
what is happening in someones life.
It means understanding meaningfully
whether or not someone has, whether or not someones
work place is accessible.
Is it totally accessible?
Is it partially accessible?
If it's partially accessible does that mean
that they don't get to go staff meeting?
What are they not getting to do
in that partially accessible workplace?
Can they go to the bathroom?
That's a thing.
If someone's home environment is accessible
or not accessible.
If it's not accessible, why not?
If it's not accessible who is it in their life that is
compensating for that lack of access?
And, what does that mean for that relationship dynamic?
What does it mean for a relationship dynamic
if someone is set up in such a way that their life
needs to be facilitated?
How conscious is that?
How much conversation has their been about that?
What does that mean about that persons ability
to experience boundaries?
One of the things that is often true for people
with disabilities is that their experience of personal
boundaries is dramatically different than the experience
of personal boundaries of able bodied people
because there is a way in which the body that is identified
as a disabled body is a body that's also commodified.
There's an objectification process that happens
that means that someone is not able to afford
the same relationship to privacy.
The same relationship to intimacy.
The same relationship to interacting in a meaningful way
with their bodies in their environments in the way that
someone else might be able to take for granted.
Understanding what's happening for your client in real time
means also sort of dimensionally understanding these things.
But it means things that are even more dimensional
than that which include things like,
how are you thinking about the impact of disability
in how you understand what's happening for
your client diagnostically?
It is really, really easy to integrate disability
into a sense of pathology.
It's also really, really easy to divorce disability from
how you're understanding that persons self
and their identity and how they move through the world.
Which is going to be comforting to you, because if I'm not
thinking about it I can't do it wrong.
But it's actually going to rob you of the ability to
meaningfully understand what's happening for them.
Micro aggressions, those experiences in the world
that we have of being diminished and devalued.
Those experiences that are the opposite of mirroring
are also the experiences that corrode the self.
If you have a client who is chronically in positions
that they are experiencing things that are corrosiive
to their self that is impactful in how you think about
what you're doing with that client.
That is impactful in how they move through the world.
Another piece of this is a piece that has
to do with trauma.
For those of you who do trauma work and
are being trained in trauma work,
there's a lot of transferable skill in understanding trauma.
Because you are working with people who are
disproportionately likely to have experienced trauma.
You are also working with people who, because of
medical interventions have often had experiences that
very much replicate trauma because they are the experience
of having someone who has power over you make decisions
about your body that are painful to you,
over which you feel powerless in that moment.
That is fundamentally the definition of a
traumatic experience.
There are ways in which interacting with
the medical community creates a system of trauma
for the person that you're working with.
Those are some of the clinical issues that may be present.
Other clinical issues that may be present, though,
have to do with your clients relationship to disability
and their social and emotional worlds relationship
to disability.
What I mean when I say that is family of origin for example.
Families have a lot of really interesting ideas
about disability.
Disability is incredibly, incredibly triggering.
It's incredibly triggering.
One of the things that you what to know
from your client, ultimately, is what the belief system
was in the family about disability.
Where did the disability come from?
Is is somebodies fault?
Is there a source of blame?
Is there a spiritual or religious based belief system
around why that disability occurred?
What does that disability mean?
How does that disability shape the identity
that the family has?
How does that disability shape how the family is
relating to one another?
All of those things are going to have had some
pretty powerful impact on how your client understands
themselves and how your client understands their
relationship in the world.
Ableism will have informed those most intimate relationships
in that way.
Understanding those belief systems,
also understanding a belief system around cure.
Just because I have embraced disability identity in the way
that I have or the social justice movement says that
we should, all of us, have the right to live in the bodies
that we're living in, not everyone is living that way.
Understanding what someones individual relationship
to their own disability is and their relationship to the
issue of cure is, is a powerful influence in what happens
in the therapy.
And is impactful in what happens in the therapy.
But there's something else.
That is what's happening for the able bodied provider
in the transference in that relationship.
Disability is triggering, that doesn't make you bad.
It does mean that there are ways that disability
can trigger our own sense of mortality.
It can trigger our own sense of vulnerability.
It can trigger our own sense of defensiveness
around that vulnerability.
When we get really overwhelmed by someone else's
life experience we blame them.
We don't mean to but we kind of do.
We kind of start to rationalize.
Think about what happens for you when you see someone
who is homeless.
How often does it happen that you think,
"Oh, well they're probably addicted.
"Oh, well they're probably psychotic."
We do that because we want to distance ourselves
from the experience of that person.
We want to objectify that experience and distance
ourselves from that experience because we don't want
to resonate with that experience.
We find issues of disability incredibly threatening!
We find issues of disability incredibly threatening
because we have terrible, terrible models in this culture
of what it means to be a person with a disability.
It doesn't look good.
And so, in feeling threatened in that way we often
will distance ourselves from our clients.
We'll distance ourselves from people with disabilities.
We'll distance ourselves by saying "They're so inspiring!"
We'll distance ourselves by saying, "Wow!
"I would never do what you do.
"How do you do what you do?"
It sounds like a compliment inside your head,
what's true in real life (audience laughter)
what's true in real life is that it is an
act of objectification.
And it is an act of objectification that is designed
to reify my membership and your membership
on that food chain.
I want to make sure that you know
that you are in your place.
I want to make sure that you know that I am not you.
I want to make sure that I know that I am not you.
Guess what?
Disability is coming!
You're all us.
(Andrea and audience laughing)
But there's a way in which, especially in a transferential
relationship where so much of what we do depends on
bringing ourself to the room and bringing our own
sense of empathy and our own sense of resonance
to the room, if there's a threat to that,
if you are experiencing that as threatening,
of course you are because you also are a product
of this ableist culture.
That is not your fault.
But it is worth resolving because you will not be able to
give your client what your client so deeply deserves.
Which is being meaningfully seen and understood.
Meaningfully responded to.
Meaningfully developing a sense of safety and belonging.
Those things are your clients right.
Those are the things that you signed up to support.
If you are having a lot of traffic about ways in which
being experience near with your client is threatening to you
then you're not going to provide them the things
that they need.
That's painful and that's a tremendous loss.
The other part of that is the pressure of disembodiment.
The problem with having a complicated body
in a culture that does not value complicated bodies
is that there is a tremendous amount of pressure
to disavow yourself from that body.
There is a tremendous amount of pressure from
the therapist.
There is a tremendous amount of pressure from the family.
There is a tremendous amount of pressure from yourself,
from your internalized ableism, your experience,
my experience of being able to say, "Yeah, I;m not really,
"I'm fine, I'm fine."
Because I can't afford to not be fine.
I can't afford to have a need like that.
That is the impact of ableism,.
It is also this kind of profound expression of
disembodiment, this kind of profound expression
kind of like, the person that I am, and the person
that I am out in the world, and the person that you see,
and the person that I'm interested in having you
interact with is that person over there, that's kind of
to your left of this particular body.
We see that in term of survivors as well, right?
The experience of trauma survivors of being like,
"When I inhabited that body bad things happened
"I'm not so interested in inhabiting that body,
"I'm really not interested in caring for that body.
"You can just, I'm, no, not doing it."
Ableism can function in a very similar way.
This is the body that has defined my confinement.
This is the body that has defined my choices.
This is the body that has defined my membership
and this is the body that has impacted my relationships.
I'm not so interested in this body.
I'm not so interested in taking care of this body.
There is a way in which therapists can really easily
collude with that.
There is what in which therapists can really easily
collude with, like. "Well, you're not talking about it and
"I feel ill equipped to talk about it and am terrified that
"I'm going to say the wrong thing, so how 'bout we just
"don't talk about it?
"That sounds terrific!
"Let's go with that."
(Andrea and audience laughing)
Right?
Except that it's a profound disservice to your client.
And, again, if any of you are reading and enjoying
Peter Levine and if you're not, please try.
If any of you are reading and enjoying
Peter Levine what you will know,
and what you'll know if you're reading the brain stuff, too
is that being embodied is fundamental to our humanness
and being embodied is fundamental to our healing.
That there is way in which healing depends on
our ability to be in active conversation with our bodies.
Trauma lives in the body in a very specific way.
When we are not able to act and react from a
trauma based perspective from within the bodies that
we've got we are limited in our capacity to heal.
Being a sexual being is a very embodied thing.
Intimacy can be a very embodied thing.
If you are supported and in fact encouraged
and in fact facilitated to have a relationship outside of
the body that you're in, there's a whole lot of life
and a whole lot of self that you don't get to have.
That you don't get to have access to.
The process of supporting someone and being re-embodied
and being re-embodied in the body that they've got.
One way or the other we've got to figure out how to
inhabit the body that we've got.
One way or the other we've got to figure out how to be
willing to take care of that body.
One way or the other we've got to be willing to introduce
that body into an intimate relationship and into an
intimate connection with another human being.
We need it, it's fundamental.
It's fundamental to who we are.
We all know those early studies, before there were
human subjects departments (Andrea and audience laughing)
where they would take a mammal and remove it
from it's mother and provide it with everything.
Provide it with adequate food and adequate body temperature,
adequate hydration
and not touch.
And they would die.
Every time.
We are embodied beings, we need each other
and we need to inhabit our bodies in a way that is
meaningful and part of connection.
Being a person with a disability means inhabiting a
complicated body that people are responding to
in a lot of really complex ways.
Being an ally, and a healer, with someone who is
inhabiting a complicated body also means creating
a language and an understanding for how to inhabit
that body in a meaningful way.
Making sense?
This is also where I want to invite you to think about
how you are thinking about your clients life experience
different than you might if you were identifying them
as a person who is able bodied.
If you are a person who is able bodied, we have an
expectation that you're having sex.
We have an expectation that you're achieving goals.
We have an expectation that you're interacting
meaningfully with the world.
And if those things aren't happening
we identify that as a problem.
We identify that as a problem and we work actively
to think about how to mitigate that problem.
It is really, really, really easy
when someone presents with a disability,
particularly when someone presents with a disability
that you are overwhelmed by
to distance yourself from those ordinary life goals.
To distance yourself from an expectation that this
person should also have romantic relationships.
That this person should also have friendships.
That this person should also have employment.
It's really easy when feeling systemically overwhelmed
to distance yourself from those things.
And, it's really critical that you don't.
It's really critical that as an activist an ally
and a provider that you hold for your client
an expectation that they get to have a life.
If the ADA has given us anything, and I'm
a little ambivalent, but if the ADA has given us anything
it has given us a generation of people who have grown
up underneath it.
It has given us a generation of people who've grown up
with the expectation of having a life.
That's really different.
It's really different than how I grew up.
It's really different than what our cultural expectation
has been to this point.
And that's the beginning of really meaningful change.
It's the beginning of really meaningful change to say,
"I have a expectation of being part of the human community."
My ability to do that, still tremendously troubled.
Still systemically limited.
But, if I don't even hold that expectation
if I don't even have that mental picture of,
"I am a person who gets to be in the world."
then that's going to change a lot about how I interact
with the world and it's going to change a lot about
what I expect from it.
It's also going to change a lot about what I expect
from my providers.
A healing act is holding with your client that expectation.
A healing act is holding with your client the expectation
that everybody gets to have a life.
That everybody gets to, sort of be in the human community
in meaningful and challenging and interesting ways
and that there are lots and lots of ways to facilitate
and make that happen.
Where I want to take us back to is
in the disability justice movement
because the disability justice movement reaches
way back to feminist psychology to say
"It's really, really in collaboration
"that all things occur."
That the whole idea of autonomy
is profoundly mythologized because,
that's not a word at all
(Andrea and audience laughing) mythologized.
The whole idea of autonomy is fundamentally based on
if I am someone whose needs are not only
completely acceptable, but are so seamlessly met,
I never have to acknowledge that I'm getting help.
Think about our model of the most autonomous person.
Think about our models of who really did it.
Who really was super successful?
Bill Gates, let's think, let's pause.
That is not someone who hasn't gotten help.
That is someone who has gotten a tremendous
amount of help.
Armies of people are facilitating that person
every single day.
Armies of people facilitate the people that we call
autonomous every single day.
The difference between that population of people and
the rest of us is that that population of people's access
is facilitated in such a way that they don't even have to be
conscious of it.
They don't even have to know it's happening, it just is.
It's just kind of true in the world that, you know,
I have a need, and it's met, and I don't even have to
really name it as a need.
And on top of that I get to be called healthy for it.
And on top of that I get to be called successful for it.
And on top of that I get all of the relational food
of that mirroring,
Because that's the other thing that's not happening
when people are not in work environments,
and the other thing that's not happening when they're not
participating in community events, and the other thing
that's not happening when they're not getting to reach
a rich relational world, is they're not bringing their
gifts to that world, they're not bringing themselves to that
world and they're not having reflected back to them
their fundamental worth.
So ultimately the only thing that gets reflected back to you
is you as designated need.
I am not resource, I am need.
I am designated need.
Well, if I am designated need
then part of what that means is that I never experience
myself as resource.
Part of what that also means is that my starting point
is always apologetic.
Because my starting point is "I'm already taking up
"too much space just by virtue of the fact that I'm here."
I've already been a problem.
I've already been a need.
I can't actually afford to need anything else.
And I certainly can't afford to tell you what that is
because we've already established that you are providing
charity by affording me my very existence.
That's what I mean when i say participation in the
human community,
What I mean is that.
That if we are, all of us human beings
then we are, all of us people who have needs.
And, we are all of us people who have resources.
And, that if we systematically remove a population
of people from that balance sheet
then not only are we identifying that population of people
as having needs, we are also removing their resources.
We are also removing their ability to meaningfully
contribute to the resources in the world.
And we're removing, most of all, I am then removed
from my sense of worth as a human being,
I am then removed from my sense that I can contribute
in a meaningful way to the larger world.
That's a devastating loss.
And it's a devastating loss that's going to create some
emotional symptoms.
For which I could then be pathologized,
but that's not going to happen now,
because now you have that whole context.
(Andrea and audience laughing)
You're going to carry that context with you
everywhere you go, I'm sure of it.
Our option for meaningfully contributing
to a healing environment is really about shifting gears
and really about shifting into a place of
"If everybody counts then we can afford to be embodied."
We can afford to care for our bodies.
We can afford to care for ourselves.
We can afford to be in a relationship with one another.
If everybody counts and everybody is meant to be
part of the human community then we are all of us
design- part of designing systems that facilitate everyone
being part of that community.
Not because, you know, I'm a really good person
and I want to do a really good thing,
but because I want the resources that I'm going to
miss out on.
I want the personhood that I am going to miss out on
if we eliminate an entire population of people.
If we eliminate an entire population of people
I'm going to lose a lot.
So, I'm going to be active in
creating situations that create access for all of us
because if all of us are here
all of us can contribute in a really meaningful way.
I'm going to thing about needs not as that stratification
not as "I am the helper and you are the helped."
but as "We are collaborators together in creating
"a situation."
If the situation that we are interested in creating is that
we want to be together in this experience
if we want to be together in this relationship
we want to be together in interacting with the world
in this way then let's put on the table all of our needs
and all of our resources in figuring out how to
facilitate making that happen.
Is that making sense?
Where are we for time?
Okay, I think we're at a good spot.
So, now we are in the official
question and answer period.
Thank you for indulging the other one.
I kind of want to know what people are thinking about.
What are you thinking about?
Yeah?
- [Audience member 8] I've seen a lot about
how social activism can be helpful in making sure
that things are accessible and this and that
but in the actual therapy session
you talk about being embodied and that stuff but
if we don't want to (too low to understand)
If we don't want to pathologize those feelings
but those feelings are coming from lack of access
it would seem like the most direct route is to effect
the access?
What can we do about that in the actual clinical setting?
- I think that's a great question
and what I understand you to be saying is
if someone is having feelings of
anger, frustration, sadness, alienation
because they're not being able to access.
Part of you wants to contribute to helping create
that access, but what to do with those feelings instead?
Yeah?
Is that the question?
- [AM8] Yes, what to do in the actual therapy session.
- Right.
- [AM8] You can't create access to a building
during that therapy session.
- Well, not in that hour, but maybe after that hour.
(Andrea and audience laughing)
- [AM8] What to do in that 50 minute session?
- I think that the thing to do in that 50 minute session
is the thing that we do with alienation and rage, right?
All of us have clients who have really good reasons
to feel alienated.
All of us have clients that have really good reasons
to feel disenfranchised.
All of us have clients who are, or should be
really, really angry about that.
Part of what you are helping someone navigate
in navigating those difficult feelings is
first and foremost locating that where it belongs.
Let's not call that your pathology, let's call that
what is true in the system that we currently live in
and let's validate for you that that system is
incredibly, incredibly painful and incredibly, incredibly
unjust and that you did nothing to create that,
that you are, in fact being targeted by
this particular oppression.
That I see that you're being targeted by this
particular oppression and that I see that that's
playing out for you in really painful ways
and I can resonate with that pain and I can resonate
with your anger around that and I'm going to say to you
over and over and over again that this isn't you
and that it isn't your fault and it's not even in the
thing that is wrong with you, it is in fact the thing
that is wrong with the toxic system that we have
currently established.
Yeah.
- [Audience member 9] I'm struggling to picture what
it looks like as an able bodied clinician
what it will look like (mumbling) expectations
(speakers volume too low to understand)
in a way that's not oppressive and invalidating
(speakers volume too low to understand)
- So part of what you're saying is that you're worried
about imposing those expectations on someone whose life
hasn't reflected that and whether or not that imposition
is going to be oppressive of them and desensing of them?
Yeah?
- [AM9] Yeah, I'm trying to explore expectations.
- I think that part of the answer to that question
is really about what you are holding
in the way that all of us hold, for our clients
a sense of what we hope for them and a sense of
what we imagine for them
and sometimes we'll even hold a sense of, kind of
where we should go from here.
That one's dangerous.
But being able to hold a set of expectations
for someones life experience and not just dismiss
out of hand that that's not an experience that they
get to have changes the direction of the conversation.
It doesn't mean that you're going to go in and say
"Well, what about dating, let's talk about dating."
It does mean that if they are reflecting back to you
that that is something, that being in an intimate
relationship is not among their options,
you get to hold that question instead of assuming
that that is a fundamental truth.
You get to hold with them that question,
as you would with any other client.
Any client that came in and said "Well, I can't really
"have relationships with people."
you would hold that as a question and you would not
say to them "That's wrong and you're being stupid"
but you would say to them, you would hold with them
that question and that possibility.
"What's actually, what can we actually create for you?
"What's actually true about what's keeping you away from
"what you need and what your self needs?"
Is that helpful?
Okay.
Yeah?
- [Audience member 10] When dealing with a lot of questions
about how to, maybe create a culture of,
a culture of openness around just being able to talk about
concerns that have to do with the body and embodiment
do you think it would be helpful to (mumbling)
you and the client to include that as part of
you locating the self?
Saying "I identify as an able bodied person."
and saying that to all clients across the board
no matter how they present?
- I think that's a beautiful idea.
I think being able to, and it is the way that we want to
acknowledge and navigate difference in the therapy
relationship and say "I acknowledge that this is who I am
"in the world and that that's here in the room with us."
Nice, thanks.
Yeah?
Yeah.
- [Audience member 11] (volume too low to understand)
(volume too low to be understood)
and able bodied, what does that even mean?
(volume too low to understand)
and how many people are able bodied
from the day they're born to the day they die?
- [Andrea] (whispering) Nobody, nobody. - [AM11] (too low to understand)
and certainly as they age they'll be considered disabled
in many ways (too low to understand)
I think even in the context of able bodied you want to
be a little bit careful about, it's a myth, the way
the idea of the autonomy.
- I completely and absolutely agree with you
and I can say that if I came into a room and I was
sitting across from you I would locate you as an
able bodied person and I would think of our experiences
as different in that way.
So, I want to support you in not reifying
that identification, because you're absolutely right
about that and I want to also integrate your point
in that which is, is there a way to acknowledge
at the very least the differences in how we are read
in the world and how we are responded to in the world
that is respectful to the experiences of both of us?
- [AM11] But then in a certain sense (too low to understand)
- It's exactly what I'm talking about.
(Andrea and audience laughing)
- Yes, precisely.
You know can-
- [AM11] (too low) able bodied (too low)
- Yeah, absolutely.
Asolutely true.
I knew it would be fun to work here.
Yeah?
(audience laughing)
- [Audience member 12] I have a question,
I really appreciate, like the other people in this audience,
how you're tying together social justice perspective
and the clinical perspective
but I;ve noticed a tension around that connection
that comes up regardless of which -ism
you're talking about.
You run the risk of seeing a person who comes into
your office as having a set of problems that is entirely
over determined by their social location and is totally
stated to happen to them based on their science
and stated identity and then commiserate with them
about how these things are unavoidable
and thereby miss their, kind of, web of individual
experience in which all of the stuff has gotten filtered.
So I wonder how you think about acknowledging the
system of injustice in which a person has lived
and honoring their individual idiosyncrasies.
- I think that's really, really important and I guess
the way that I would respond to that is to say
rather than thinking about it as "Now I've got all of
"this knowledge and I am rich in my understanding
"of your location in this system."
Rather than thinking about bringing it into the room
in that way, bringing into the room a lot of questions.
What I want to suggest is bringing into the room a lot
of questions and a lot of availability for possibility
for what is happening for your client.
That's the stuff.
Being genuinely and authentically curious
about your clients lived experience
and being able to meaningfully resonate with that
lived experience and being able to meaningfully meet them
in that experience.
That is the healing act.
And so part, what holding this mantle,
and holding this larger cultural understanding is about
is not about then imposing that understanding
but about bringing with that understanding
all of the really important questions and
all of the really important curiosities
that will support your client in bringing themselves
fully into the room.
Does that answer your question?
Yeah?
- [Audience member 13] I want to ask you a question
about how you think disabled peoples relationships
with systems impact their identity development?
If your clients, people grow up as clients of a system,
how does that change them and how does that
come into a therapeutic relationship when in fact
someone may feel they're having a conversation with this
individual but there's a system behind that
that has driven how that person sees themselves,
maybe drives their authentic autonomy or not.
How do you see the relationships with systems
impacting them?
- I think that the relationship to systems and the identity
that emerges as a consequence of having been
the identified need is pretty profound in peoples
understanding of their own actual needs,
of their own individual needs and of their ability
to bring that into the relationship.
There's a book that I'm going to reference and then
not have the title for.
There's a book that was written in England and
it was actually written for,
to train personal care attendants.
The book is written from an empowerment model
and really talks about if you're a personal care attendant
you need to be working in collaboration with your client
and they need to be actively involved in a conversation
about what it is that they actually need and what it is
that you actually are responding to
which in this room doesn't sound like rocket science
but in real life is.
There's an entire paragraph in that book that's written
that talks about how if you are someone who has been
systematically removed from being able to locate
your own need and systematically removed from being able
to say that need out loud because you are already a problem
because your only resource is to be apologetic
and because the ways in which you're going to be
successful in exactly those systems is by demonstrating
your capacity to yield to those systems.
Then it's not going to be a reflex for you to say
"Oh gosh, I'm thirsty and I'd actually really like
"some ice water so before we do anything else can we
"get the ice water first, can we start there?"
Because what you're conditioned to do is
minimize, diminish and dismiss.
What you're conditioned to do is apologize.
What you're conditioned to do is not know,
what I am conditioned to do is not know what I need.
What I am conditioned to do is minimize the impact
of my needs on the people around me
or minimize the impact of perceived need
on the people around me.
If you are making me a cup of coffee
because it is the direct route to my heart (audience laughter)
are you doing that because you are doing that as an
act of relationship?
Or, are you doing that because you've decided
that I am not good at making coffee because
it's going to be challenging for me to do that?
Because where you locate yourself in that response
changes everything about our relationship in that moment
and changes everything about how I get to see myself.
Did that answer your question?
- [AM13] Yeah.
- Yeah?
What else?
Yeah.
- [Audience member 14] You've talked a lot about
individuals who have a visually apparent disability
and I'm really curious to know a little bit more,
this is a very raw question but a little bit more about
people who have hidden disabilities?
So, for example I'm dyslexic and that's something that's
hidden and I don't generally share that with a lot of people
this is probably the most people I've shared it with
(Andrea and audience laughing) - Nicely done!
- [AM14] And so I think and I think about as a therapist
I work with teenagers who would probably rather get
in a fight in class and get kicked out than have to read
and have their classmates know.
But then also thinking about more broadly,
most of the clients you see have some sort of disability
or some sort of mental health issue that might
impact their (mumbling)
So I'm just curious to know a little bit more about
those hidden disabilities and how that contributes as well
both clinically and from a social justice perspective.
I know it's a really big question.
- It's a really big question and it's a really important one
because one of the things that's true,
actually, let me ask you a question then,
if you don't want to answer it you absolutely
don't have to.
What has been a thing that has been difficult for you
about having a disability that no one sees?
- [AM14] I would say often times by those people being like
"Oh, well I wouldn't have known that."
and that feeling of "Oh, but you look so normal."
- Uh huh, right.
What you're naming in that is that location.
People want very much to support you in staying
in the privileged category, in the category of able bodied.
I'm going to dismiss, I'm going to minimize,
I'm going to deflect what you have just told me
about what's difficult for you about moving
through the world.
The other thing that's true about that
and the other thing that plays out a lot
especially with invisible disabilities is
not only am I going to deflect
and deny because I'm interested in keeping you
in this category and not in that category.
I'm also going to decide for myself
whether or not your disability is legitimate.
What's true for people with visible disabilities
what's true for me as a person with a
visible disability is that people have a lot of beliefs
about what it is that I can and cannot do.
They're almost never right, I would like to add.
Their sense of accuracy around that is horrific.
(Andrea and audience laughing)
But it has had an enormous impact on my life,
what people have decided for me that I
can and cannot do.
If I am someone who passes as someone who is able bodied
part of what that means is that my ability to name
and advocate for myself around a need that I'm having
is five steps behind.
Because you're not going to hear me when I say
I have this need.
You're not going to locate me in the way that I need you to
locate me in order to meaningfully respond to that need.
And then you're going to decide for yourself
whether or not you believe me.
This is something that happens a lot for people who
experience variable disabilities.
It's a tremendously difficult situation to navigate
because if I saw you being able to climb the stairs
last week and you're telling me you can't climb the stairs
today I'm going to decide that you're malingering.
Because it is always the privileged population,
it is always the population who has access to the resources
that gets to decide whether or not they're going to
dole those resources out
to the not privileged population.
It's always the privileged population that gets to
make that decision.
One of the things that's difficult about not having
any visual queues is that you then have to advocate
for yourself even to be located as someone who has
a legitimate need.
Yeah?
- [Audience member 15] You talk a lot about
being in a clinical setting but I'm curious about
some things for us as classmates where we're all
studying to be clinicians but we're also in an environment
that is very, very fast paced and has expectations of
being able to learn and produce in very specific ways.
What are some things that we can do to support each other
as classmates or as faculty who's here,
what are some things that we can do to bring
visibility in to the room in terms of curriculum
as we study it and acknowledging the variability of
the bodies and learning styles that are in the room?
- That's lovely!
One of the first things that I would love to see happen
is that disability become a current in all of the clincial
conversations that you have.
That in all of the clinical conversations that you have
you locate yourself in articulating whether or not
you're talking about someone who is inhabiting
what we have defined as a standard set of abilities.
Whether or not you're locating a clinical situation
that presumes a standard set of abilities
in processing information or a standard set of abilities
in moving through the world.
Even in the way that you articulate your cases
or articulate your relationship to your clients
or articulate your relationship to each other
being able to locate "I'm talking about someone who is
"white, heteresexual and able bodied, or who
"identifies as able bodied, or who experiences an oridnary
"range of abilities."
Being able to name that, names in it's legitimacy
identities that are not that.
If we are able to name that it's not
what is normal or what is not normal
if we're not using that dichotomization to say
you are the category that is advantaged and therefore normal
and you are the category that is problematic.
The category that is problematic is the only category
that get's named.
Being able to name, in your classes,
and being able to articulate in your classes
ways in which able bodied and ableism
is informing every interaction that you're having
because it is,
is I think crucial.
I think interpersonally what's crucial
is being able to create the spaces that are safe enough
to say, to be able to name, this is how I'm impacted
by this environment.
This is how I'm impacted by how this material
is being presented to me.
This is how I'm impacted by the ways in which
I'm being expected to process this information.
Because if I can articulate that impact,
if I can name that impact in a way that's not
going to be shamed
in a way that's not going to be denied
and also not going to be pathologized
then I can elicit collaboration around that
and I can also experience the relief that we all experience
in the validation of that.
If I can say without shame and embarassment
"The act of getting into this building was horrific."
and I can have reflected back to me that in fact
not only is that true but it's a level of emotional energy
and a level of emotional cost that not everyone has.
The experience of validation around that
and the normalization of that as being part of the
experience of the human community
is going to impact really directly the stress
that people experience and impact really directly
the ways in which people with disabilities
get to feel a part of this community as well.
And get to not feel as separate or alienated from this
community as well.
Does that answer your question?
Yeah?
- [Audience member 16] Do you work this any clients
who are non verbal (speaking too quietly to be understood)?
- I don't actually work with clients that are not
verbal, I'm in a very verbal position
at this point in my life.
(Andrea and audience laughing)
I would, it would be a mis step for me to
try and articulate that.
There is a tremendous amount of literature
that is pretty compelling about how to interact
around communication.
- [Laura Rauscher] One more question
before we have to wrap up.
Yep?
- [Audience member 17] Hi!
I don't have a question but
as a social worker myself in practice
I'm always on the look for writings of personal,
of people who walk the walk, talk the talk.
The one most compelling and poignant writing I've ever
read was the lawyer from Charleston, South Carolina
near my homeland, was Harriet McBryde Johnson.
- Harriet McBryde Johnson! - [Laura Rauscher] Amen!
- [AM17] And I just wanted to share that with you all.
Some of her writings, her essays have taught me
almost everything I know about ableism and disability.
so I just wanted to offer that. - Me too!
Harriet McBryde Johnson, very nice.
Very nice.
- [Laura Rauscher] You have one more comment back there?
Quick one.
- [Audience member 18] I want to thank you,
and Smith for inviting you.
But also I've been attending these occasionally for
many, many years, as a Smith graduate, back in the day.
This is one of the most useful, compelling, articulate,
coherent, rich in humanity, really.
I've can scribble it on the paper but I want to
(speaker drowned out by applause)
(applause)
- [Andrea] Thank you very very much.
I'm really excited that I got to be here,
this was a lot of fun.
- [Laura] Thank you so much.
Thank you all, goodnight.
(applause)