On the social model of disability

Why resistance is actually a god send :: ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON July 18th 2022

I write in my book about the model of disability that I subscribe to as an autistic person. You can buy it here if you’re interested.

One of the most harmful things that neurotypical not-trauma-informed- society does (in my opinion), is to blame our resistance as the problem.

You don’t like therapy? Well you’re resistant to it.

You aren’t sleeping well? Well you’re resistant to letting go fully then.

You don’t like this movie or book? You haven’t given it a proper chance.

I could go on, but you get it. ^

Instead of blaming our resistance as the problem, I tend to orient clients to figuring out what about the situation makes them resistant.

Our resistance can teach us so much about what we need and who we are.

I never think it’s a good idea to just DO IT. I think it’s a good idea to slow down and really analyze and figure it out.

Maybe it works for people of other neurobiologies to just do it even if there is resistance without asking questions, but I know for me, as an autistic, it’s actually dangerous for me to subscribe to that school of thought - which is very hard given the self-help world shouting it at me constantly.

Using the social model of disability, if you don’t like the mall, it’s not because you should get used to the mall and get over your resistance about the mall, it’s because something about the way the mall is set up does not work for you.

So if we can establish that, we can start to ponder: what can we add or take away from the situation of the mall so that if you want to go to the mall (or sometimes need to go to the mall), you can? In this case, maybe you would add sunglasses and noise cancelling headphones, or a safe person by your side, and you would ditch going at busy hours and prioritize going in quickly when it opens and the rest of the world is still in the starbucks line.

Here’s another example: I genuinely love retreats, but I do not do well in new environments immediately, so travelling to retreats is not ideal for me. But I always thought I was in resistance to retreats as a personal failing because I could never stay throughout the entire length of one, or because of the immense stress I started to feel when I booked one only to end up cancelling my spot. After cancelling, I would feel like a failure and on the outskirts of circles I wanted to be in with no real way to join. I was so embarrassed each time any of the above happened. That was until I lived in Encinitas (a coastal town in north county San Diego;) and a lot of retreats were now suddenly local to me.

I signed up for a weekend retreat, that I wrote about in Can You Turn The Lights Off? (Chapter: Belly Fat), and I completely loved it. That’s because I could go home every night in my things. I knew the town, the place (I even drove to the retreat house the night before to check out the parking), the restaurants, etc.

So it wasn’t that I don’t like retreats as I had assumed - that I was somehow in resistance to intimacy or being seen or trying new things or leaving my comfort zone or investing in myself. It was that traveling is too hard for my brain in general, but then add on traveling plus the social pressures of a new group of people, and the processing of new experiences and new environments, I completely meltdown or shut down. Or I would feel such intense anxiety I would dip out prior to.

So my point stands: it seems that more often than not, when our resistance shows up, it’s usually to be heard and understood, not to be pushed through.

I am wishing you a great week ahead. xx