Helping People With Disabilities Quotes

We are not easy to help. Nor are we easy to be around. Nobody with a serious illness is easy to be around. Although not obviously physically disabled, we struggle to get things done. Our energy levels are dangerously low. Sometimes, we find it hard to talk. We get angry and frustrated. We fall into despair. We cry, for no apparent reason. Sometimes we find it difficult to eat, or to sleep. Often, we have to go to bed in the afternoon or all day. So do most people with a serious illness. We are no different.

As a society, we need to have compassion for all people affected by illness and disability—and that means those who receive care as well as those who give care. We all matter, and no one should feel like they can’t ask for help when they need it. If someone says they’re hurting, please listen. Please take them seriously. Please be kind. If you’re hurting, please be kind to yourself.

People can only understand their own pain. Even a genuine desire to help a person with a disability can become a burden or a discouragement for the person on the receiving end. It is important for helpers and therapists to ask themselves, If I was the person I’m helping … ? It would be useful also if they double-checked that the assistance they’re offering is of real relevance to the person with special needs, and not about gratifying their own desire to care.

Many masked Autistics are sent to gifted education as children, instead of being referred to disability services.[18] Our apparent high intelligence puts us in a double bind: we are expected to accomplish great things to justify our oddness, and because we possess an enviable, socially prized quality, it’s assumed we need less help than other people, not more.

The hardest thing in life and the hardest to live through is the knowledge that there is someone you love very much whom you cannot save from suffering. You can do things to aid people's physical disabilities; but you can do little to help the pain of the heart.

One of the major ways abled society dehumanizes the disabled is by calling our maturity into question. “Adults” are supposed to be independent, though of course no person actually is. We all rely on the hard work and social-emotional support of dozens of people every single day. You’re only seen as less adult, and supposedly less of a person,[3] if you need help in ways that disrupt the illusions of self-sufficiency.

If you are disabled, it is probably not your fault, but it is no good blaming the world or expecting it to take pity on you. One has to have a positive attitude and must make the best of the situation that one finds oneself in; if one is physically disabled, one cannot afford to be psychologically disabled as well. In my opinion, one should concentrate on activities in which one's physical disability will not present a serious handicap. I am afraid that Olympic Games for the disabled do not appeal to me, but it is easy for me to say that because I never liked athletics anyway. On the other hand, science is a very good area for disabled people because it goes on mainly in the mind. Of course, most kinds of experimental work are probably ruled out for most such people, but theoretical work is almost ideal. My disabilities have not been a significant handicap in my field, which is theoretical physics. Indeed, they have helped me in a way by shielding me from lecturing and administrative work that I would otherwise have been involved in. I have managed, however, only because of the large amount of help I have received from my wife, children, colleagues and students. I find that people in general are very ready to help, but you should encourage them to feel that their efforts to aid you are worthwhile by doing as well as you possibly can.

Recently, Stacey Milbern brought up the concept of “crip doulas”—other disabled people who help bring you into disability community or into a different kind of disability than you may have experienced before. The more seasoned disabled person who comes and sits with your new crip self and lets you know the hacks you might need, holds space for your feelings, and shares the community’s stories. She mentioned that it’s telling that there’s not even a word for this in mainstream English. We wondered together: How would it change people’s experiences of disability and their fear of becoming disabled if this were a word, and a way of being? What if this was a rite of passage, a form of emotional labor folks knew of—this space of helping people transition? I have done this with hundreds of people. What if this is something we could all do for each other? How would our movements change? Our lives? Our beliefs about what we can do?

Three things make people want to change. One is that they hurt sufficiently. They have beat their heads against the same wall so long that they decide they have had enough. They have invested in the same slot machines without a pay-off for so long that they finally are willing either to stop playing, or to move on to others. Their migraines hurt, their ulcers bleed. They are alcoholic. They have hit the bottom. They beg for relief. They want to change. Another thing that makes people want to change is a slow type of despair called ennui, or boredom. This is what the person has who goes through life saying, "So what?" until he finally asks the ultimate big "So What?" He is ready to change. A third thing that makes people want to change is the sudden discovery that they can. This has been an observable effect of Transactional Analysis. Many people who have shown no particular desire to change have been exposed to Transactional Analysis through lectures or by hearing about it from someone else. This knowledge has produced an excitement about new possibilities, which has led to their further inquiry and a growing desire to change. There is also the type of patient who, although suffering from disabling symptoms, still does not really want to change. His treatment contract reads, "I'll promise to let you help me if I don't have to get well." This negative attitude changes, however, as the patient begins to see that there is indeed another way to live. A working knowledge of P-A-C makes it possible for the Adult to explore new and exciting frontiers of life, a desire which has been there all along but has been buried under the burden of the NOT OK.

People who use their disability, grief or adversity as an excuse to avoid doing what they can are emotionally dependent, and emotional dependence can be even more deadly than economic dependence.

Why Does He Do That? That's the number one question, isn't it? Maybe it's his drinking, you say. Maybe it's his learning disabilities. It's his job; he hates it. He's stressed. I think he's bipolar. It's his mother's fault; she spoiled him rotten. It's the drugs. If only he didn't use. It's his temper. He's selfish. It's the pornography; he's obsessed. The list could go on and on. You could spend many years trying to pinpoint it and never get a definite answer. The fact is, many people have these problems and they aren't abusive. Just because someone is an alcoholic doesn't mean he is abusive. Men hate their jobs all the time and aren't abusive. Bipolar? Okay. Stressed? Who isn't! Do you see where I am going with this? Off the subject a bit, when someone commits a violent crime, they always report in the news about his possible motive. As human beings, we need to somehow make sense of things. If someone murders someone, do you think it makes the family of the victim feel better to know the murderer's motive? No. Except for self-defense, there really is no excuse for murder. Motive, if there is any, is irrelevant. The same is true of abuse. You could spend your whole life going round and round trying to figure out why. The truth is, the why doesn't matter. There are only two reasons why men commit abuse—because they want to do so and because they can. You want to know why. In many ways, you might feel like you need to know. But, if you could come up with a reason or a motive, it wouldn't help you. Maybe you believe that if you did this or that differently, he wouldn't have abused you. That is faulty thinking and won't help you get better. You didn't do anything to cause the abuse. No matter what you said, no matter what you did, you didn't deserve to be abused. You are the victim and it won't help you to know why he supposedly abused you. No matter what his reason, there is no excuse for abuse. You are not to blame.

I have always been told that a person has to accept that the illness is chronic," she says, at the end of our interview. "You can be 'in recovery,' but you can never be 'recovered.' But I don't want to be on disability forever, and I have started to question whether depression is really a chemical thing. What are the origins of my despair? How can I really help myself? I want to honor the other parts of me, other than the sick part that I'm always thinking about. I think that depression is like a weed that I have been watering, and I want to pull up that weed, and I am starting to look to people for solutions. I really don't know what the drugs did for me all these years, but I do know that I am disappointed in how things have turned out." Such is Melissa Sances's story. Today it is a fairly common one. A distressed teenager is diagnosed with depression and put on an antidepressant, and years later he or she is still struggling with the condition. But if we return to the 1950s, we will discover that the depression rarely struck someone as young as Melissa, and it rarely turned into the chronic suffering that she has experienced. Her course of illness is, for the most part, unique to our times.

I’m an occupational therapist, an obscure profession if there ever was one. We are few and far between, maybe because we have chosen to serve people with disabilities. All disabilities. Not a glamorous endeavour, nor a lucrative one. And I say serve because we deem that in helping we see weakness, while in serving we see wholeness. We’ve opted for wholeness nearly a century ago and have been at odds with the system ever since. We don’t fix people, you see: with them, we simply try to find a way to meaning, balance, and justice. I chose occupational therapy because it blends science and humanism, intellectual rigour and compassion.

The views on technology we get from listening to disabled people often look very different from those of people educated in the medical and "helping" professions.

Over the past seventy years the various identity struggles have to some degree remediated the great wrongs that have been done to workers, people of color, Indigenous Peoples, women, gays and lesbians, and the disabled, while helping to humanize our society overall. But they have also had a shadow side in the sense that they have encouraged us to think of ourselves more as determined than as self-determining, more as victims of 'isms' (racism, sexism, capitalism, ableism) than as human beings who have the power of choice. For our own survival we must assume individual and collective responsibility for creating a new nation—one that is loved rather than feared and one that does not have to bribe and bully other nations to win support.

Kay: ... I know she thinks if she were me she'd be better, but do you know what the problem is with being sick? It's that you're sick. People who are healthy think they know how you could get better, because when they imagine what your life is like they imagine having your sickness on top of their health. They imagine that sick people have all the resources they do and they're just not trying hard enough. But we don't. I don't. I know my sister is only trying to help me, but I can't help it. I think, You suffer for just one day the way I do. I want you to feel like this for just one day. Then you tell me how to get better.

it becomes obvious that people with disabilities have experiences, by virtue of their disabilities, which non-disabled people do not have, and which are [or can be] sources of knowledge that is not directly accessible to non-disabled people. Some of this knowledge, for example, how to live with a suffering body, would be of enormous practical help to most people…. Much of it would enrich and expand our culture, and some of it has the potential to change our thinking and our ways of life profoundly.

Think about the "already-not-yet-ness" of the kingdom being reflected along a spectrum of expressions of restoration. Healing is the fullest and most present expression of restoration, hope is the most future-oriented expression, and help is in the continuum in between.

Although stigmatizing attitudes are not limited to mental illness, the public seems to disapprove persons with psychiatric disabilities significantly more than persons with related conditions such as physical illness (34-36). Severe mental illness has been likened to drug addiction, prostitution, and criminality (37,38). Unlike physical disabilities, persons with mental illness are perceived by the public to be in control of their disabilities and responsible for causing them (34,36). Furthermore, research respondents are less likely to pity persons with mental illness, instead reacting to psychiatric disability with anger and believing that help is not deserved (35,36,39)." World Psychiatry. 2002 Feb; 1(1): 16–20. PMCID: PMC1489832 Understanding the impact of stigma on people with mental illness PATRICK W CORRIGAN and AMY C WATSON

Perhaps you’re reading this book with your phone by your side, checking your email whenever your attention drifts, tapping text messages to a friend. You sit at the end of a long line of inventions that might never have existed but for people with disabilities: the keyboard on your phone, the telecommunications lines it connects with, the inner workings of email. In 1808, Pellegrino Turri built the first typewriter so that his blind lover, Countess Carolina Fantoni da Fivizzano, could write letters more legibly. In 1872, Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone to support his work helping the deaf. And in 1972, Vint Cerf programmed the first email protocols for the nascent internet. He believed fervently in the power of electronic letters, because electronic messaging was the best way to communicate with his wife, who was deaf, while he was at work.

Most people like that don’t want pity. They cope with their disabilities, help others, live good lives. They’re brave. I get all that. Yet it seemed to me—maybe because everything in my personal system was working five-by-five—that there was something mean about having to deal with such things, out of whack and unfair.

Although containing and denying grief is a time-honored activist practice that works for some people, I would argue that feelings of grief and trauma are not a distraction from the struggle. For example, transformative justice work—strategies that create justice, healing, and safety for survivors of abuse without predominantly relying on the state—is hard as hell! What would it be like if we built healing justice practices into it from the beginning? Everything from praying to the goddesses of transformation to help us hold these giant processes and help someone acting abusively choose to change to having cleansing ceremonies along the way.

Don't hate white people. They can't help it. They have a learning disability. They need your compassion. They need accommodations. They are like preschoolers--their understanding of race is so basic. They can't be faulted for being uncomfortable with somebody who has what amounts to a graduate degree in race--that is, us. It's not fair for preschoolers to be placed in the same classroom with graduate students and be forced to compete. Pity them, Maria. Take their hands and explain very slowly and very carefully to them the truth of what you know, but with kindness in your heart. Have compassion for them, because not everybody starts on an equal playing field.

I probably should say that this is what makes you a good traveler in my opinion, but deep down I really think this is just universal, incontrovertible truth. There is the right way to travel, and the wrong way. And if there is one philanthropic deed that can come from this book, maybe it will be that I teach a few more people how to do it right. So, in short, my list of what makes a good traveler, which I recommend you use when interviewing your next potential trip partner: 1. You are open. You say yes to whatever comes your way, whether it’s shots of a putrid-smelling yak-butter tea or an offer for an Albanian toe-licking. (How else are you going to get the volcano dust off?) You say yes because it is the only way to really experience another place, and let it change you. Which, in my opinion, is the mark of a great trip. 2. You venture to the places where the tourists aren’t, in addition to hitting the “must-sees.” If you are exclusively visiting places where busloads of Chinese are following a woman with a flag and a bullhorn, you’re not doing it. 3. You are easygoing about sleeping/eating/comfort issues. You don’t change rooms three times, you’ll take an overnight bus if you must, you can go without meat in India and without vegan soy gluten-free tempeh butter in Bolivia, and you can shut the hell up about it. 4. You are aware of your travel companions, and of not being contrary to their desires/​needs/​schedules more often than necessary. If you find that you want to do things differently than your companions, you happily tell them to go on without you in a way that does not sound like you’re saying, “This is a test.” 5. You can figure it out. How to read a map, how to order when you can’t read the menu, how to find a bathroom, or a train, or a castle. 6. You know what the trip is going to cost, and can afford it. If you can’t afford the trip, you don’t go. Conversely, if your travel companions can’t afford what you can afford, you are willing to slum it in the name of camaraderie. P.S.: Attractive single people almost exclusively stay at dumps. If you’re looking for them, don’t go posh. 7. You are aware of cultural differences, and go out of your way to blend. You don’t wear booty shorts to the Western Wall on Shabbat. You do hike your bathing suit up your booty on the beach in Brazil. Basically, just be aware to show the culturally correct amount of booty. 8. You behave yourself when dealing with local hotel clerks/​train operators/​tour guides etc. Whether it’s for selfish gain, helping the reputation of Americans traveling abroad, or simply the spreading of good vibes, you will make nice even when faced with cultural frustrations and repeated smug “not possible”s. This was an especially important trait for an American traveling during the George W. years, when the world collectively thought we were all either mentally disabled or bent on world destruction. (One anecdote from that dark time: in Greece, I came back to my table at a café to find that Emma had let a nearby [handsome] Greek stranger pick my camera up off our table. He had then stuck it down the front of his pants for a photo. After he snapped it, he handed the camera back to me and said, “Show that to George Bush.” Which was obviously extra funny because of the word bush.) 9. This last rule is the most important to me: you are able to go with the flow in a spontaneous, non-uptight way if you stumble into something amazing that will bump some plan off the day’s schedule. So you missed the freakin’ waterfall—you got invited to a Bahamian family’s post-Christening barbecue where you danced with three generations of locals in a backyard under flower-strewn balconies. You won. Shut the hell up about the waterfall. Sally

Not only are your visitors technologically advanced, they have greater social cohesion, or they would not have been able to reach your shores. They are coming into a world where tribal warfare is dominant, where one human being cannot recognize another, where everyone claims different allegiances and authorities. They are coming into a world where people are ruining their environment at a frightening pace. They are coming into a world where people are fearful, superstitious and self-indulgent and where there is great tragedy, suffering and human abuse. How would this world look to you if you were a visitor coming here for the first time? Even with your human viewpoint, you can gain a perspective of how you must look to those who are visiting. Will they be compassionate towards you? Will they attempt to help you? Will they attempt to avoid you? Will they want to have a relationship with you? Can they trust you? Can you be relied upon? Are you consistent enough in order to establish relations? These are all meaningful questions for you to ask in order to gain a Greater Community perspective, even from a human point of view. Seeing yourself from a Greater Community perspective will show you what you must accomplish and what your great disabilities are at this time. This will give you a new understanding of yourself, one that is very fair and honest.

I couldn’t help but ask myself, Where were these people when he really needed them? Where were all of these helpful people when Herbert was three and his mother died? Where were they when he was seven and trying to recover from physical abuse? Where were they when he was a young teen struggling with drugs and alcohol? Where were they when he returned from Vietnam traumatized and disabled?

Experiences like that helped me realize that being “different” just might help me contribute something special to the world. I found that people were willing to listen to me speak because they had only to look at me to know I’d faced and overcome my challenges. I did not lack credibility. Instinctively, people felt I might have something to say that could help them with their own problems (pp. 20-21).

labels say nothing about a person. they say only how the rest of us categorise that person. good literature is always about peeling labels off. and treating real people with dignity is always about peeling the labels off. a diagnosis may lead to practical help. but genuinely understanding another human being involves talking and listening to them and finding out what makes them an individual, not what makes them part of a group.

Just as we commonly hear people say the doctor prescribed someone particular riding exercises, or ice baths, or walking without shoes, we should in the same way say that nature prescribed someone to be diseased, or disabled, or to suffer any kind of impairment. In the case of the doctor, prescribed means something ordered to help aid someone’s healing. But in the case of nature, it means that what happens to each of us is ordered to help aid our destiny.

A brick could be used to show you how to live a richer, fuller, more satisfying life. Don’t you want to have fulfillment and meaning saturating your existence? I can show you how you can achieve this and so much more with just a simple brick. For just $99.99—not even an even hundred bucks, I’ll send you my exclusive life philosophy that’s built around a brick. Man’s used bricks to build houses for centuries. Now let one man, me, show you how a brick can be used to build your life up bigger and stronger than you ever imagined. But act now, because supplies are limited. This amazing offer won’t last forever. You don’t want to wake up in ten years to find yourself divorced, homeless, and missing your testicles because you waited even two hours too long to obtain this information. Become a hero today—save your life. Procrastination is only for the painful things in life. We prolong the boring, but why put off for tomorrow the exciting life you could be living today? If you’re not satisfied with the information I’m providing, I’m willing to offer you a no money back guarantee. That’s right, you read that wrong. If you are not 100% dissatisfied with my product, I’ll give you your money back. For $99.99 I’m offering 99.99%, but you’ve got to be willing to penny up that percentage to 100. Why delay? The life you really want is mine, and I’m willing to give it to you—for a price. That price is a one-time fee of $99.99, which of course everyone can afford—even if they can’t afford it. Homeless people can’t afford it, but they’re the people who need my product the most. Buy my product, or face the fact that in all probability you are going to end up homeless and sexless and unloved and filthy and stinky and probably even disabled, if not physically than certainly mentally. I don’t care if your testicles taste like peanut butter—if you don’t buy my product, even a dog won’t lick your balls you miserable cur. I curse you! God damn it, what are you, slow? Pay me my money so I can show you the path to true wealth. Don’t you want to be rich? Everything takes money—your marriage, your mortgage, and even prostitutes. I can show you the path to prostitution—and it starts by ignoring my pleas to help you. I’m not the bad guy here. I just want to help. You have some serious trust issues, my friend. I have the chance to earn your trust, and all it’s going to cost you is a measly $99.99. Would it help you to trust me if I told you that I trust you? Well, I do. Sure, I trust you. I trust you to make the smart decision for your life and order my product today. Don’t sleep on this decision, because you’ll only wake up in eight hours to find yourself living in a miserable future. And the future indeed looks bleak, my friend. War, famine, children forced to pimp out their parents just to feed the dog. Is this the kind of tomorrow you’d like to live in today? I can show you how to provide enough dog food to feed your grandpa for decades. In the future I’m offering you, your wife isn’t a whore that you sell for a knife swipe of peanut butter because you’re so hungry you actually considered eating your children. Become a hero—and save your kids’ lives. Your wife doesn’t want to spread her legs for strangers. Or maybe she does, and that was a bad example. Still, the principle stands. But you won’t be standing—in the future. Remember, you’ll be confined to a wheelchair. Mushrooms are for pizzas, not clouds, but without me, your life will atom bomb into oblivion. Nobody’s dropping a bomb while I’m around. The only thing I’m dropping is the price. Boom! I just lowered the price for you, just to show you that you are a valued customer. As a VIP, your new price on my product is just $99.96. That’s a savings of over two pennies (three, to be precise). And I’ll even throw in a jar of peanut butter for free. That’s a value of over $.99. But wait, there’s more! If you call within the next ten minutes, I’ll even throw in a blanket free of charge. . .

There are times when I wonder where this disability "autism" comes from. Could it have been created, I wonder, by humankind itself? I can't help but feel that some imbalance in this world first caused neuro-atypical people to be needed and then brought into being. This isn't to say that all of us are delighted to be the way we are all the time, of course. But I refuse to accept it when people view us as incomplete or partial human beings; I prefer to believe that people with autism are every bit as whole as anyone else. We might be different from the majority in diverse ways, but why are these differences negative things?

Sometimes Christian good is hard to be around. It’s not of this world, and the juxtaposition jars. For example, Jean Vanier spent seven years in the British navy, starting in 1942. Later in life he noticed the way people with mental disabilities were mistreated and discarded by society into miserable asylums. He visited the asylums and noticed that nobody in them was crying. “When they realize that nobody cares, that nobody will answer them, children no longer cry. It takes too much energy. We cry out only when there is hope that someone may hear us.” He bought a little house near Paris and started a community for the mentally disabled. Before long there were 134 such communities in thirty-five countries. Vanier exemplifies a selflessness that is almost spooky. He thinks and cares so little of himself. He lives as almost pure gift. People who meet him report that this can have an unnerving effect. Vanier walked out of a society that celebrates the successful and the strong to devote his life purely to those who are weak. He did it because he understands his own weakness. “We human beings are all fundamentally the same,” he wrote. “We all belong to a common, broken humanity. We all have wounded, vulnerable hearts. Each one of us needs to feel appreciated and understood; we all need help.

Disability justice, when it’s really happening, is too messy and wild to really fit into traditional movement and nonprofit industrial complex structures, because our bodies and minds are too wild to fit into those structures. Which is no surprise, because nonprofits, while created in the ’60s to manage dissent, in many ways overlap with “charities”—the network of well-meaning institutions designed on purpose to lock up, institutionalize, and “help the handicapped.” Foundations have rarely ever given disabled people money to run our own shit. Nonprofits need us as clients and get nervous about us running the show. Disability justice means the show has to change—or get out of the way.

I like how Dallas Willard put it: “We don’t believe something by merely saying we believe it,” he said, “or even when we believe that we believe it. We believe something when we act as if it were true.” So perhaps a better question than “Do I believe in miracles?” is “Am I acting like I do?” Am I including the people who are typically excluded? Am I feeding the hungry and caring for the sick? Am I holding the hands of the homeless and offering help to addicts? Am I working to break down religious and political barriers that marginalize ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities and people with disabilities? Am I behaving as though life is more than a meaningless, chaotic mess, that there is some order in the storm?

The second part of the folk theory holds that racism is entirely a matter of individual beliefs, intentions, and actions. In the folk theory, a racist is a person who believes that people of color are biologically inferior to Whites, so that White privilege is deserved and must be defended. Racism is what this kind of White supremacist thinks and does. The folk theory holds that such people are anachronisms, who are ignorant, vicious, and remote from the mainstream. Their ignorance can be cured by education. Their viciousness can be addressed by helping them to enjoy new advantages, so that they can gain self-esteem and will not have to look down on others. Since education and general well-being are increasing, racism should soon disappear entirely, except as a sign of mental derangement or disability. One of the most difficult exercises that this book recommends is to move away from thinking of racism as entirely a matter of individual beliefs and psychological states. White Americans generally agree that things happen in the world because individuals, with beliefs, emotions, and intentions, cause them to happen. They consider this understanding to be the most obvious kind of common sense. Yet not everyone approaches the world from this perspective, and it is very interesting to try to think about racism from outside the framework that it imposes. Critical theorists do not deny that individual beliefs figure in racism. But we prefer to emphasize its collective, cultural dimensions, and to avoid singling out individuals and trying to decide whether they are racists or not. Furthermore, critical theorists insist that ordinary people who do not share White supremacist beliefs can still talk and behave in ways that advance the projects of White racism. I will try to show, in chapters to come, how

Extensive research has revealed that the more religious you are, the likelier you will be to hold conservative, right-wing political views—and conversely, the more conservative and right-wing you are politically, the greater is the likelihood that you will be strongly religious. In the United States, strong religiosity and strong conservative politics go hand in hand. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule; strongly religious African Americans, for example, still tend to vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. But this glaring exception aside, when taking into account national averages, strongly religious Americans—when compared to the less religious or irreligious—are much more likely to support the death penalty; support draconian punishment for prisoners; support the policies of former President George W. Bush; support the war in Iraq; support the governmental use of torture; oppose gay marriage and gay rights; oppose welfare spending that helps society’s unfortunate, hungry, or disabled; and oppose regulations to protect the environment.

This was yet another manifestation of racism and contempt for the South, yes, but also of a universal cognitive disability, in that people had a very hard time imagining that catastrophe could happen to them, until it did. So until the climate was actually killing them, people had a tendency to deny it could happen. To others, yes; to them, no. This was a cognitive error that, like most cognitive errors, kept happening even when you knew of its existence and prevalence. It was some kind of evolutionary survival mechanism, some speculated, a way to help people carry on even when it was pointless to carry on. People living just twenty miles from a town flattened by a tornado in Ohio would claim that the flattened town was in the tornado track and they were not, so it would never happen to them. The following week they might get killed, in the event itself surprised and feeling that this was an unprecedented freak occurrence, but meanwhile, until then, they swore it couldn’t happen. That’s how people were, and even the torching of the South didn’t change it.

Each of the three recognized categories—care, service, and education—would encompass a wide range of activities, with different levels of compensation for full- and part-time participation. Care work could include parenting of young children, attending to an aging parent, assisting a friend or family member dealing with illness, or helping someone with mental or physical disabilities live life to the fullest. This category would create a veritable army of people—loved ones, friends, or even strangers—who could assist those in need, offering them what my entrepreneur friend’s touchscreen device for the elderly never could: human warmth. Service work would be similarly broadly defined, encompassing much of the current work of nonprofit groups as well as the kinds of volunteers I saw in Taiwan. Tasks could include performing environmental remediation, leading afterschool programs, guiding tours at national parks, or collecting oral histories from elders in our communities. Participants in these programs would register with an established group and commit to a certain number of hours of service work to meet the requirements of the stipend. Finally, education could range from professional training for the jobs of the AI age to taking classes that could transform a hobby into a career. Some recipients of the stipend will use that financial freedom to pursue a degree in machine learning and use it to find a high-paying job.

My shrink suggested that if I was going to continue traveling so much that I could look into getting a service animal expressly trained to provide emotional support to people with anxiety disorders. I considered getting Hunter S. Thomcat trained, but then I remembered that he gets spontaneous nervous diarrhea every time he's in a moving car, and I'd imagine that holding a cat who seems to have explosive plane dysentery wouldn't necessarily *help* my anxiety as give me something new (and horribly unsanitary) to be anxious about. I called around to different service-animal specialists and spoke to a woman who told me it's better to get an animal who has already been trained and has the right temperament. She also told me cats aren’t preferred emotional-support animals for anxiety disorder, but my cats hate dogs so I figured I was fucked, but then she told me that the Americans with Disabilities Act was recently interpreted as allowing “people with anxiety disorders to travel with an emotional-support pony on airlines.” So basically I could bring a goddamn pony on board with me. I’m pretty sure a pony wouldn’t fit under my seat or in my lap, but I rather liked the idea of a small medicinal horse standing in the aisle beside me while I braided his mane. Plus, Pony Danza would make a great pack animal and instead of bringing suitcases I could just put my extra clothes on him and that way I wouldn’t have to pay to check a bag. Plus, the pony wouldn’t get cold because it would be wearing my pajamas.

Mario'd fallen in love with the first Madame Psychosis programs because he felt like he was listening to someone sad read out loud from yellow letters she'd taken out of a shoebox on a rainy p.m., stuff about heartbreak and people you loved dying and U.S. woe, stuff that was real. It is increasingly hard to find valid art that is about stuff that is real in this way. The older Mario gets, the more confused he gets about the fact that everyone at E.T.A. over the age of about Kent Blott finds stuff that's really real uncomfortable and they get embarrassed. It's like there's some rule that real stuff can only get mentioned if everybody rolls their eyes or laughs in a way that isn't happy. The worstfeeling thing that happened today was at lunch when Michael Pemulis told Mario he had an idea for setting up a Dial-a-Prayer telephone service for atheists in which the atheist dials the number and the line just rings and rings and no one answers. It was a joke and a good one, and Mario got it; what was unpleasant was that Mario was the only one at the big table whose laugh was a happy laugh; everybody else sort of looked down like they were laughing at somebody with a disability. The whole issue was far above Mario's head, and he was unable to understand Lyle's replies when he tried to bring the confusion up. And Hal was for once no help, because Hal seemed even more uncomfortable and embarrassed than the fellows at lunch, and when Mario brought up real stuff Hal called him Booboo and acted like he'd wet himself and Hal was going to be very patient about helping him change.

Why Does He Do That? That's the number one question, isn't it? Maybe it's his drinking, you say. Maybe it's his learning disabilities. It's his job; he hates it. He's stressed. I think he's bipolar. It's his mother's fault; she spoiled him rotten. It's the drugs. If only he didn't use. It's his temper. He's selfish. It's the pornography; he's obsessed. The list could go on and on. You could spend many years trying to pinpoint it and never get a definite answer. The fact is, many people have these problems and they aren't abusive. Just because someone is an alcoholic doesn't mean he is abusive. Men hate their jobs all the time and aren't abusive. Bipolar? Okay. Stressed? Who isn't! Do you see where I am going with this? Off the subject a bit, when someone commits a violent crime, they always report in the news about his possible motive. As human beings, we need to somehow make sense of things. If someone murders someone, do you think it makes the family of the victim feel better to know the murderer's motive? No. Except for self-defense, there really is no excuse for murder. Motive, if there is any, is irrelevant. The same is true of abuse. You could spend your whole life going round and round trying to figure out why. The truth is, the why doesn't matter. There are only two reasons why men commit abuse—because they want to do so and because they can. You want to know why. In many ways, you might feel like you need to know. But, if you could come up with a reason or a motive, it wouldn't help you. Maybe you believe that if you did this or that differently, he wouldn't have abused you. That is faulty thinking and won't help you get better. You didn't do anything to cause the abuse. No matter what you said, no matter what you did, you didn't deserve to be abused. You are the victim and it won't help you to know why he supposedly abused you. No matter what his reason, there is no excuse for abuse. You are not to blame. —Beth Praed

told my people that I wanted only the best, whatever it took, wherever they came from, whatever it cost. We assembled thirty people, the brightest cybersecurity minds we have. A few are on loan, pursuant to strict confidentiality agreements, from the private sector—software companies, telecommunications giants, cybersecurity firms, military contractors. Two are former hackers themselves, one of them currently serving a thirteen-year sentence in a federal penitentiary. Most are from various agencies of the federal government—Homeland Security, CIA, FBI, NSA. Half our team is devoted to threat mitigation—how to limit the damage to our systems and infrastructure after the virus hits. But right now, I’m concerned with the other half, the threat-response team that Devin and Casey are running. They’re devoted to stopping the virus, something they’ve been unable to do for the last two weeks. “Good morning, Mr. President,” says Devin Wittmer. He comes from NSA. After graduating from Berkeley, he started designing cyberdefense software for clients like Apple before the NSA recruited him away. He has developed federal cybersecurity assessment tools to help industries and governments understand their preparedness against cyberattacks. When the major health-care systems in France were hit with a ransomware virus three years ago, we lent them Devin, who was able to locate and disable it. Nobody in America, I’ve been assured, is better at finding holes in cyberdefense systems or at plugging them. “Mr. President,” says Casey Alvarez. Casey is the daughter of Mexican immigrants who settled in Arizona to start a family and built up a fleet of grocery stores in the Southwest along the way. Casey showed no interest in the business, taking quickly to computers and wanting to join law enforcement. When she was a grad student at Penn, she got turned down for a position at the Department of Justice. So Casey got on her computer and managed to do what state and federal authorities had been unable to do for years—she hacked into an underground child-pornography website and disclosed the identities of all the website’s patrons, basically gift-wrapping a federal prosecution for Justice and shutting down an operation that was believed to be the largest purveyor of kiddie porn in the country. DOJ hired her on the spot, and she stayed there until she went to work for the CIA. She’s been most recently deployed in the Middle East with US Central Command, where she intercepts, decodes, and disrupts cybercommunications among terrorist groups. I’ve been assured that these two are, by far, the best we have. And they are about to meet the person who, so far, has been better. There is a hint of reverence in their expressions as I introduce them to Augie. The Sons of Jihad is the all-star team of cyberterrorists, mythical figures in that world. But I sense some competitive fire, too, which will be a good thing.

PATTERNS OF THE “SHY” What else is common among people who identify themselves as “shy?” Below are the results of a survey that was administered to 150 of my program’s participants. The results of this informal survey reveal certain facts and attitudes common among the socially anxious. Let me point out that these are the subjective answers of the clients themselves—not the professional opinions of the therapists. The average length of time in the program for all who responded was eight months. The average age was twenty-eight. (Some of the answers are based on a scale of 1 to 5, 1 being the lowest.) -Most clients considered shyness to be a serious problem at some point in their lives. Almost everyone rated the seriousness of their problem at level 5, which makes sense, considering that all who responded were seeking help for their problem. -60 percent of the respondents said that “shyness” first became enough of a problem that it held them back from things they wanted during adolescence; 35 percent reported the problem began in childhood; and 5 percent said not until adulthood. This answer reveals when clients were first aware of social anxiety as an inhibiting force. -The respondents perceived the average degree of “sociability” of their parents was a 2.7, which translates to “fair”; 60 percent of the respondents reported that no other member of the family had a problem with “shyness”; and 40 percent said there was at least one other family member who had a problem with “shyness.” -50 percent were aware of rejection by their peers during childhood. -66 percent had physical symptoms of discomfort during social interaction that they believed were related to social anxiety. -55 percent reported that they had experienced panic attacks. -85 percent do not use any medication for anxiety; 15 percent do. -90 percent said they avoid opportunities to meet new people; 75 percent acknowledged that they often stay home because of social fears, rather than going out. -80 percent identified feelings of depression that they connected to social fears. -70 percent said they had difficulty with social skills. -75 percent felt that before they started the program it was impossible to control their social fears; 80 percent said they now believed it was possible to control their fears. -50 percent said they believed they might have a learning disability. -70 percent felt that they were “too dependent on their parents”; 75 percent felt their parents were overprotective; 50 percent reported that they would not have sought professional help if not for their parents’ urging. -10 percent of respondents were the only child in their families; 40 percent had one sibling; 30 percent had two siblings; 10 percent had three; and 10 percent had four or more. Experts can play many games with statistics. Of importance here are the general attitudes and patterns of a population of socially anxious individuals who were in a therapy program designed to combat their problem. Of primary significance is the high percentage of people who first thought that “shyness” was uncontrollable, but then later changed their minds, once they realized that anxiety is a habit that can be broken—without medication. Also significant is that 50 percent of the participants recognized that their parents were the catalyst for their seeking help. Consider these statistics and think about where you fit into them. Do you identify with this profile? Look back on it in the coming months and examine the ways in which your sociability changes. Give yourself credit for successful breakthroughs, and keep in mind that you are not alone!

Developing a business depends on many factors. But you should basically understand the exchange between value. In other words, you must provide value to receive equal value. If you look at single people, you can see that they can’t provide any value – they don’t smile, dress, talk or behave in a way that makes others want to spend time, much less a life, with them. Relationships and Business are not much different. In a business, people know that appearance and the way you talk to a costumer is as important as the value of your product, and that’s why brands sell, even when their products have no quality. For example, in shopping malls you can see shops packed with people buying clothes that have no value and will be ruined or out of fashion very soon, because the brand is selling an image, not quality anymore. China, on the other hand, managed to compete in the world markets by reducing price over quality, and is now paying the price of a very bad reputation, as most people don’t trust Chinese brands anymore. This is already impacting the economy, so I don’t know what will happen in the next years. It’s all in the hands of the politicians and the internationalization of the companies. And yet, I just said this to explain the relation between value and product. But here’s another example. I tried to share what I know about Learning with Teachers, Parents and Psychologists, and nobody cared. Besides, what I earned in helping children with learning disabilities was a very low payment, and I had to quit that as I couldn’t afford to pay an apartment and daily expenses with such job. However, there are people making thousands of dollars with drugs that have no effect, toilets for cats and pet-rocks. In other words, is never about what the world needs but what the world wants.

Developing a business depends on many factors. But you should basically understand the exchange between value. In other words, you must provide value to receive equal value. If you look at most singles, you can see that they can’t provide any value – they often don’t smile, dress, talk or behave in a way that makes others want to spend time, much less a lifetime, with them. Relationships and businesses are not much different. In a business, people know that appearance and the way you talk to a costumer is as important as the value of your product, and that’s why brands sell, even when their products have no quality. For example, in shopping malls you can see shops packed with people buying clothes that have no value and will be ruined or out of fashion very soon, because the brand is selling an image, not quality anymore. China, on the other hand, managed to compete in the world market by reducing price over quality, and is now paying the cost of a very bad reputation, as most people don’t trust Chinese brands anymore. This is already impacting the economy, so I don’t know what will happen in the next years. It is all in the hands of the politicians and the internationalization of the companies. And yet, I just said this to explain the relation between value and product. But here’s another example: I tried to share what I know about learning with teachers, parents and psychologists, and nobody cared. Besides, what I earned in helping children with learning disabilities was a very low payment, and I had to quit that as I couldn’t afford to pay an apartment and daily expenses with such job. However, there are people making thousands of dollars with drugs that have no effect, toilets for cats and pet-rocks. In other words, it is never about what the world needs but what the world wants.

Post-Rehab Advice: 5 Things to Do After Getting Out of Rehab Getting yourself into rehab is not the easiest thing to do, but it is certainly one of the most important things you can ever do for your well-being. However, your journey to self-healing does not simply end on your last day at rehab. Now that you have committed your self to sobriety and wellness, the next step is maintaining the new life you have built. To make sure that you are on the right track, here are some tips on what you should do as soon as you get back home from treatment. 1. Have a Game Plan Most people are encouraged to leave rehab with a proper recovery plan. What’s next for you? Envision how you want yourself to be after the inpatient treatment. This is a crucial part of the entire recovery process since it will be easier to determine the next phase of treatment you need. 2. Build Your New Social Life Finishing rehab opens endless opportunities for you. Use it to put yourself out in the world and maybe even pursue a new passion in life. Keep in mind that there are a lot of alcohol- and drug-free activities that offer a social and mental outlet. Meet new friends by playing sports, taking a class or volunteering. It is also a good opportunity for you to have sober friends who can help you through your recovery. 3. Keep Yourself Busy One of the struggles after rehab is finding purpose. Your life in recovery will obviously center on trying to stay sober. To remain sober in the long term, you must have a life that’s worth living. What drives you? Begin finding your purpose by trying out things that make you productive and satisfied at the same time. Get a new job, do volunteer work or go back to school. Try whatever is interesting for you. 4. Pay It Forward As a person who has gone through rehab, you are in the perfect place to help those who are in the early stages of recovery. Join a support group and do not be afraid to tell your story. Reaching out to other recovering individuals will also help keep your mind off your own struggles, while being an inspiration to others. 5. Get Help If You’re Still Struggling Research proves that about half of those in recovery will relapse, usually within the treatment’s first few months. However, these numbers do not necessarily mean that rehab is a waste of time. Similar to those with physical disabilities who need continuous therapy, individuals recovering from addiction also require ongoing support to stay clean and sober. Are you slipping back to your old ways? Do not let pride or shame take control of your mind. Life throws you a curveball sometimes, and slipping back to old patterns does not mean you are hopeless. Be sure to have a sober friend, family, therapist or sponsor you could trust and call in case you are struggling. Remember that building a drug- and alcohol-free life is no walk in the park, but you will likely get through it with the help of those who are dear to you.

There is a taboo in the psychology world, to ask a therapist what their cure rate is. Though the therapist knows what the person means in asking, and could give an answer, they typically dislike the question, because it is a way of measuring the psychologist on something that depends ultimately on their patients. To add to that the therapist doesn’t typically see a struggle in their patient’s life not being a struggle, but that a person gets better at not letting it get to them. I would say that our experience in life will always be in reference to our weaknesses, but that isn’t a bad thing. Our weaknesses plague us until we decide to really face them, and then they become strengths as we change them. I think it is a matter of maturing, and not curing in psychopathology, we’re naïve not broken. Alcoholism for instance, once it is overcome, the person doesn’t forget all the intricacies of the cost-benefit of alcohol once they become sober. They still know exactly what problems alcohol seemed to solve, and when faced with those problems, they cannot completely exclude it as a possible remedy. Why? For example, I personally don’t drink alcohol, but I know many people who see it as a normal part of their life, and have set what they feel are appropriate bounds for its use. It is a lot easier for me, who has not experienced any benefits, but knows several disadvantages, to not see alcohol as worth it. However, similarly in my life, fully knowing both the advantages of things like soda, fast food, sleeping in, not exercising and whatever else, in the cost benefit analysis, they sometimes still win. Every asset has associated risks, and when making a decision, while trying to optimize value, we are not picking between correct or incorrect, or right or wrong, but cost vs benefit in safe bet vs the risky bet. Whether I can study or write better while drinking a caffeinated soda has yielded inconsistent results, but sometimes the gamble seems worth it, however drinking a soda before going to the gym has yielded consistently negative results. This is the process of maturity, and the only way to help someone mature faster, is to help them remember and process the data they have already gathered or are currently gathering. One thing that slows down this process is false information. Many cases of grave disability due to psychopathology are caused because of the burden of an overwhelming amount of counterproductive information, and limited resources of productive information.

If I were physically dependent—paralyzed or disabled or limited in some physical way—I would need you to help me. If I were emotionally dependent, my sense of worth and security would come from your opinion of me. If you didn’t like me, it could be devastating. If I were intellectually dependent, I would count on you to do my thinking for me, to think through the issues and problems of my life.

If I were physically dependent—paralyzed or disabled or limited in some physical way—I would need you to help me. If I were emotionally dependent, my sense of worth and security would come from your opinion of me. If you didn’t like me, it could be devastating. If I were intellectually dependent, I would count on you to do my thinking for me, to think through the issues and problems of my life. If I were independent, physically, I could pretty well make it on my own. Mentally, I could think my own thoughts, I could move from one level of abstraction to another. I could think creatively and analytically and organize and express my thoughts in understandable ways. Emotionally, I would be validated from within. I would be inner directed. My sense of worth would not be a function of being liked or treated well. It’s easy to see that independence is much more mature than dependence. Independence is a major achievement in and of itself. But independence is not supreme.

The major function of social work is concerned with helping people perform their normal life tasks by providing information and knowledge, social support, social skills, and social opportunities; it is also concerned with helping people deal with interference and abuse from other individuals and groups, with physical and mental disabilities, and with overburdening responsibilities they have for others. Most important, social work’s objective is to strengthen the community’s capacities to solve problems through development of groups and organizations, community education, and community systems of governance and control over systems of social care. The concern of psychotherapy is with helping people to deal with feelings, perceptions, and emotions that prevent them from performing their normal life tasks because of impairment or insufficient development of emotional and cognitive functions that are intimately related to the self. Social workers help people make use of and develop community and social resources to build connections with others and reduce alienation and isolation; psychotherapists help people to alter, reconstruct, and improve the self.

How Much Money Can We Afford To Give To Charity? Knowing how much money you can safely give to charity is challenging for everyone. Who doesn’t want to give more to make the world a better place? On the other hand, no one wants to become a charity case as a result of giving too much to charity. On average, Americans who itemize their deductions donate about three or four percent of their income to charity. About 20% give more than 10% of their income to charity. Here are some tips to help you find the right level of donations for your family: You can probably give more than you think. Focus on one, two or maybe three causes rather than scattering money here and there. Volunteer your time toward your cause, too. The money you give shouldn’t be the money you’d save for college or retirement. You can organize your personal finances to empower you to give more. Eliminating debt will enable you to give much more. The interest you may be paying is eating into every good and noble thing you’d like to do. You can cut expenses significantly over time by driving your cars for a longer period of time; buying cars—the transaction itself—is expensive. Stay in your home longer. By staying in your home for a very long time, your mortgage payment will slowly shrink (in economic terms)with inflation, allowing you more flexibility over time to donate to charity. Make your donations a priority. If you only give what is left, you won’t be giving much. Make your donations first, then contribute to savings and, finally, spend what is left. Set a goal for contributing to charity, perhaps as a percentage of your income. Measure your financial progress in all areas, including giving to charity. Leverage your contributions by motivating others to give. Get the whole family involved in your cause. Let the kids donate their time and money, too. Get your extended family involved. Get the neighbors involved. You will have setbacks. Don’t be discouraged by setbacks. Think long term. Everything counts. One can of soup donated to a food bank may feed a hungry family. Little things add up. One can of soup every week for years will feed many hungry families. Don’t be ashamed to give a little. Everyone can do something. When you can’t give money, give time. Be patient. You are making a difference. Don’t give up on feeding hungry people because there will always be hungry people; the ones you feed will be glad you didn’t give up. Set your ego aside. You can do more when you’re not worried about who gets the credit. Giving money to charity is a deeply personal thing that brings joy both to the families who give and to the families who receive. Everyone has a chance to do both in life. There Are Opportunities To Volunteer Everywhere If you and your family would like to find ways to volunteer but aren’t sure where and how, the answer is just a Google search away. There may be no better family activity than serving others together. When you can’t volunteer as a team, remember you set an example for your children whenever you serve. Leverage your skills, talents and training to do the most good. Here are some ideas to get you started either as a family or individually: Teach seniors, the disabled, or children about your favorite family hobbies.

The teacher didn’t make people with disabilities out to be heroes or sad stories. It was just a description of the world in which people with disabilities were real and present.

I have my first review this is exciting I write a passage to introduce the book and want to share it on SNS . As below words,hope you can give me some advice. " Want to share a book with all of you,my friends .So luck to read this book <> . He is not a famous writer but all story is he`s real experience,how to be abuse by his mother, how to overcome learn disablity ,how to be a good father in life and how to get a middle class life in US now.The purpose to write this book is that he want to help someone who have same experience with him and encourage those people,you are not alone,there are many people have experienced similar things,you can overcome it and you deserved a good life. This book can help us to avoid many mistake when we as a parent .

If healing is the closest form of the already-ness of the coming of the kingdom of God, and if help moves farther down the spectrum toward the not-yet-ness of the kingdom of God, then hope points us most clearly to the ultimate consummation of the kingdom of God in the future. Healing implies reversal, help implies assistance, and hope implies reminding. Remember that the coming of the kingdom is also a future event. It is the looking forward to the consummation of all things. When healing is not in the will of God's providence, and help is not enough-and it never will be in this lifetime-then hope is always a present reality.

Recall that along the spectrum of restoration, healing is the most presently experienced reality of the coming of the kingdom. Healing implies a reversal of circumstances. But when reversal is not experienced, does that mean that the kingdom is not present even in part? When the power of the King is not felt through healing, it is still found through help. While healing implies restoration through reversal, help implies restoration through assistance. In practical terms, help is what stems the tide of a free fall into despair that can be experienced through brokenness. While help may not reverse the circumstances experienced, it can break the downward spiral of negativity that we all experience when faced with daunting challenges.

Ted helped pass major social and civil rights legislation. His efforts include the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (1975), the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Child Care Act (both passed in 1990), and the Ryan White AIDS Care Act of 1990; he increased funding for the National Institutes of Health and many more educational, housing, medical, and support-services programs. The ADA specifically prohibited discrimination on the basis of disability, forcing the inclusion of millions of people with disabilities in education, housing, employment, sports, and more. Hatch said that even though he and Kennedy differed much on policy and philosophy, he “never doubted for a minute [Ted’s] commitment to help the elderly, the ill, and those Americans who have been on the outside looking in for far too long.

Fortunately, this is one place where the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities does help autistics. Somewhere in its verbiage, it is indicated that disabled people should not be subjected to sterilization against their wishes.

Hospice deploys nurses, doctors, chaplains, and social workers to help people with a fatal illness have the fullest possible lives right now—much as nursing home reformers deploy staff to help people with severe disabilities. In terminal illness that means focusing on objectives like freedom from pain and discomfort, or maintaining mental awareness for as long as feasible, or getting out with family once in a while—

Developing a business depends on many factors. But you should basically understand the exchange between value. In other words, you must provide value to receive equal value. If you look at single people, you can see that they can’t provide any value – they don’t smile, dress, talk or behave in a way that makes others want to spend time, much less a life, with them. Relationships and Business are not much different. In a business, people know that appearance and the way you talk to a costumer is as important as the value of your product, and that’s why brands sell, even when their products have no quality. For example, in shopping malls you can see shops packed with people buying clothes that have no value and will be ruined or out of fashion very soon, because the brand is selling an image, not quality anymore. China, on the other hand, managed to compete in the world markets by reducing price over quality, and is now paying the price of a very bad reputation, as most people don’t trust Chinese brands anymore. This is already impacting the economy, so I don’t know what will happen in the next years. It’s all in the hands of the politicians and the internationalization of the companies. Actually, that’s why this Chinese government sends its companies to other countries. And yet, I just said this to explain the relation between value and product. But here’s another. I tried to share what I know about Learning with Teachers, Parents and Psychologists, and nobody cared. Besides, what I earned in helping children with learning disabilities was a very low payment, and I had to quit that as I couldn’t afford to pay an apartment and daily expenses with such job. However, there are people making thousands of dollars with drugs that have no effect, toilets for cats and pet-rocks. In other words, is never about what the world needs but what the world wants.

When I was 20 years old, I learned how much art can mean to people. I worked as a camp counselor for developmentally disabled youth and adults in the redwood forest near Santa Cruz, California. It was mostly for children with heavy autism-spectrum disorders and related conditions. There was a kid there, about 11 years old. He was fidgety, nervous, but generally happy and liked to play and explore. His nickname was "Crossing Lights" because every few seconds, he would become terribly uneasy and start saying "crossing lights...crossing lights PLEASE... CROSSING LIGHTS...PLEASE!!", screaming and crying to the point where he would be having a full mental meltdown. The only way to ease his distress was to draw a series of little symbols like this: (image shown) ...over and over again, constantly, and forever. If you stopped, he would gradually become disturbed and have a severe psychological attack. But if you kept drawing the little symbol, he was calm and peaceful, like a wave washing over him. Silence. Then, a few seconds later.. "Crossing lights... Crossing lights please..." I filled up probably thirty sheets of paper like this. Tragically, the entire camp was burnt down last year in the California wildfires. I am working on a fundraiser to help them rebuild everything.

Because they had never seen a bright light since the day they were born in this world, they couldn’t understand what it meant when they were told, “God said, ‘Let there be light,’” and they couldn’t help but think of another meaning of the word light, as in light weight, since the same word had different meanings, and only one of them was comprehensible to them. For all human beings, our knowledge is limited by our senses, to the extent that we experience, feel, and sense with our bodies. So when the visually disabled people are asked about what light is, they are predisposed to think of the word’s meaning in terms of weight. If you and I are in their shoes, we would think the same.

Knowing our history is important. It helps us understand that what we face in our current time is socially constructed and can therefore be altered. It gives us greater insights into the workings of the forces that oppress us. It gives us evidence with which to challenge the myths and false assumptions that dominate popular ideas about disability. Lessons from the past can help us shape and build a more effective resistance in the present.

I realized that I get to report in the halls of Capitol Hill because of the work of disabled activists who literally crawled up the steps of that very building to help pass the ADA. When people see me as an inspiration because I ‘overcame’ my disability to graduate college and hold a job, I want to respond that the only things I overcame were the specific obstacles in front of me. I am a return on others’ investment in policy. In the same way, every autistic person who language is in classes or winds up in a group home or institution is not a reflection of poor upbringing but rather a failure in policy.” ~ Eric Garcia We’re Not Broken: Changing The Autism Conversation

For example, weighted blankets or fidget toys sold by sites like Stimtastic might help soothe your anxiety. Or the social skills toolkits offered on blogs like RealSocialSkills.org may help you develop greater confidence in interacting with people, disabled and neurotypical alike.

There’s nothing innately wrong with using the internet to help meet your need for social contact and structure. Disabled people have found community and shared resources on the internet for decades. However, excessive and compulsive internet use and gaming can prove damaging to Autistic people and inhibit our social connections and development.[42] When we spend too much time online, it can limit how much practice we get interacting and communicating out in the world, contribute to feelings of loneliness and depression, and further the detachment so many of us feel from our bodies. Hiding our struggles away from the world is not a productive means of

Master of Occupational Therapy in Orthopaedics: A Comprehensive Guide Occupational therapy (OT) is a health profession that helps people of all ages to live their lives to the fullest by enabling them to participate in the activities of daily living (ADLs) and occupations that are important to them. OTs work with people who have a variety of conditions, including physical disabilities, cognitive impairments, mental health challenges, and developmental delays.

More recently, autism has been seen by some as a neurological difference and not necessarily a disorder at all. According to the Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN 2022, About Autism section): Autism is a developmental disability [which is a natural part of human diversity] that affects how we experience the world around us. Autistic people are an important part of the world. Autism is a normal part of life, and makes us who we are… Autistic people are born autistic and we will be autistic our whole lives… There is no one way to be autistic. Some autistic people can speak, and some autistic people need to communicate in other ways. Some autistic people also have intellectual disabilities and some autistic people don’t. Some autistic people need a lot of help in their day-to-day lives, and some autistic people only need a little help. All of these people are autistic, because there is no right or wrong way to be autistic. All of us experience autism differently, but we all contribute to the world in meaningful ways. We all deserve understanding and acceptance.

207, 2nd Floor, 3rd Main Rd, Chamrajpet, Bengaluru, Karnataka 560018 Call – +91 7022122121 ### The Development of Kannada Literature and the Rise of Online Accessibility The rich history of Kannada literature, which stretches back more than a millennium and is littered with vibrant narratives, poetic forms, and academic works, is extensive. The development of Kannada writing has been both rich and varied, ranging from the ancient texts of the 9th century to contemporary novels and essays. The way readers interact with their literary heritage has changed significantly as the digital age has progressed, making Kannada literature significantly more accessible. Thanks to platforms like Veeraloka Books, readers can now explore the depths of Kannada literature without being restricted by location. By making it possible for customers to purchase books with just a single click, these online retailers have created a link between readers and authors. This progress from customary physical book shops to computerized stages has been critical in advancing Kannada writing, guaranteeing its significance in a quickly impacting world. The extensive selection of titles offered by Kannada books online is one of the most significant benefits. Poetry, fiction, historical novels, and biographies are all forms of Kannada literature. Stages, for example, Veeraloka Books curate a huge determination of these works, taking care of different peruser interests. Because literature has become more accessible to everyone, you can find something that piques your interest whether you're a casual reader or an avid collector. In addition, readers can get their beloved books delivered to their homes through Kannada books online, saving them the hassle of going through crowded stores or standing in long lines. People who live in remote areas or in areas with few bookstore options will appreciate this convenience. Online platforms remove barriers and foster a deeper connection between authors and their audiences by delivering Kannada literature to your doorstep. Sales alone are not enough to stop the digital transformation of Kannada literature; It also includes promoting fresh and upcoming authors. Online platforms make it easier for aspiring authors to have their voices heard in a more democratic setting than traditional publishing avenues. Self-publishing on platforms like Veeraloka Books has helped numerous authors reach a larger audience than ever before. This change ensures that the literary landscape remains dynamic and vibrant by encouraging experimentation and innovation in Kannada writing. E-books and audiobooks have also become more widely available, making them more accessible. These choices provide readers who prefer digital formats with portability and flexibility. Younger readers who are accustomed to using smartphones and tablets can now more easily access Kannada literature. Audiobooks cater to those who enjoy listening to stories during their daily commutes or while multitasking, while e-books are portable, making it simple to read on the go. Moreover, the web empowers perusers to draw in with writing in manners that were already impossible. Discussions of books, authors, and literary themes can flourish on social media, online forums, and other platforms. Perusers can associate with one another, share surveys, and effectively partake in the abstract talk encompassing Kannada composing. The community of readers of Kannada literature is also bolstered by this interaction, which not only enhances the reading experience. In conclusion, Kannada literature faces both challenges and opportunities in the digital age. Platforms like Veeraloka Books make it easier for people with disabilities to access literature, allowing it to flourish.

Fernando crouches next to one of the beds and takes out a box. He digs inside it for a few seconds, then picks up a small, round disc. It is made of a pale metal that I saw often in Erudite headquarters but have never seen anywhere else. He carries it toward me on his palm. When I reach for it, he jerks it away from me. “Careful!” he says. “I brought this from headquarters. It’s not something we invented here. Were you there when they attacked Candor?” “Yes,” I say. “Right there.” “Remember when the glass shattered?” “Were you there?” I say, narrowing my eyes. “No. They recorded it and showed the footage at Erudite headquarters,” he says. “Well, it looked like the glass shattered because they shot at it, but that’s not really true. One of the Dauntless soldiers tossed one of these near the widows. It emits a signal that you can’t hear, but that will cause glass to shatter.” “Okay,” I say. “And how will that be useful to us?” “You may find that it’s rather distracting for people when all their windows shatter at once,” he says with a small smile. “Especially in Erudite headquarters, where there are a lot of windows.” “Right,” I say. “What else have you got?” says Christina. “The Amity will like this,” Cara says. “Where is it? Ah. Here.” She picks up a black box made of plastic, small enough for her to wrap her fingers around it. At the top of the box are two pieces of metal that look like teeth. She flips a switch at the bottom of the box, and a thread of blue light stretches across the gap between the teeth. “Fernando,” says Cara. “Want to demonstrate?” “Are you joking?” he says, his eyes wide. “I’m never doing that again. You’re dangerous with that thing.” Cara grins at him, and explains, “If I touched you with this stunner right now, it would be extremely painful, and then it would disable you. Fernando found that out the hard way yesterday. I made it so that the Amity would have a way of defending themselves without shooting anyone.” “That’s…” I frown. “Understanding of you.” “Well, technology is supposed to make life better,” she says. “No matter what you believe, there’s a technology out there for you.” What did my mother say, in that simulation? “I worry that your father’s blustering about Erudite has been to your detriment.” What if she was right, even if she was just a part of a simulation? My father taught me to see Erudite a particular way. He never taught me that they made no judgments about what people believed, but designed things for them within the confines of those beliefs. He never told me that they could be funny, or that they could critique their own faction from the inside. Cara lunges toward Fernando with the stunner, laughing when he jumps back. He never told me that an Erudite could offer to help me even after I killed her brother.

disabilities. In colonial America, the settlement of a vast new rural society meant that early colonists put a premium on physical stamina. The early colonies tried to prevent the immigration of those who could not support themselves and would have to rely on state help. People with physical or mental disabilities who were potentially dependent could be deported, forced to return to England.

A higher soul is different than an old soul as these souls are at a level even closer to God than most, which is something that every soul strives to be. Higher souls are born into this world to become an intricate part of our lives. When you think of someone with a higher soul, you may imagine that these are people with higher stature in this life such as religious figureheads or people who have devoted their lives to God. Are these the people with higher souls? Perhaps, but it is more likely that it is the people you never thought about who are actually those possessing a higher soul. These are the souls who are born into this world with extreme disabilities such as the handicapped, the mentally challenged, those with terminal illnesses, and numerous other challenges. These individuals are unable to take care of themselves or unable to survive in this world on their own, dependent upon the help of others. And these souls are here for one reason only … the betterment of our souls.

My first review of my book " Want to share a book with all of you,my friends .So luck to read this book <> . He is not a famous writer but all story is he`s real experience,how to be abuse by his mother, how to overcome learn disablity ,how to be a good father in life and how to get a middle class life in US now.The purpose to write this book is that he want to help someone who have same experience with him and encourage those people,you are not alone,there are many people have experienced similar things,you can overcome it and you deserved a good life. This book can help us to avoid many mistake when we as a parent .

Unless I know what I owe him in return. We already have a bargain, and I am determined to never need anything more from him beyond this drive. “I can walk,” I assure him. “I’ll just follow the sound of your footsteps.” “Why are you so stubborn, Helen?” he asks me. “It won’t kill you to accept my arm. I’m a doctor. I’m here to help you, not to hurt you.” “You are helping me,” I say with forced cheerfulness. “You’re carrying my suitcase and offering me a ride to New York. Isn’t that enough for one day, Dr. Larson?” “I just don’t understand you,” he says as he begins trudging toward his colleague’s vehicle. “All the blind people I have met usually prefer a little more touch in their communication.” “Well, you hadn’t met me,” I say simply as I stroll behind him. “I don’t like being touched. I don’t like it when people use my disability as an excuse to fuss over me.” “That’s not what I was doing!” he says defensively. He grumbles to himself, but continues moving toward the road. He walks in silence for a few seconds before speaking again. “I think I should warn you: road trips with Dr. Philips can get a little... crazy.” “Crazy?” I say with a mixture of concern and curiosity. “Dr. Philips is usually very

Around the same time that index was released, Nicholas Kristof (again, a hero to many liberals), wrote a column that addressed the dependency on government programs.5 He focused on Kentucky’s Appalachian area, where people have yanked their kids out of literacy classes because if those kids learn to read, the parents will be less likely to qualify for a monthly SSI check for having kids with intellectual disabilities. We are not even making this up. Apparently, many of these people receive nearly $700 each month from Supplemental Security Income for those “disabled” children, and they receive those payments until their kids turn eighteen. And when the kids do turn eighteen, they are illiterate and unproductive because of their parents, and they collect SSI income as adults, many of them never holding a job in their entire lives. This is how our entitlement programs “help.” Nice, huh? Kristof wrote, “This is painful for a liberal to admit, but conservatives have a point when they suggest that America’s safety net can sometimes entangle people in a soul-crushing dependency. Our poverty programs do rescue many people, but other times they backfire.

a deeply personal form of service needs to define the church's expression of the gospel to others. Keeping the manifestations of mercy personal helps prevent us from operating from a position of power. Recall that Jesus "made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant." If the One who possesses all power and authority was willing to set that aside to relate to us personally, how can we do any less for others?

Two of my teachers made a huge positive difference for me. One was my football coach who did not think I was a loser, and encouraged me to stay in school and keep trying. The other was a special ed teacher who realized that I had a reading disability but that I wasn’t retarded. She honestly told me that she wasn’t trained to help people with dyslexia but that she knew it existed and that it wasn’t my fault. She knew how hard I was trying. She spent a year teaching me to fill in the blanks on paperwork such as job applications so I would have that skill when I needed it. She also let me leave class early so I could saunter into the lunch room from the direction of the “regular” classrooms so other kids wouldn’t know I was a SPED.” —Eddie—

As I watched people with advanced dementia sing and worship, I could not help but be caught up in the deep mystery of what it might mean to worship Jesus when you have forgotten who he is. Holding the hand of someone with advanced dementia and coming to realize that they are not someone who “used to be,” but someone who is important in the present and indeed has a vocation that will lead them into the future was, to say the least, humbling, challenging, and quite beautiful.

For many of us, our survivorhood and our neurodivergence are pretty damn intertwined. As disabled TJ workers, we know what it's like to inhabit secret bodymind stories that many turn away from, as "too much", and that knowledge helps us in our TJ work - people trust us with their survivor stories because they can tell we've seen some shit.

I'm so glad I decided to step back and let Rosa find Tom on her own. She deserved to experience the thrill of discovery. Growing up as a blind person in a sighted world, there have been many instances where well-meaning sighted people denied me that thrill. We all need to get better at knowing when to help and when to back off and say, "Check every corner.

Here at LCB, I'm surrounded by people who understand that blindness is just limited eyesight. With the right tools and training, blind people can compete as equals with sighted peers. Places like LCB exist to help blind people gain the tools and training to succeed. Sadly, our views on blindness are a minority view outside of these walls.

But then, during the months that I was away from my little colony of apes, I began to see the built-in limitations of empathy. Perhaps because of my relationship with Carol and the rivalry with Zack, and because I am a woman, I came for the first time to believe that even a well-intentioned man, one who truly does empathize with women, is nonetheless incapable of knowing how the relations between men and women feel to a woman. Mainly, he is incapable of knowing how he is perceived by her. And therefore she, despite her likeness to him, remains opaque to him, unknowable. This doesn’t mean that conflict between them is inevitable or inescapable. But there are useful parallels in the relations between men and women, between whites and blacks, between people without disabilities and disabled people, and between human primates and non-human primates. We who have more power in the world, like men with good intentions, try to empathize with those who have less. We try to experience racism as if I who am white were black, to see the world as if I who am sighted were blind, and to reason and communicate as if I who am human were non-human. And thus I dealt with my chimpanzees as if I were one myself. And what was wrong with this? What was ethically and even practically wrong with having empathy towards the other? For a long time, I answered, Nothing. Nothing at all. It’s good politics. I see a blind man about to cross the street and think, He can’t see the whizzing traffic, he needs me to see it for him, to take his arm and escort him over to where he clearly wishes to go. Operating on the assumption that, if I were blind, I’d need me to help me, I grab the man’s arm and pull him panic-stricken into the traffic, terrifying and endangering him. Because I am sighted, I have relied and insisted on using a guidance system that utilizes sight as its main source of data. But the blind man has his own system for crossing the street. The blind man hears what I merely see, isolates bits of information that are lost on me, and coordinates and remembers data that I’ve not even registered. I’m talking here about the difference between empathy and sympathy, between feeling for the other and feeling with the other. The distinction came to matter to me. It still does. When you abandon and betray those with whom you empathize, you’re not abandoning or betraying anyone or anything that’s as real as yourself. Taken to its extreme, perhaps even pathological, form, empathy is narcissism.

It is estimated that the financial burden of mental illness worldwide will reach $16 trillion by 2030. The World Health Organization reports that over 300 million people suffer from depression alone, making it the leading cause of disability worldwide. That projection is not only disturbing but emphasizes the need to seek disruptive, innovative approaches to psychiatric disease. Mobilehealth can help fill these needs for at least two reasons: given the number of available mental health professionals, it is virtually impossible for all those in need of those services to be cared for face-to-face, a dilemma that is especially acute in low and middle-income countries. And there is also some evidence to suggest that many patients are more willing to open up about their psychological concerns online during an anonymous consultation. 

The prospect of SOE service in the field was undoubtedly terrifying. So many backed out that SOE would later set up a “cooler,” a remote country house in the wilds of Scotland where quitters would be forcibly confined until what knowledge they had gleaned of SOE was of no use. As of July 1941, F Section had just ten people still in training—of whom Virginia was the only woman. And the only one with a disability.

In fact, the culture of innovation is so pure and so stridently noble that it often sounds like advertising. You hear about the startup that is going to help with sanitation in African cities; the one that’s going to print out prosthetic hands for disabled children; the one that’s procuring clothes for homeless children. “We’re with people who are curing cancer in a different way, and changing banking technology, and helping folks who can’t see anymore,” says a woman in a short YouTube video about MassChallenge. Inno is going to solve global warming. Inno is coming up with new treatments for autism. Inno is so inherently moral that there is even a UNICEF Innovation team; dial up its homepage and you will encounter the following introductory sentence: “In 2015, innovation is vital to the state of the world’s children.” The fog of righteousness surrounding this concept is so thick it allows all manner of absurdly altruistic claims. “Can startups help solve Boston’s Biggest Problems?” asked an email I received last spring. Of course they can! The group that sent it, CityStart Boston (“Leveraging the Innovation Community to Tackle Civic Issues”), announced plans to mobilize “the entire Boston startup ecosystem” to “collaborate to develop viable ventures designed…” Wait! Stop here for a moment, reader, and try to guess: in what way is the startup ecosystem going to collaborate to solve Boston’s biggest problems? If you guessed “to enhance innovation in Boston’s neighborhoods,” you were right. Startups are going to collaborate to enhance startups.

Armed human beings, officially trained in efficient methods of administering death and violence, should not be dispatched in response to a Black woman experiencing an episode related to a psychiatric disability. She may not only not receive help, but her behavior may well be used as a pretext to kill her. Safety and security require education, housing, jobs, art, music, and recreation.

The was no single person or agency responsible for helping people such as Rebecca, who fall outside the standard remit of mental health and disability services, and it wasn’t clear who exactly was accountable for securing housing. “The action plans from case conference meetings between July and October 2016 list the ‘lead agency’ for determining accommodation options as ‘All,’” Glass noted. Everyone was responsible, so no one was responsible.

I knew what was wrong, but I had refused to start psychotherapy or obtain an official diagnosis. Sure, this refusal might have been pathological, but not in the sense that Black people all have some disabling stigma around getting help for our mental health issues. Some of us do stigmatize therapy, thinking that it indicates a person is weak.

Marin hesitated. He was not disposed to pursue this discussion, which he regarded as fruitless. But he was recalling the period when he was first adjusting to Trask’s body. The dreamlike memories—that scene where what was evidently a dying man was asking for help. The incident could well be a clue to the mystery of Trask’s past associations. He described the scene to Trask briefly and said, “I gathered that he could have the help only if he could tell why he was ill. What happened to him?” Trask said, “One of my early experiments in self-sufficiency.” “What did the experiment prove?” The other man was scowling. “This is a lame-duck world, David. A large percentage of people are so deeply involved in the need for someone to tell them what to do, think, feel and believe that they will die rather than become aware of their own responsibility for illness, failure and other disabilities. We’ve got to change that. We’ve got to set up a system where people are interdependent, and where an authority on some subject is merely a source of information for his equals.” “This man died?” “No.” Trask shrugged. “After he fell into a coma, we fulfilled our role of father or mother substitute and saved him.

As hospitals sprang up, they became a comparatively more attractive place to put the infirm. That was finally what brought the poorhouses to empty out. One by one through the 1950s, the poorhouses closed, responsibility for those who’d been classified as elderly “paupers” was transferred to departments of welfare, and the sick and disabled were put in hospitals. But hospitals couldn’t solve the debilities of chronic illness and advancing age, and they began to fill up with people who had nowhere to go. The hospitals lobbied the government for help, and in 1954 lawmakers provided funding to enable them to build separate custodial units for patients needing an extended period of “recovery.” That was the beginning of the modern nursing home. They were never created to help people facing dependency in old age. They were created to clear out hospital beds—which is why they were called “nursing” homes.

The advice I would give to an able-bodied person having sex with a disabled person for the first time is to, first, breathe. Accept that you both might be anxious at times, but just take a deep breath. Ask questions. I like to first test with just a touch, and see what the reaction is. I have found that most disabled people, out of necessity, have learned to communicate what their needs are very well, but they still may be apprehensive asking for certain things pertaining to pleasure. Ask, “How does this feel? What can I do to help?”. Be respectful when asking questions, communication is everything.

studies have found that faced with a stressful life event, such as divorce, the birth of a severely disabled child, or military trauma, avoidants’ defenses are quick to break down and they then appear and behave just like people with an anxious attachment style.

we take a strength-based approach to treating people in our practices. As we like to say, we do not treat disabilities, we help people unwrap their gifts. More exuberantly: We help identify superpowers!

The English language is perniciously ableist. We speak in metaphor that constantly puts down disabled bodies, with phrases like "turning a blind eye" and "it fell on deaf ears" falling from our lips so easily. People often tell me it's not that big of a deal. But, of course, if you've been listening to your language make you sound stupid, ignorant, and useless for your entire life, when you've made a profession out of the craft of language, you cannot help but find pain in the ways that language cuts you to the quick. ASL has its own barbs. All languages do. But English is troublingly ableist. (Page 42)

You’re calling me a disability, I heard her say. You’re calling me your disability. I couldn’t get it out of my head. Motherhood is your problem. The thing holding you back. No, I wanted to scream. It’s not holding me back. It’s society that isn’t helping people, pregnant or disabled. It’s not the injury or the medical condition or pregnancy or even motherhood that is a disability. It’s society that is disabling people by not creating a level playing field.

Simple smart phones not only help seniors or those with disabilities; some people just want to use and navigate a simpler phone, while others may prefer an affordable phone without as many features as an advanced smartphone. It's also more convenient for some people to use a simple smartphone because it's much more durable with a longer battery life and is less likely to deteriorate over time.

we can de-couple the idea that people who are disabled deserved to be so, since that is not what early Judaism or Jesus taught. Jesus does not ask the hemorrhaging woman, “Did you do something sexually immoral such that you are bleeding?” (I have heard sermons go in this direction; do not go there). He does not ask the blind man whether he was punished for having been a Peeping Tom (one student, seeking a cause for blindness, connected the healing of the blind man of Bethsaida to the Sermon on the Mount, where after condemning adultery Jesus states, “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away”) [Matthew 5:29]. Some intertextual connections are not helpful.

The decision of when and how to self-disclose puts Autistic people in quite a double bind. In order to be known, we have to come out, but we’re usually coming out in a harsh cultural landscape where it’s likely that people won’t actually understand us. By coming out, we help to counter ignorant images people have of our disability, but because those stereotypes are so pervasive and long-standing, it’s impossible for a single counter-example to undo all the harm that’s been done. Often, when a person from the majority group encounters information that runs against their stereotypes of an oppressed group, they respond by either discounting the information (for example, by saying “you’re not really that Autistic!”) or by subgrouping the people who deviate from stereotypes (for example, by telling them “you’re not like those other Autistic people, the ones who are really impaired. You’re one of the smart ones!”).

The mental health field also maintains authority through selectivity of its members and suppressed dissent. There is a pretense of certainty propagated by leaders in mental health, with oft repeated promises of supporting evidence to be discovered soon; it is taken for granted that their authoritative stance is merited. Despite this political posturing, several areas of concern actually leave much to question, for instance: it is rare for findings to be replicated (Open Science Collaboration, 2015), with only about 3% of journals even being willing to accept articles attempting to repeat previous studies to see if their findings were more than just a fluke (Martin & Clarke, 2017); the peer -review process of journals is biased toward recognizable names and against newcomers or detractors (Bravo, Farjam, Grimaldo Moreno, Birukou, & Squazzoni, 2018), setting up a sort of “good ol’ boys’ club” dynamic; the rates of authors retracting their studies due to problems or false findings are rapidly rising (Steen, Casadevall, & Fang, 2013); the subjects used in studies are consistently biased (Nielsen, Haun, Kartner, & Legare, 2017) and based on samples that are among the least representative of humans, in general (e.g., Arnett, 2008); spurious and meaningless correlations are frequently reported as exciting new discoveries (see Richardson, 2017); gold-standard “evidence-based treatments” are, on average and at best, only helpful for about 25% of people (Shedler, 2015); selective reporting, guild interests, and researcher allegiance heavily bias psychiatric research (Leichsenring et al., 2017; Whitaker & Cosgrove, 2015); and, perhaps most important, with all the purported advances in treatment, the prevalence and long-term outcomes of diagnosable mental disorders has not decreased in the last century (Jorm, Patten, Brugha, & Mojtabai, 2017; Margraf & Schneider, 2016), while disability rates continue to rise exponentially (see Whitaker, 2010 for an analysis on this trend).

One of the coaches and disability advocates whose work has helped to inform this book, Heather R. Morgan, stressed to me that before we examine our masks and learn to take them off, we must first recognize that the version of ourselves we’ve been hiding from the world is somebody we can trust. “I think it can be risky for people to try to think about where their mask comes from and think about taking the mask off before they first know that there’s somebody safe underneath of it,” she says.

To what extent and in what circumstances physical activity shifts metabolisms thus offsetting efforts to lose weight remains to be elucidated, but the fact remains that many studies have shown that exercise, including walking, can lead to weight loss. But to do so, one needs to walk considerably more than half an hour per day for many months. In addition, people who exercise more may compensate metabolically, negating some of the effects of added physical activity. Finally, it truly is faster and it’s often easier to lose weight by dieting because everyone needs to eat but no one has to exercise, and not eating five hundred calories of energy-rich food (four slices of bacon) requires less time and effort than walking five miles a day. Please, I do not wish to trivialize how hard it is to exercise if one is unfit and overweight: it can be uncomfortable, unpleasant, and disheartening, and disabilities can make it challenging or impossible. But for those unwilling or unable to run, swim, or do other vigorous exercises, walking remains an inexpensive and pleasant way to get a moderate and useful dose of physical activity. Even more important, regardless of how one initially loses weight, keeping the weight off almost always demands physical activity. The majority of dieters who do not exercise regain about half their lost pounds within a year, and thereafter the rest typically creeps back slowly but surely. Exercise, however, vastly increases the chances of maintaining weight loss.49 One example of this payoff comes from an experiment conducted here in Boston. When doctors put 160 overweight police officers on low-calorie diets for eight weeks, some with and some without exercise, all the officers lost sixteen to thirty pounds (seven to thirteen kilograms) with the ones who exercised losing slightly more. But once the crash diet was over and the policemen went back to their normal diets, only the officers who continued to exercise avoided weight regain; all the rest regained most or all of the pounds they initially lost.50 Many other studies confirm that physical activity, including walking, helps keep those lost pounds off.51 Maybe those ten thousand steps a day aren’t such a bad idea after all….