| 1. What Having a Disability Means to Your Search |
Bill had been a high-powered financial wholesaler for many years before
his heart attack, selling financial products to other financial professionals. When
I met him in Boston he had been out for only a year, and looked in perfect health.
He was still young, in his late thirties, and the attack had scared him. So
he had stopped drinking, dieted religiously, and exercised regularly. It was now
time for him to take those first steps toward getting back to work.
But mentally he wasn't ready yet. "Dan, nobody knows what it means,
what it does to your life. I've kept in close touch with my friends, lunch almost
every week, and I've tried to explain it to them, but there are no words. The
boredom and frustration are bad enough."
"But you also begin to feel strange, as though what you used to do
somehow isn't real anymore. The world seems different, and you're not sure you fit in
it, the way you did before the disability."
Fred, a brilliant manufacturing engineer, had been out for five years. He
had relocated from California to Tennessee to lower his living costs. He had
made key contributions in the design and manufacture of products as diverse as tin
cans and helicopters. After five years, he was still eager to get back to work, and
not just because he needed to earn more money.
"The
financial problems are big," I remember him
telling me, "and I'm still dealing with back
and leg pains. But what really gets me is that I
don't have those interesting engineering projects
anymore. It was a lot of fun figuring out
creative answers to tough design problems, and I
guess I was spoiled. It's not easy to fill your
day when you're used to doing what you love, then
you can't do it anymore."
The story is the same even when the job isn't ideal. Consider the words
of Orlando, who had held a job in electronics assembly before his back
problems got worse. "I never thought I had an especially good job, but now I realize
how much I miss seeing those people every day, joking around, even working
extra fast when we had to. That job looks pretty good to me now."
Phil, who had been a janitor before eye problems developed, felt the
same way. "Looking back, Dan, I see I enjoyed it in ways I didn't even know, but
you could never have convinced me of that back then."
No one but
you can know what your disability means to you.
Not even another person with a long term
disability. Life with a disability is just as
individualized and isolated as the healthy life you
had before it happened.
How can
anyone else truly understand your particular blend
of frustrations, anxieties, determination, hopes,
fears, and all the subtle shades of emotions, or
lack of them, in between?
If you're on long term disability, it's likely that at one time, maybe not
that long ago, you were working ..... either for an employer, in your profession,
or in your own business. You were healthy enough to do your job, and to
some degree you identified with that job.
You may have had the normal degree of discontent, or you may have loved it.
Regardless, it gave you a place to go, useful and productive things to do, and
at some level, a comfortable feeling that, however important or unimportant
you were in the overall scheme of things, you fit in.
You were a functioning part of the world of commerce, a cog in the wheel
of the great machine that makes the world hum. You were doing your part,
however exalted or humble, in producing the goods and services that we all sell to
one another to keep ourselves fed and clothed and housed.
And you felt pretty good about it. Or if not, at least it provided activity
and filled your days with challenges, or problems to solve, or interactions with others.
You had talents and you were using them, perhaps to create something,
sell something, operate something, analyze something, make something happen,
help others make something happen, or maybe stop something from happening.
It gave you a place to be and things to do that the rest of the world
respected as honest labor, whatever its status. But suddenly, one day, everyone else is
going to work ..... and you're not.
Maybe it was because of an accident. Maybe it was an illness or
physical problem that gradually, or suddenly, got worse. Maybe it was a stroke. Or
maybe it was an operation that didn't go right. Whatever, it left you unable to perform
as you always had ..... and as you had always taken for granted.
That first day when you couldn't go to work like everyone else, the
world shifted slightly on you. You perceived it from an angle you'd never
quite experienced before. Things weren't the same, and it was
uncomfortable somehow. On the second day, they shifted a little bit more.
Gradually, with each passing day, you begin to inhabit a
different psychological space. You're not addressing the world the way you did for
so long. Questions may arise. Who am I, if I'm no longer the person who
does such-and-such each day? Am I still lovable if I'm no longer out there
achieving and producing? Just what is the significance of my life?
Concerns may start to surface. Will I ever be productive again? Can I
be happy doing something different from what I've always done? How far am
I falling behind? How will my family get by? Will I become a burden, or
worse yet, a bore?
Depending on your answers to those kinds of questions, you may
gradually regain peace of mind and a healthy level of self-esteem ..... or things may go
the other way.
By the time six months pass, you might be in any number of
emotional places. For some, they fully expect to be "back in the swing of things" in
some specified time period, and they keep themselves occupied by staying up-to-date
in their chosen field. No problem there.
For others, however, it might be a little more complicated. Maybe
they realize they can't go back to doing what they used to do any time soon .....
or ever. Maybe they realize their employer doesn't want them back or can't
make room for them.
Or they can't go back to running their business as they had. Maybe
they develop a real sense of isolation, not knowing anyone else in their set
of particularly difficult circumstances.
Financial problems often develop, even with the cushion of benefit
payments from their disability income policy. Marital and other relationships are tested,
and sometimes it turns out to be a destructive test. Friends may not know how
to respond properly, and slowly slip away. Wives or husbands may not be able
to handle the pressure, and there can be a lot of pressure. Problems here.
If there's pain - really bad pain - it can mean very big problems.
Your whole world becomes focused on how to live with that pain. The energy
and concentration it takes can be all-consuming, leaving little else of life to
be experienced, none of it savored.
And if you need to take drugs to help you cope with it, they can rob you
of that clear conscious focus on life you'd always assumed would be yours, rob
you of your energy, your stamina, your zest for life.
So depending upon your circumstances, your reactions, and your
individual makeup, a disability can mean just a temporary setback, or it can bring
your whole world crashing down around you, tearing apart the whole fabric of
your existence, erasing all the familiar reference points by which you judged your
daily experience, and distorting all the standards and many of the values you relied
on to assign meaning to your life.
And only you can truly know what it means to you. So if someone tells
you they understand your situation because they've worked with hundreds of others
in similar circumstances, or because they've "gone through it themselves" at
some point, you might choose to forgive their presumptuousness, and appreciate
that they mean well.
But you know they don't
really know. They don't really understand.
You know what though? In terms of whether their understanding helps you get out
of this place you're in, to some other place you'd rather be, you might ask
the question, what difference does it make? You have your options regardless.
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