transabled.org

I’m sure it doesn’t make any substantive proof for anyone, but i would like to add my voice to the debate by saying that i wasn’t abused – and never even came into contact with anyone who was disabled during my childhood (and as such could not have ‘transferred’ any kind of longing or desire for disablement or attention) as some of the theories would have us beleive.

I have questioned long and hard why i have the feelings that i do – and i still dont know the answer.

I was heartened to hear the theory that homosexuality was a brain process which arose owing to certain conditions in the womb. But i now know that this is also widely disputed.

For me, it just made a lot of sense that there was something in my makeup that made me this way. I havent suffered any great trauma, i dont have any particular identifiable memory i can link this back to, and so it was (and is) comforting to think that there is just something in my brain chemistry that makes me this way…

If i knew why perhaps i could fix it – perhaps i could stop having these thoughts, perhaps i could stop feeling this way. But i dont think the answer is that simple.

I am very convinced that there are many things that go to making us who we are – i guess i’m trying to say that i dont think its either nature or nurture – but a combination of both.

And i’m also not so sure that trying to decifer the particular reason why we are this way is beneficial – i’ve not been so good at it to date, but i really would like to get to the stage where i can just accept that i am who i am, and be it for one reason or another, it just is what it is…

And its different for all of us – i mean, we all have a shared experience, but we also all have different experiences which have brought us to this point – but for me, abuse wasn’t one of them.

That idea is way off base, but, since the soup of the day in mental health is to blame everybodies current situation on childhood trauma,this will have to be played out to its conclusion.

There are some axioms or assumptions in this:

1) “One condition comes from one cause.” Most existing things have multiple causes, and some can even come from different co-causes. And sometimes the same causes don’t lead to the same consequence. Because nature is not exact, we don’t know all necessary factors and combinations of factors, and maybe we know not very much about life at all.

2) “Knowing where it comes from helps healing it.” In fact, there are a lot of diseases and other problems that can be solved without having a clue where they come from. Some say: The solution doesn’t care about how the problem developed.

3) “One can distinguish between psyche and body (neurons).” In fact, one cannot in most cases. And this is a very old philosophic and even spiritual question.

I would say, like Ronald, that some “explanations” are fashionable at certain times, and others not. Genes, brain, hormones, childhood abuse, relationships, sexual drives, traumas of all kinds, too much or not enough of this or that, nutrition, even clothes etc. are “blamed” for nearly everything when they are “in”.

We don’t know why and how people become homo- or transsexuals. But we have learnt that we don’t have to know. And why don’t we ask how people become heterosexual?

I don’t remember any abuse except that my mother sometimes became hysterical. I was not beaten often, I just was shouted at and had to cope with the tempers of her and her addiction to control everything.

But others had much more controlling mothers who shouted louder and had even stronger tempers – and as far as I know they don’t have BIID.

I haven’t seen anyone doing research into possible genetic factors that might lead to BIID. Seems not to be fashionable enough right now…

I believe in good old Socrates.

I never suffered abuse that I’m aware of, nor material deprivation, but my parents were so emotionally needy themselves that they really did not know how to nurture me emotionally. I feel I wound up as something of an emotional cripple, had a long hard time coming to understand, and live, the difference between need and love. I have to wonder if that didn’t get translated into a need for physical expression of my emotional life. All I know is that for as long as I can recall, every time I have seen someone with mobility impairment my deep strong feeling is, “That should be me.” This I know is the experience of many others as well.

I was badly abused as a child, moved from relative to relative when very young, etc etc. Yes, I think there is a very, very, very slight link.

i have never been *physically* abused to my knowledge, although my mom is verbally abusive. the only disabled people i encountered when i was little were the severely disabled kids and i wasn’t jealous of them. i *was* jealous whenever one of my classmates broke a bone, but i know that one was just because everyone wanted to be their friend. i don’t think the fact that i wanted a broken arm when i was younger is really connected with me wanting to be paralyzed now.

@Tora: I broke my right collar bone when I was 14 and my left collar bone when I was 16. Nobody wanted to be my friend.

Hi everyone, sorry I haven’t posted lately – been feeling really low.
The trouble with relating later problems to childhood abuse is that there are so many variables. Where does Abuse begin? With inconsistancy or conditional love? With lack of warmth? with over-critical parenting? Some people who suffered the worst kinds of abuse grow up free of mental ill-health, others from families which are ostensibly functional (at least by any usual definition) grow up with severe personality disorders. This is true of mental health and illness in general, so heaven only knows whether or how it relates to BIID. And that’s before other variables are factored in.

@chloe- this was when i was in preschool. and then second grade. and then fifth grade. same person, same arm all three times. she is now part of the social “group” that i tried so desperately to be a part of until this year when this year’s sophomores caught up to me to be in the same school again. my sophomore friends like me no matter what and accept me even though i’m a senior. but that’s beside the point. my point is that when you’re a little kid, an oddity like a cast DOES make you extremely popular, at least for a little while. another aspect may be that in second grade when the other girl broke her arm for the second time, she got to use the computer for her writing assignments. at that time, i did NOT get to use the computer for writing assignments. i had to write them all by hand, just like everything else. i was extremely frustrated because all the other kids could write just fine, which i thought was rather odd. didn’t everyone else’s hands cramp up every few sentences? well, no. turns out, i have dysgraphia. when my teachers first started letting me type my work, they were amazed that i’m actually not as dumb as they thought. once, a teacher that had mostly read things i had written by hand was given a report that i had typed. she thought i had plagiarized it (i didn’t). so, i think part of my breaking-my-arm fantasy involved getting something i NEEDED, a keyboard.

@Tora: Those are some really interesting psychological insights regarding the fantasy of breaking your arm. It seems signigicant that you view paralysis in a rather different way.

No abuse to my knowledge. For me broken arms and legs definitely let to later dreams about paralyzis. I had this desire long before I ever heard of paraplegia etc.