The Guilt Structure of 'Invisible' Disability

We talked a lot in class about the ironic difficulty in accessing accommodations, but we didn't talk much on how even once they've been acquired they're not always honored or may be difficult to use personally. I know from my own experience that after getting through all of high school without accommodations, regardless of the fact that I needed them, I now have a major imposter syndrome complex when I use them in college. The major cause of that is the heavy stigmatization of mental or invisible disability as laziness, and therefore any accommodations afforded to them are viewed as 'cheats' or a way to get off easier than everyone else and have a leg up. In short, after all of the labor- physical, emotional, financial, etc.- required in order to even access accommodations of any kind and have them implemented properly without them being manipulated, actively discredited, or even denied by professors or peers, you still have a personal hump of stigmatization and social pressure to overcome to allow yourself to use your accommodations guilt-free. Which, honestly, is more labor than it's worth sometimes. So now you've spent all this time, energy, and money to get something you can't even properly utilize because doing so means givihng yourself a break and combatting years or even a lifetime of stigma and deligitimization. All in all, accommodations are a service which is incredibly difficult to actually take advantage of, and overcoming the buereacratic barriers is only one part of that. The socialized personal barriers are often more intimate, particularly if you recieve accommodations only later in life, since yourself and others around you have trained you to think accommodations are a special treatment you don't need, when in actuality you were operating on burnout for all of your childhood.