When the Label Feels Heavier Than the Condition

For most of my life, I did not call myself disabled. I did not want to. I resisted the label, the stigma, the assumptions that came with it. I especially did not want to be seen as weak or vulnerable. So I kept my condition hidden, not just from others, but often from myself too.

But here is what I have come to realise:

The real source of my suffering was not the condition itself. It was my relationship with it. The way I judged it, resisted it, and tried to stay one step ahead of it.

And I am not alone.

As someone who supports others living with disability, whether it is visible or not, I have met many people carrying the same weight I once did. Their condition might bring challenges, yes. But often the deeper pain is internal. It is a quiet shame. The need to hide. The fear of being seen as different. It is the silent belief that you are somehow less than. Not enough.

Specific patterns take root from that place: loneliness, withdrawal, and resentment. Consider even when someone is capable and gifted, life can feel heavy and out of reach.

When Hiding Hurts More Than the Disability Itself

My disability is mostly invisible, so I've got good at concealing it. I lied. I made excuses. I overcompensated, pushing myself too hard just to avoid the risk of being seen as weak. Or broken. Or not enough. I wanted to blend in and pass as normal, but the cost was high. Emotional exhaustion. A steady erosion of self-worth. And a growing reliance on alcohol to dull the ache of living out of alignment with who I was.

In my article "The Role of a Community in Supporting People with Hidden Disabilities to Flourish," I discussed how secrecy isolates and fractures your relationship with yourself. When you live behind a mask, disconnected from your reality, you cannot truly belong. People might surround you, but no one can connect with the version of you that is not real. And deep down, you know it.

Eventually, I hit a wall. Things fell apart: my career, my marriage, my health. And as I sat in the rubble of what once was, something quietly but powerfully became clear:

I had been fighting the wrong battle all along.

You can transform your relationship to disability.

It took me a long time to understand this, but I now hold it as truth: our circumstances do not cause our suffering. It is our relationship with those circumstances that does.

That single distinction changed everything for me.

Within the Being Framework, we explore the Aspects of Being that shape how we relate to ourselves, others, and life itself. These aspects, such as vulnerability, authenticity, responsibility, freedom, and courage, are tools we can use to navigate life. When we disempower our relationship with these aspects, life can feel narrower. It can be harder, especially when you are navigating a disability or living with a chronic condition. But by understanding and empowering these aspects, we can transform our relationship with anything, including our pain, our past, and the parts of ourselves we have learned to hide.

But here is the good news, and it is not just theory, it is lived experience:

We can transform our relationship with anything, including our pain, our past, and the parts of ourselves we have learned to hide.

And when that shift happens, everything else begins to move with it.

“I Am Cursed.” “It Is So Unfair.” “I Will Never Be Enough.”

These are some of the phrases I used to tell myself quietly, repeatedly, often without even realising how deeply they were shaping my world. Over the years, I have heard variations of these same stories in the voices of many people I have worked with. For instance, I remember a time when I felt like I was cursed because of my disability. It took me a while to realise that it was not my disability that was the problem, but my relationship with it.

Take John, for example, not his real name. He had been hiding his autism for most of his adult life. The pressure to mask who he was became overwhelming. His anxiety deepened. Depression crept in. Eventually, alcohol became the coping mechanism. Beneath it all was a constant, gnawing fear that no one would ever truly get him. That he would always be misunderstood. Alone.

But things began to shift the day he walked into an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. He felt something different in that room, surrounded by others who were not pretending. People who had stopped performing and started being real. He felt safe. Seen. Understood. His healing did not begin because his condition changed. It started because his relationship with it did.

Then there was a young professional I worked with, a bright, driven, and quietly navigating a hidden spinal condition. After a failed surgery, he convinced himself that his future had collapsed. He put his dreams on the shelf. Life became about survival, not possibility. He resigned himself to limitation. But when things began to unravel and the cost of denial became too high, he made a different choice.

He leaned into vulnerability. He started sharing his reality, not as a complaint but as an honest expression of what was true for him. In doing so, he gave others a chance to support him. Over time, something remarkable happened. He found a new sense of freedom, not in fixing his condition but in accepting it. Today, his challenges remain, but they no longer define him. He is living fully, not despite his condition but alongside it.

Acceptance Is Not Resignation. It Is Empowerment.

There is a common misconception that accepting a disability means surrendering to it. That acceptance equals defeat. But in truth, the opposite is often the case.

Acceptance is the gateway to freedom.

When we stop resisting reality and meet it fully, without denial or distortion, we create the space to make powerful choices. That is when change becomes possible. Not because the circumstances shift, but because we do.

I will never forget the moment it clicked for me. I realised that the pain I carried was not just physical. It ran deeper—emotional, psychological, and woven into the meanings I had wrapped around it. I thought I was cursed, that I was broken, and that this pain would define the rest of my life. But something began to shift when I started to explore my relationship with qualities like authenticity, vulnerability, and freedom.

That shift opened doors I didn't know were there. I began to see I had more agency than I had ever believed.

In the book Manage Your Pain, researchers from the Royal North Shore Pain Management Centre explain how catastrophic thinking, those familiar internal scripts like “this is terrible” or “I cannot cope”, amplifies the experience of pain. I know that reality all too well because I have lived it. But once I began rewriting the narrative, the pain changed too, not just in intensity, but in how I related to it.

It stopped being about simply managing symptoms. It became about reclaiming my life.

Belonging Starts With Being Seen

One of the most powerful things we can do as human beings is allow ourselves to be seen, truly seen, in our full humanity.

Whether your disability is visible to others or hidden beneath the surface, the path to fulfilment often begins with one courageous act: letting someone in. Letting them see not just the curated version of you but also the real, raw, honest experience you are living with.

When we remove the mask, stop trying to pass as normal, and begin to share our actual story, we create space for something profoundly healing. We make room for connection, compassion, and the kind of support that only comes when people relate to who we are.

I remember one client in particular. He was a talented musician, full of passion and potential, but paralysed by anxiety and fear. He longed to perform, but stepping on stage felt impossible. Still, something shifted when he began building a new relationship with courage and self-expression. The fear did not vanish overnight, but he did not wait for it to. He moved forward anyway. Eventually, he stepped onto that stage and shared his voice.

In doing so, he transformed his experience and permitted others to do the same.

Disability Does Not Diminish Your Wholeness

Somewhere along the way, many of us absorb a damaging belief that to be whole or complete, we must be flawless. That if we are living with a disability or any kind of limitation, we are somehow less than. That integrity is only available to unbroken people in the truest sense of the word.

That is simply not true.

In the Being Framework, integrity is not about perfection. It is not about having everything together or presenting a polished version of yourself to the world. Integrity is about alignment. It is about being honest with yourself, being aware of who you are and what you are navigating, and choosing to show up responsibly in the midst of it.

It is not about waiting until you are fixed. It is about recognising that you already have everything you need to live with purpose and meaning, right now, as you are.

Living with a disability does not exclude you from wholeness. Something alters when you stop chasing an ideal of perfection and start relating to yourself as already whole. You begin to reclaim your power, not because your circumstances changed, but because your relationship with them did.

The Real Shift

So let me leave you with this:

Your disability is not the problem.

The real issue lies in the story you have told yourself about what it means.

And here is the truth: stories can change. When you change the story, you change your reality. You shift the way you see yourself, your possibilities, and what you are capable of.

Maybe you have believed that you have to hide. That you are broken. Your dreams are out of reach and no one could ever truly understand. But those beliefs do not have to define you. They are not facts. They are just stories, often inherited, internalised or shaped by fear.

What defines you is how you choose to respond to a challenge, what you stand for, and what you move toward, even when it is hard.

You feel unstoppable in achieving your goals when you relate to yourself with authenticity, vulnerability, responsibility, courage, and freedom.

Want to Go Deeper?

If this resonates with you and you are ready to explore more, I invite you to stay connected, reach out, and start a conversation. You do not have to navigate this path alone.

This article is more than a conversation about disability. It is about discovering what becomes possible when you begin living from who you truly are.

At its heart, this journey is not only about pain, disability and chronic health. It is about who and how we are becoming.