Living with disabilities: mental and physical

Disabilities can take many forms, such as a mental disability or a physical disability. Sometimes you’re born with them, and sometimes they result from an accident, an illness, or something similar. How do you live your best life despite that disability?

In this blog, we take a closer look at that question.

Mental disability is often an impairment that is hard to see from the outside and that many people misunderstand. It may seem familiar to you that people then say something about "acting normal.

Research also shows that people with mental disabilities are more likely to be discriminated against than those with physical disabilities. Surely, people with mental disabilities are seen as less human than people with physical disabilities by people who do not suffer from disabilities themselves[1].

With disability, mental or physical problems can make it more difficult for you to live a normal life. This may have a medical cause or it may be congenital.

A disability can prevent you from functioning properly, either mentally or physically, or cause certain organs or limbs to not function as they should. Even after the acute phase of an illness has passed, you may still be dealing with a disability resulting from that illness. For example, you might develop diabetes after acute pancreatitis; your brain might no longer function properly after you’ve had a stroke ; or you might have had to have a limb amputated due to an illness, or that limb might simply function differently than it did before you had an illness or needed a medical procedure.

A consequence of disability can make it difficult to function properly physically, mentally and emotionally. For example, it may be difficult to walk, or you may freeze when you are in a stressful situation.

The disability can also become characteristic of the person who has it. Everyone "knows" that man or woman with a particular impairment. Depending on how visible your disability is, your environment may react well or not so well to it. This, in turn, can have all kinds of consequences for the rest of your life.

A disability does not have to be a limitation for everyone. If you have something that makes walking difficult, for example, but it doesn't bother you, you don't have to see it as a limitation.

However, if you do suffer from your limitation, then of course it is a limitation. Even if other people around you tell you not to "fuss. If you experience something as a disability, that is how it is for you at that moment.

If you have a severe disability, you are often labeled as disabled by those around you[2]. ADHD, for example, is more of a limitation than a disability, while people with Down syndrome are often also viewed as disabled; however, even within that group, there are people with milder forms and those with more severe forms.

With a disability you can often still function enough to keep yourself afloat in society, but with a disability you often need more help.

What is a mental disability?

A mental disability involves difficulty with thoughts. For example, people in the early stages of dementia are considered to have a mental disability[3]. People with Parkinson’s disease may also experience this[4].

With mental impairment, you may have difficulty keeping your attention, such as when you want to follow a conversation. In addition, you may forget how to do something. For example, you may have momentarily forgotten the steps to make tea.

In addition, learning something new can be challenging; your reaction time may be slowed, and you may have trouble speaking fluently. This doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll start stuttering, but you may have difficulty formulating your sentences and finding the right words (source 4).

Problems such as adhd, dyslexics and the like can therefore fall under the heading of disability. However, most people with these disorders can very well live a fine life, possibly with a little help.

What is a physical disability?

A physical impairment is a limitation in your movement and/or the functioning of your organs. For example, if you suffer from MS, the strength in your muscles slowly decreases[5]. This is a very clear example.

But even having difficulty walking due to, say, an injury that can no longer be fixed can be considered a physical disability.

A physical disability often prevents you from doing certain work. For example, work that requires you to stand a lot can be difficult.

Fortunately, there are often still plenty of office jobs and other jobs you can still fill. In the process, you can often get alternative keyboards and mice for an office job or ways to work with a computer if it is difficult due to a physical disability[6].

Hypnosis for mental disability

Hypnosis can also do a lot for people with mental disabilities. For example, did you know that hypnotherapy is better for people with adhd than cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to better cope with their disability?

In a study where people either received CBT or hypnotherapy every week for ten weeks, it was found that the improvement in the reduction of anxiety, depressive symptoms was greatest in the group of people who had received hypnotherapy. People's well-being also improved more with hypnotherapy and in doing so, the effects also lasted longer[7].

Mental health issues can also cause a great deal of stress and anxiety. Old age comes with its own challenges, and when these are mental—such as frequent forgetfulness—they can also lead to additional anxiety. Because even if you don’t have dementia, noticing that you’re forgetting things more often can still trigger all sorts of worrying thoughts.

In that case, hypnosis can also help deal with that stress and anxiety of mental impairment[8].

Children with Down syndrome can also benefit from hypnosis, for both motor problems and problems with their thinking. Memory, for example, can be improved with hypnosis[9].

Hypnosis for a physical disability

Sometimes you can also have some sort of mixture of mental and physical impairment. For example, if you've had a stroke, sometimes it's difficult to move your limbs. A case study shows that hypnosis can help rehabilitation after a stroke. In the study, the person in whom hypnosis was applied was able to move his arm and leg properly again after five weeks and had improvements in using the muscles in his face[10].

In 2021, a slightly larger study was conducted on the impact of hypnosis on physical recovery from stroke. This showed that the impairment score went from 2.5 to 0.5. This saved the UK health service more than 1,600 pounds per patient[11].

For conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome or dyspepsia, hypnotherapy is also frequently studied and used to help people live better with these issues.

In dyspepsia, the use of hypnosis shows promise in reducing reflux and burping[12].

If you suffer from irritable bowel syndrome, hypnosis is often already recommended to gain more of a sense of control over this condition.

It is interesting, though, that hypnosis can do something about physical limitations. This is because when during hypnosis you imagine yourself moving a limb the area in your brain becomes active that is important for moving your limbs. You can use hypnosis to make a kind of link between imagining that you are going to make a certain movement, to the planning of that movement and the final execution (source 9, page 7).

Another study found that hypnosis can be used to treat the physical tics associated with Tourette syndrome, provided it is combined with physical training (source 9, p. 8).

So how does hypnosis help?

As mentioned with physical limitations, visualizing movements can already do much to gain more control over them.

Visualizing, or something similar if you find it difficult to imagine things, often plays an important role in hypnosis. First, because it can help you relax, and second, because visualizations allow you to solve certain problems very specifically by imagining a particular solution, for example.

In addition, a hypnotherapist will always consider how your disability affects your life and offer suggestions to help you cope better with it.

Would you like to learn more about hypnosis and how you can use it to help yourself and others? Then come join a free online masterclass.

Or enroll in one of our seminars or trainings. Ideal for self-development and if you want to help people make the most of their lives.

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