“I’m just feeling really guilty. It feels uncomfortable, and I’m not sure what to do with that feeling now,” one participant said to me after one of my privilege walk exercises.
I have often received this response. Feelings of guilt are very real and valid, and sometimes it is hard for someone to move beyond their guilt because of how uncomfortable it can feel. Guilt can become so overwhelming that it drives people to inaction and silences them, preventing them from moving forward in a constructive way.
We can categorize guilt as two different types: unhealthy guilt and healthy guilt.1 Here, I use pre-existing frameworks and discourse on racial justice and white guilt and adapt them to anti-ableism and non-disabled guilt.
Unhealthy non-disabled guilt leads to inaction, as I previously described, because it is overwhelming to learn the truth of how our privilege reflects, facilitates, and entrenches ableism in every sector of society. When our guilt makes us feel bad—for example, when we use an ableist term and are called out for it—we sometimes start to laser-focus on how ableism makes us feel, as opposed to the injustices of ableism itself. We decide we don’t want to engage in anti-ableist discussions because we simply don’t want to feel bad, which is a self-absorbed act.
Then there is healthy non-disabled guilt, where the experience of guilt leads to the desire to change. Guilt can open our eyes to injustices we’ve never noticed before—for example, when someone calls us out for using an ableist term, we realize that ableism has infiltrated our language and shaped our thoughts. And when we allow ourselves to sit with the discomfort of our guilt and acknowledge what causes it—ableism—we can be mobilized and inspired to address the root cause. As theologian Letty Russell says, “The poor do not ask us to feel guilty, for they can’t eat guilt. What they ask is that we act to address the causes of injustice so they can obtain food.”2
This, of course, is easier said than done, especially because feelings of unhealthy guilt are often accompanied by shame. If guilt is feeling bad about a certain behavior, then shame is feeling bad about who you are as a person. In other words, guilt over non-disabled privilege can turn into shame when non-disabled people realize that they automatically benefit from ableist structures in a way that they can’t separate from their self-perception. When someone feels shame, “the whole self is under attack, not just [their] behavior that is something [they] can change,” says June Tangney, a shame and guilt researcher at George Mason University.3 This type of thinking can cause one to spiral into a self-focused and selfish state, where people cope by becoming defensive to protect their identity or by doubling down and seeing themselves as an “irredeemable villain.”4 Unfortunately, both of these outcomes prevent people who experience shame from getting out of the hole of this vicious thought cycle.
The good news is that it is possible to harness shame and guilt to move forward and make positive change, even if it means having to be uncomfortable first. Feelings of discomfort are incredibly jarring, since non-disabled people’s version of “normal” in an ableist world is defined by their comfort. In fact, we disabled people often spend time and effort making the non-disabled people around us feel comfortable, even if it means going out of our way to do so.
I can think of a few examples from my own experience. In the early years of my advocacy, I would describe my paralyzed arm as my “funny hand” as a way to acknowledge my disability and bring levity to the situation. I have since stopped using that phrase because I would not want anyone to label any part of my body “funny,” nor would I use that language to describe others. However, I still do some things today for non-disabled people’s comfort. When others notice me wearing my wrist splint and ask about it, I explain, “It’s from a car accident a long time ago. Don’t worry, it doesn’t hurt!” in an attempt not to elicit more concern about my lifelong injury. You would be surprised by the number of people who ask me if my hand hurts, and even after I’ve explained that it does not, they respond with “Well, it looks like it hurts,” dismissing my response and doubling down on their own projections about my experience.
There’s a phrase going around DEI and education circles: “Get comfortable with being uncomfortable.” Lily Zheng, a DEI speaker and strategist, aims to clarify this statement: “It’s not the experience of discomfort that creates positive change, but instead the resolution of it.”5 According to Zheng, it is not enough to feel uncomfortable without any follow-up, which can exacerbate pre-existing ableist attitudes and behaviors. Instead, we need to focus on resolving the dissonance of our discomfort through constructive action and attitude shifts.