The identity of positive disability and the choice of blindness

The distorted people tend to Fearful Blind as or more other disabling holidays (Enoch et al., 2019; Scott et al., 2016). They view blindness as tragic and assume that the blind are desperate to treat (Nario-Edmond, 2020).

At the beginning of visual loss, people suffer from severe psychological distress (Boagy et al., 2022; Nyman et al., 2012). At this stage, almost everyone welcomes the treatment that would reflect visual loss.

But their collapse identity In the end, he leads them to start creating a new identity that includes blindness as a central feature.

What is identity?

In psychology, “identity” refers to a person’s beliefs about how they are similar and differ from others (BreWer, 1991; Erikson, 1968). We explain our similarities by align with ourselves with people and social groups with beliefs and values, GoalsAnd the other features that we find are attractive. We explain our differences by expressing beliefs, values, features, goals, etc., which these people and groups are not shared.

According to Eric Ericsson (1968), the composition of the identity is the main axis of a personality Early development Teenager To the stage of early puberty. Ericsson described this focus as the “identity crisis”. Susan Branji and her colleagues (2021) stated that “adolescents begin to ask and explore … (who) they want to be, the roles they want to occupy in adulthood, and their place in society.”

During adolescence, we start building his autobiography that connects those who were in the past, which we are at the present time, and who we will be in the future. In this story of life, we come to see ourselves the same self with the passage of time and through different conditions of life.

Identity provides us with the goal and meaning in our lives, and therefore, it is an essential incentive for our actions. Identity helps us:

• Select both short -term and long -term goals.
• Perseverance in achieving goals after the experience of frustration and failures.
• Create and maintain good relationships.

Loss of sight before adolescence

The effects of blindness on identity depend on the age of visual loss. People who lose their eyesight early in life integrate easily blindness in their identity because they have always considered themselves visually weak. As a teenager stated, blindness “never bothers me, because I have never seen correctly. It is only who I am” (Robertson et al., 2021). The formation of a blind identity in adolescence helps them face the challenges they will face as adults (BOGART, 2014).

Loss of sight after adolescence

The emergence of blindness in adulthood, which formed the amazing identity during the crisis of teenagers. A person will need to create a new biography narration by adhering to new roles, groups, beliefs, goals, etc. (Ferrey et al., 2024; Galvin, 2005).

The quality of their relationships is important in forming a new identity (Branje et al., 2021). They need to remain new relationships with people who accept their blindness. They must prepare themselves to lose friends who cannot do this, as in the case of a young woman named Pearl: “I really bothered me. I lost many friends because I was not a pearl.

The composition of identity is more complicated when one has a remaining remaining vision during adolescence to appear for others, as in the case of Kailla Allen, the personal development coach in Arizona. She was born in a genetic retinal condition that took her peripheral vision during childhood. Although she was lawful, she had a sufficient central vision to participate in many of the activities that were seen.

Kayla was circulated during the end of the high school. She also received rehabilitation services outside the school to ultimately lose their loss in the central vision.

The presence of Kayla because of the presence of the twilight on the borders between the amazing and unstable worlds. I asked her if she was agreeing, when she was a teenager, to treat her retinal disease if someone is available. She replied, “Yes.” The partial vision of her has embarrassed her because she made her different from her fully distorted peers. She was unable to celebrate the most important teenage rituals: obtaining a driver’s license.

Kayla had no sense of belonging either in the visual or blind worlds. The lack of belonging to the ability to solve the crisis of its identity.

She was comfortable when she lost her central vision in adulthood. She finally faced a sense of belonging in the blind world. When I asked her if she would now choose to choose if a cure is found for her blindness, she replied, “No,” and explained her decision: “I know who I am. I know where to sit in the world while I am comfortable with what I do.”

Kayla’s positive position on blindness shows that she has succeeded in forming a disability identity (Dunn & Burcaw, 2013; Forber-PRTT ET Al., 2017). People who formed the identity of the disability show:

• A positive feeling in particular
• Pride in the case of disability
• Feeling of belonging to a society of the handicapped

Hahn and Todd Belt (2004) found that people with a strong disability identity are not looking for “treatment”. They asked a group of disability activists to evaluate the amount they agreed or do not agree to the following statement: “Even if I can take magic pills, I do not want to treat my disability.”

Many participants agreed to the statement. The researchers found that the more the participants reject the idea of ​​treatment, the more they agree to the disability confirmation data, such as:

• “In general, I am happy to be a person who suffers from a disability.”
• “Being a person who suffers from a disability is an important reflection for me.”

In my next message, I will discuss the search for blindness treatments and their potential reception in the blind community.

Note: I would like to thank Kira Feng for her editorial assistance.