About special needs

Living in the world where we all need to constantly move faster and faster in order to be able to cope with the demands of society and economy leaves a toll on each one of us. We tend to feel stressed with the long working hours, with being underpaid, with not being appreciated for our efforts, with not being seen as individuals but as parts of a larger system.

People with special needs may not be working in a corporate sector, they may not be lawyers appearing in court fighting for extremely important causes, or may not be striving to get funds for their own start-up, however the pressure they live under and the stress and frustrations that they experience can be equally difficult for them to deal with.

I recently felt frustrated after having been rejected one more time by the artist residency program, I questioned the sense of applying for something again and began to wonder whether there is any point in trying at all. Someone else might feel frustrated with not being able to recall the spelling of one's own name. Two different situations, two different people, yet perhaps the amount of effort we both put into our writing a good project and writing the name is the same? And perhaps both of us want to finally make it good this time and not to have to face the disappointment and frustration again.

We all have the same needs that need to be met for each of us to be able to live a thriving and healthy emotional life.

Few years back I was standing at the school corridor just after the lunch break. The bell rang and I was watching adults standing around a class 3 student who was diagnosed with a genetic disorder. She was walking slowly towards her classroom, too slowly and so the adults began telling her that she needs to walk faster. It was my first active experience of empathy as I was trying to imagine what this situation might have looked like from the perspective of the child. It must have been scary I felt. It must have felt scary and powerless to be standing among people twice her size and be rushed to walk with the speed that was too fast for her to handle.

It must feel equally scary and frustrating to be an elderly person being rushed to eat faster and spill less soup onto the table when the hand is shivering.

We all have the same basic human needs and one of them is ability to be seen for who we are as beings and not for the actions that we are able to perform with sometimes better, sometimes worse results. We all want to be loved and appreciated, we all need warmth, friends, sense of belonging.

I do not want my friends to judge me on the basis of how successful I am as a professional. A child with special needs wants to have friends to play with irrespective of whether he/she is able to score the goal during the football match. As a child I was never good at sport – I would always be the last person to be chosen by any team. It felt embarrassing and frustrating to be the last one taken into the team...every week of my primary school.

I live in a place where many people believe I do not understand the language they speak. It happened to me a couple of times that people would talk about me in a rude way thinking that I would not be able to understand their words. But I did... and it hurt. It made me feel like an object. People with special needs may look different sometimes or behave in a different way, however, it does not mean that they are completely unable to understand the tone of voice or words that are being used while talking about them. They do understand...

Life is often stressful for many of us. As humans we are very often programmed to experience negative emotions in a stronger way than the positive ones in our lives, even though the latter once may be actually be larger in number. Positive emotions are often experienced in a milder, more subdued way and so we need them more frequently. Perhaps while dealing with individuals with special needs we could try to concentrate on strengths more than on the weaknesses?

That class 3 student I mentioned a few sentences above... she managed to stand in the vrkshaasana (tree pose) in a yoga class one day... And that day the whole class clapped for her... She performed great! 30 seconds of balance! And I think she felt like a great achiever that day, the way you or I do after a performance, good session, promotion at work.