No Excuses: The Ableism in Grind Culture

From fitness to mental wellness, to business, to social media, and chores, we’ve seen the fast-growing self-improvement industry seep into every facet of our daily lives. Self-help experts will — often aggressively — encourage us to do better and be better so that we might achieve our goals more quickly and efficiently. We’re given numerous strategies and plans that enable us to do so, with the final necessary ingredient being our own desire to change. Such ‘positivity’ seems harmless, right?

Wrong.

Most folks read such catchphrases as “no excuses” and “the only thing stopping you is your attitude” as examples of tough love. We’re intended to confront our poor work ethic, procrastination, and lack of discipline and rationalize that these issues impeding us are entirely of our own making. All we must do is cast away such negative thinking and apply ourselves to whatever task is set out before us — but what happens when your “excuses” are far deeper than just a “bad habit?”

Certainly, each of us struggle with our own imbalances when it comes to work, responsibilities, and goals, but when it comes to disability, our limitations aren’t subconscious hinderances we dream up to avoid doing things; the reality of disability for many people is accepting that there will be activities we simply cannot participate in.

There will be physical feats that our bodies aren’t capable of anymore. There will be places and social circles we can’t be present in because of their threat to our mental wellness. There will be times when we’ll be forced to prioritize rest over everything else, because if we don’t, we’ll pay a tremendous price — and that price is not worth “pushing through it” just to demonstrate that we can.

Fitness self-help messaging is a frequent culprit of this particular kind of ableism. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen fitness pages prop up individual examples of disabled people working out to effectively shame other disabled people for not doing the same. Again, the assertion is that our limitations are merely a result of our “attitude” and not physical or mental conditions that make working out or going to the gym exceedingly difficult, which in turn completely minimizes many disabled folks’ experience.

I used to really enjoy working out. In fact, it was an excellent stress reliever for me, and it allowed me to healthily express emotions and blow off steam. Now, a workout that might’ve been a breeze for me a few years ago leaves me with extended pain flares and waves of fatigue, symptoms of my disability that, at their worst, keep me in bed and prevent me from doing almost anything else with my day. I don’t work out as often as I used to, not because I lack the motivation, but because I quite literally can’t unless I want to be in pain.

This tactic of shaming people into action is weaved into the fabric of capitalist society. It mistakes, or perhaps deliberately labels, disability as laziness and attempts to make us feel guilty for not engaging in society the same way able-bodied, neurotypical people do. It asserts that if we cannot perform to the default standard — a standard determined by and for non-disabled people — we aren’t trying hard enough; in reality, even able-bodied people’s best efforts aren’t equal or the same, and thus it’s unrealistic to aspect disabled people to function in a way that’s pleasing to a society that’s largely inaccessible to us.

Think about this mentality with your disabled friends, too. When they cancel on you to rest, how often are you frustrated when they decide to prioritize their care? When you plan group activities, how much thought goes into making certain your disabled friends will be able to comfortably participate? If your friend relies on social programs or financial help to sustain themselves, how often do you find yourself painting their circumstances in a negative light?

Whether we’re aware of it or not, ableism is pervasive in our social and personal circles, and it’s important to recognize and confront it. Each of us, disabled or otherwise, experience the world differently, and none of us should be shamed for functioning differently or having specific needs. Nakita Valerio wrote: “Shouting ‘self-care’ at people who actually need community care is how we fail people,” and understanding this is essential to creating a more accessible, disability-informed world.