This editorial was written by Jason Schreurs, and originally appeared in DABC’s Transition magazine on Respecting Disability Language and Identity. (Summer 2022). Read the issue here.

My name is Jason and I live with bipolar. I didn’t say, “I’m bipolar” or “I have bipolar.” I also didn’t use the word “disorder” or “illness.” I choose to say I “live with” my condition: “bipolar.”

This is my personal preference and I would never judge anyone else on theirs. I’m not alone in the disability community questioning the language that I use and how it helps to form my identity. It’s a fascinating and important discussion.

What I’ve Learned as a Group Facilitator
As a support group facilitator for the past two years, I’ve seen that many people living with disabilities use many different ways to describe themselves.

Some use terms that detach them from their condition. They want to say they’re not defined by something that’s beyond their control. They didn’t ask for it, it’s not who they are. They’re not ill, disordered or diseased.

People in another camp, just as validly and just as passionately, want to acknowledge their illness for the many ways it affects them. For them, terms like “illness” and “disorder” validate the struggles they face in day-to-day functioning, while softer terms like “health issue” or “health condition” minimize those struggles.

Much of the disability community has moved toward first-person language that emphasizes the person, not the disability, and how disability is just one aspect of who they are. Others argue that this can discredit a person’s lived experience.

“I want [people] to know I have a diagnosed illness and not a general health issue,” says Jennifer Ann de la Torre, who has schizoaffective disorder. “An illness means I require special accommodations, as well as empathy, compassion and sensitivity.”

Isha Sharma has diagnoses of bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder and borderline personality disorder. She reflects on why she has come to refer to herself as someone who “has” or “lives” with disabilities.

“It took a couple of years of therapy and consistent work on myself to understand and accept that I can live a life that is healthy. Language has been an important part of that,” says Sharma. “Being kind to myself has never been easy, but I am working on it, and saying ‘I have a condition’ versus ‘I am a condition’ makes a massive difference.”

My Own Questions About Language
I often wonder if I’m downplaying my own diagnosis by telling people I have a health condition, rather than an illness. As an advocate for mental health, I can see both sides of the issue.

While normalized language may help some people to accept me for who I am, a more immediate form of advocacy would be to raise awareness about how illness affects me and people with other conditions–and what our communities and services can do to support us.

I know that how people with disabilities self-identify is not a closed issue. How we use language around disability to formulate our identities is a fluid process, and that’s okay.

Courtenay McLeod has been living with bipolar for 21 years and would like to see more acceptance around people’s choice to use whatever language empowers them.

“There is no universal ‘one size fits all’ when it comes to articulating your own experience,” she says. “Being open-minded and understanding how personal conditions can be—and how that may affect the language [we] use—needs to be accepted.”

Even as I type words like “condition” to describe what I live with, I know others out there are at their own desks typing words like “illness” to define their own experiences.

“I don’t care how other people say it,” says Michael Frenette, who has a mental disability. “I’m not a language police officer, and I don’t believe anyone should be. My personal struggles do not take priority over other people’s lives and truths, and most people who are not informed only want to learn.”

Jason Schreurs is a music and mental health writer, host of the internationally renowned Scream Therapy podcast, and self- proclaimed punk weirdo.