understanding for different disabilities?

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I find that with a lot of people with a history of discrimination. And the hardest part is they have reason to take it personally, even when it's not.

Like when Monk on TV, who can't stand to shake hands, saw a whole row of people needing to shake his hand. Normally he wet-wipes his hand after every shake.

In this case he plunged in and shook everyone's hand, then wet-wiped his hand at the end.

Problem was... the first several people he shook hands with were white. The last one was black.

His assistant was really apologetic and tried to say that he didn't mean it that way, but the other people (all of whom were appalled at that point) basically said "What other way can you mean that?"

Saw on a Tourette documentary though, a woman who had uncontrollable tics to say the least socially appropriate thing possible even when she very much didn't mean them. (That's the real root of the swearing thing, it's not the swearing, it's the unacceptability of the words in general.)

So she usually avoided situations where she'd be around people who wouldn't understand or have warning.

But absolutely had to go to the bank one day and couldn't wait until the lines were short.

So she went in. Stood behind a black guy in a purple sweater.

And was trying really, really, really hard, not to say the n-word, working really hard to suppress that tic.

And the tic came out, "purple n****r, purple n****r."

I think the guy must've known it was a tic or something (or just that she was neurologically odd in some way -- which I can imagine, because she looked visibly unusual on the video from all the ticcing, and would often cover her mouth while ticcing as if she was coughing) though, because he didn't get offended, he just turned around and said, "Lady, if you think n****rs are purple, you've got problems."

But she was still absolutely mortified she'd said it, of course.

There was a guy on the same documentary, who was, I think, Dutch. And when he got on the plane to go to America he'd be swearing in Dutch. When he'd be in America he would not swear at all. And when he went back to the Netherlands he'd start swearing in Dutch again. Which is one way it was obvious that the problem was saying something you're not supposed to say, not just the concept of swearing itself.

So I think Touretters with coprolalia would also be afraid of saying the absolutely least socially acceptable thing possible, and possibly hurting people in the process who are already called names and worse, by people who really do mean it hatefully.

Sort of like, my mom unconsciously mimics accents, and used to always be afraid someone would think she was mocking them.

So... yeah, I don't find it confusing at all why someone in those or other situations like that, would find it awkward to be around some other disabled people.

I think I'm mostly comfortable with other disabled people. There was someone in a college class, who seemed to have a speech disorder and who was in a wheelchair, who was my lab partner several times, and I don't remember feeling any different (I think he might've had some of the features of Down Syndrome, though I am not good enough at discerning facial characteristics to know).

Though I do worry about unintentionally offending - considering that I usually avoid eye contact, and speak little unless I know the person REALLY well and have the energy for it, so these things might be taken as avoiding looking at a wheelchair and not knowing what to say because of being uncomfortable about disabled people in general, as opposed to being due to my own speech and language difficulties.

There are of course many disabilities I know little to nothing about, but now that I've made myself aware of disability stereotypes and stuff, I am very careful to question any assumptions I find myself making, since I know these can often be very wrong.

I understand people with different disabilities and it doesn't bother me at all when I am around them. It doesn't matter if it is a physical disability or a mental disability. I go to a group for people with mental disorders and most of them are my best friends! I actually feel more comfortable with people with mental disorders because I think they would be more understanding toward me and I would be more understanding toward them. Most of my friends are either bipolar, schizophrenic, or schizoaffective disorder. I even have a friend who has Asperger's Syndrome and he goes to my group as well. When I act weird in front of my friends I don't have to worry what they think of me because they understand me. If they did weird things I understand them as well. I have friends that have delusions and hallucinations and that didn't bother me at all. I understand that is just part of their illness. By the way, before going to this group I had very few friends and now I have around 20!