9 TPC Digest Most counseling professionals are quite familiar with microaggressions and their impact because they are well established within the counseling literature and counselor training, particularly as related to race, ethnicity, gender, and affectual orientation. While the overall concept and impact of microaggressions are well known, many counseling professionals are unfamiliar with a less researched topic: ableist microaggressions. Ableist microaggressions are deliberate or unintentional verbal, nonverbal, and/or environmental messages that convey disapproval, distaste, and condemnation of people with disabilities (PWD). The purpose of this study was to describe participants’ experiences with ableist microaggressions to help counseling professionals better understand how ableist microaggressions manifest and their impact on PWD so that professionals can avoid perpetrating ableist microaggressions and provide disability-affirming counseling services. We used qualitative content analysis to analyze participants’ self-reported experiences with ableist microaggressions. Participants (N = 90) had a diagnosed disability, and the majority (91.11%) identified as having two or more nondominant identities beyond their disability. We report two categories and 10 themes. The first category, Findings That Align With the Ableist Microaggression Scale (AMS) Subscales, encompasses themes that are congruent with the AMS subscales that we named in our a priori codebook: Minimization, Denial of Personhood, Otherization, and Helplessness. The second category, Unique Findings Independent of the AMS Subscales, resulted in six themes: Fortitude/Resilience/Coping, Contextual Factors, Impact of Microaggressions/Ableism on Mental Health/Wellness, Microaggression Experiences Are Different Depending on Visibility of Disability, Internalized Ableism, and Microaggressions Include Identities Other Than Disability. The importance of these findings cannot be overstated for counseling professionals. While participants were part of the general population rather than counseling clients specifically, their experiences reveal significant implications for practicing counselors, counseling supervisors, and counselor educators. These findings include the distress that PWD experience when ableist microaggressions are perpetrated toward them, as well as how PWD process and move through microaggressive experiences. Significantly, participants shared key ways in which they cope and are resilient, overturning common assumptions that PWD do not have the internal resources to navigate challenging situations. Professional counselors can assist clients with disabilities in fostering their resiliencies, strengths, and coping strategies further, yet their work does not stop there. Disability-affirming counselors must advocate and work for change at all levels to eliminate disability microaggressions so that PWD can have a higher quality of life, free from the constraints that individuals and systems inflict based on their beliefs about what PWD cannot do. Finally, for counseling professionals to become disability-affirming allies, preparatory work must be done. At the individual level, all counseling professionals must examine and eliminate their biases about PWD. At the training level, counselor educators and supervisors must integrate disability into counselor training, including models of disability, the historical and present systemic challenges faced by PWD, and the power within disability advocacy movements to create change. Our research highlights the strengths that PWD have and the challenges that PWD face; through their stories, this article serves as a call to action to listen to the voices of PWD and to act in disability-affirming ways. Jennifer M. Cook, PhD, NCC, ACS, LPC, is an associate professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Melissa D. Deroche, PhD, NCC, ACS, LPC-S, is an assistant professor at Tarleton State University. Lee Za Ong, PhD, LPC, CRC, is an assistant professor at Marquette University. Correspondence may be addressed to Jennifer M. Cook, University of Texas at San Antonio, Department of Counseling, 501 W. Cesar E. Chavez Blvd, San Antonio, TX 78207, jennifer.cook@utsa.edu. Jennifer M. Cook, Melissa D. Deroche, Lee Za Ong A Qualitative Analysis of Ableist Microaggressions Read full article and references: Cook, J. M., Deroche, M. D., & Ong, L. Z. (2024). A qualitative analysis of ableist microaggressions. The Professional Counselor, 14(1), 64–82. doi: 10.15241/jmc.14.1.64 9 TPC Digest
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