The challenge of Inclusivity: Everyone Matters

People living with a disability are as much a part of our community as people living without a disability. In Australia, in 2022, the Australian Bureau of Statistics identified more than one in five people (21.4%) living with a disability.
Dr Dan Siegel developed an important framework, integrating neuroscience knowledge with counselling techniques, known as the “window of tolerance”. This refers to the optimum zone of arousal, or awareness (or a nervous system in balance), where a person is calm and alert, able to effectively process information and cope with daily life, recognising that intense emotions and stress are a daily part of life, yet managed healthily. How the window of tolerance operates for a person with a disability, where emotions of hyper-arousal and disconnection can easily move to a sense of being overwhelmed, is critical to successful counselling. Factors such as chronic illness or pain, trauma, sensory sensitivities, neurological and cognitive features and overall life events and developmental stage can play a significant role in how broad or narrow the window of tolerance can be for a person with a disability.
There is a range of helpful interventions that can assist a client with a disability to manage more extreme or unpredictable emotions better and to refocus within a calmer window of tolerance. These include self-awareness routines, grounding and centring exercises, engaging senses in pursuing other tasks (like taking a walk or a soothing warm bath), and building resilience over time, such as strengthening supportive relationships and practising healthy habits.
We can all help to empower with empathy our friends, clients, and colleagues who live with a disability by recognising that their cognitive window of tolerance may be more limited and helping them rebalance their emotions and stress to a more acceptable level. These feelings of neural arousal are natural, yet often require greater effort for those with a disability to master. We can all play our part in this, recognising that while the non-disability view outside the window of tolerance may be calm and still, it may not be so for a person with a disability. Exchanging our experiences on how to manage these issues may help to foster a greater sense of inclusivity. Ultimately, we all matter, and acceptance can go a long way towards a better society.