Beyond Affirming: Expanding Disability Affirmative Therapy Using a Case Example

Most psychotherapists will have more than one client with a disability during their career. It is harmful to disabled clients for psychotherapists not to be adequately prepared for work with disabled people, as is true for any cultural identity. There is a general lack of guidance on how to integrate the disability identity and experience into therapeutic work with disabled clients. Disability affirmative therapy (Olkin, 2017) is a guide to therapy case conceptualization with disabled clients meant to be used alongside a therapist's typical theoretical approach. The authors, two disabled clinicians, use a case example to illustrate how disability affirmative therapy can be used with clients. The authors illustrate this through a composite client, Brice, a White disabled male veteran. To highlight therapeutically relevant aspects of disability culture, the authors introduce spoon theory to communicate about a disabled person's capacity. This article adds to the literature on therapeutic interventions that can be helpful with disabled clients. Clinical Impact Statement This case study examined how a client benefited from disability affirmative therapy, specifically an intervention using a concept from disability culture, spoon theory. Integrating disability-informed theory and techniques can be transformative for disabled psychotherapy clients.