What It Means to Have ‘Deaf Anxiety’
I’m reckoning with the buildup of stress I’ve accumulated through years of stigma and inaccessibility
The term “deaf” is capitalized throughout this article to refer to people who identify as culturally Deaf. Some people who are Deaf use sign language to communicate.
On an early October evening, I staggered into an urgent care facility with my husband and father. Sleepless nights and days filled with anxiety had made me dysfunctional: I could barely stand, walk, eat, sleep, read, or write. I was experiencing a nervous breakdown.
The month prior was stressful. I quit a high-stress job to pursue a dream career in full-time freelance writing (another stressful occupation), and spent a lot of my time composing essays on trauma. My husband discovered a softball-sized cyst in his abdomen that we thought might be cancerous. Thankfully it was benign, but my resilience was tested.
These are just a few of the stress-inducing factors that landed me in the emergency room. But I believe the primary cause is another risk factor that does not have a name in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: “Deaf anxiety.”
I was born Deaf 30 years ago to two hearing parents, one of whom learned sign language to…
