Attractiveness is a State of Mind: How to Cultivate the Power to Attract With a Disability

“I don’t feel attractive.”

As I said in my last post, this is a nearly universal response people report as a concern/fear in the dating with disabilities survey.

I grew up with that concern and didn’t shed it until I was well into my thirties, despite dating and having relationships.

It’s a belief that can really weigh you down. It did me.

The great news is feeling this way can be undone and once it is, there’s no going back (insert happy dance here).

I think the majority of people, both with and without disabilities, struggle at some point in their lives with this feeling. We’re all bombarded with messages from traditional and social media about what is and isn’t considered “attractive.”

Then throw in a disability and where is any framework around what’s attractive?

Time to make our own!

It begins with a relatively simple process I call “Flipping the Script.” I adopted it from a former counseling client who would reference the term when he found himself sinking into negative thinking.

What if…instead of placing your energy on worrying if you’re attractive, you placed that focus on what IS attractive about you? This will take practice, but here’s the thing I have learned about living fully and happily with a disability: it’s a disciplined practice until it begins to come naturally to you.

If you need help with this, here’s an exercise to get you beginning to flip that script.

I know there are at the minimum 25 attractive characteristics about you. Don’t worry, I won’t ask you to list all 25, just five of them. To encourage you to do this, here’s a template. Print it or copy and paste to get yourself to do this exercise.

Then spend the next 30 days (yes, 30 consecutive days) reading the list at least once a day. This daily practice is going to be very integral to flipping that thinking to all that is attractive about you. This is then going to lead to increased confidence – and not just for dating, but overall.

This change in my mindset was a game changer for me and I just began to feel better about myself in general.