- For
- Therapists, trainees and supervisors
- Time
- 10–30 minutes per exercise
- Format
- Eleven illustrated exercises
- Prints
- One-page worksheet in each full guide
- Evidence
- This site’s own tools, adapted from established ideas
Tools & Cases · For your practice
Eleven exercises that look beyond the body.
What if the problem in the room isn’t the client’s body, but the world it has to move through?
Short, disability-affirmative exercises you can use alongside your usual way of working. Each one looks for distress in barriers and ableism as well as in the person, and treats the client as the expert on their own body and access. Many can also be done alone, by anyone who wants to try. Each entry below links to its full guide, with the steps, a worked example and a one-page worksheet.
Client-led
Offer, don’t assign. Any exercise can be stopped, shortened or done at home instead.
Access first
Spoken, written, drawn, typed, with Talking Mats-style cards, or with a support person. Ask which format works today.
Energy-aware
Most take 10–20 minutes. Check capacity before starting, and leave time to land.
Not fix-the-body
The aim is understanding, choice and less self-blame, not compliance or “acceptance” of injustice.
A quick chooser
If you hear… try…
Things a client might say, and the exercise that fits. Treat these as starting points, not rules.
I’m just lazy. I should be doing more.01 Spoons06 Body weather
It’s on me to sort out the access.02 Whose job?
I’m not angry. Well, only at myself.03 Anger map
Maybe I overreacted.04 Debrief
I didn’t want to make a fuss about the camera.05 Access map
My body let me down again.06 Body weather
Everyone my age has a house and kids by now.07 Crip time
I don’t know anyone else like me.08 Lineage
People only see the brave one, or the burden.09 Script
I hate the wheelchair. I need the wheelchair.10 Aid dialogue
I can’t picture a good life.11 Utopia02 Whose job?
The sentences are invented examples for this chooser, not quotes from real people.
All eleven
Exercise 01 · Energy
Spoon Budget Check-in
Makes invisible energy costs visible, and shifts the talk from “motivation” to capacity. Builds on Christine Miserandino’s spoon theory.
Use when: A client blames themselves for “not doing enough”, or sessions keep running over their capacity. Works well as a regular opener.
Exercise 02 · Self-blame
Whose Job Is It?
A responsibility sort that separates what is the client’s to carry from what belongs to others or to systems. It targets the internalised ableism that turns every barrier into a personal failing.
Use when: A client feels guilty for needing support, or exhausted from fixing access problems alone.
Exercise 03 · Anger
Anger Map
What is my anger telling me? Treats anger as information rather than a symptom, in the spirit of Audre Lorde’s essay “The Uses of Anger”. Disabled people are often cast as “bitter”, so their anger goes underground or turns inward.
Use when: Anger is present but tangled, suppressed, or aimed at the self or the body.
Exercise 04 · Encounters
Ableism Debrief
A structured way to process a specific ableist encounter, so it doesn’t settle as shame or self-doubt. Draws on Keller and Galgay’s work on disability microaggressions and Carol Thomas’s psycho-emotional disablism.
Use when: A client brings an encounter that left them rattled, unsure if they “overreacted”, or replaying it.
Exercise 05 · Access
Access Needs Map
A client-written map of what makes therapy itself work for them, reviewed regularly. It models access as normal and ongoing, not a one-off disclosure, and it’s useful for every client, not only those who identify as disabled.
Use when: At intake, after a change in health or circumstances, and every few months.
Exercise 06 · Body
Body Weather Report
The client describes their body as a weather system rather than as “good” or “bad”. It swaps judgement for observation and makes fluctuation normal.
Use when: A client fights their body, or rates days as failures.
Exercise 07 · Time & grief
Crip Time Timeline
The client redraws their life on their own timescale, not the standard one of school, career, partner, house, children. Draws on Alison Kafer’s idea of crip time.
Use when: A client feels “behind”, or grieves milestones they were expected to reach.
Exercise 08 · Identity
Disability Lineage Letters
The client places themselves in a line of disabled people, past and future, and writes letters across it. It counters isolation and builds disability identity and pride.
Use when: A client feels they are the only one, or has no disabled role models.
Exercise 09 · Identity
Rewriting the Script
A narrative therapy exercise for the stock stories told about disabled people: tragedy, burden, brave inspiration, or “not really disabled”. The client names the scripts and writes their own version.
Use when: A client feels flattened by how others see them, or catches themselves performing a role.
Exercise 10 · Aids
Dialogue with My Aid
A Gestalt-style dialogue in which the client gives a voice to their wheelchair, cane, hearing aids, medication, pacing app or other support. It brings out the mixed feelings: freedom, shame, dependence, gratitude, resentment.
Use when: A client avoids or resists an aid, or feels it defines them.
Related: Gestalt Therapy
Exercise 11 · Future
Accessible Utopia
The client designs a world, town, workplace or single room built around their body and mind, then brings one piece of it into the present. It uses disability futurism to separate what the impairment limits from what the world limits.
Use when: A client can’t imagine a good life, or assumes all difficulty comes from their body.
Evidence & sources
- Our framework: these exercises are this site’s own reflective tools, adapted from the ideas below. They haven’t been tested as interventions.
- Miserandino, C. (2003). The spoon theory. But You Don’t Look Sick. (Exercise 1)
- Lorde, A. (1984). The uses of anger: Women responding to racism. In Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Crossing Press. (Exercise 3)
- Keller, R. M., & Galgay, C. E. (2010). Microaggressive experiences of people with disabilities. In D. W. Sue (Ed.), Microaggressions and Marginality: Manifestation, Dynamics, and Impact. Wiley. (Exercise 4)
- Thomas, C. (1999). Female Forms: Experiencing and Understanding Disability. Open University Press. (Exercise 4)
- Kafer, A. (2013). Feminist, Queer, Crip. Indiana University Press. (Exercises 7 and 11)
- White, M., & Epston, D. (1990). Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends. Norton. (Exercise 9)
- Perls, F., Hefferline, R. F., & Goodman, P. (1951). Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality. Julian Press. (Exercise 10)
- Olkin, R. (1999). What Psychotherapists Should Know About Disability. Guilford Press. (Exercise 5, and the approach throughout)
Each full guide ends with a one-page worksheet: open the guide, then use your browser’s print option and choose “Save as PDF”. Shared under CC BY-NC 4.0; see Reusing This Material. More tools: Tools & Cases · Sources and Bibliography