The embodiment of chronic pain syndromes and other physical disabilities cannot be studied without referencing pleasure management. The medical and social gaze on the exclusive pain management for people living with endometriosis or fibromyalgia or using a wheelchair assumes a specific temporality and visuality of the body that I will challenge in the present symposium.

Critical disability studies have started to frame disability as a historical and politically relevant product by arguing how the supposedly neutral notion of ‘impairment’ does not take into account the mental aspects of biological functioning as well as the materiality of cognition and affectivity.

In an attempt to overcome the missing discourse of desire in psychology, I have explored the embodied sense-making process of 13 patients and healthcare staff/educators working with people with chronic pain syndromes and physical disabilities around the following aspects: the techniques and standards of acceptability of pain, the function of pleasure, the role of continuity and rupture in chronic conditions, and the role of intimacy and aspiration in the healthcare system.

The specific methodology used - video-recorded Zoom interviews lasting one hour each - included a final session where I asked participants to bring something material that they could show in front of the camera and that made them think of ‘a body worthy of life enjoyment’. This technique served the purpose to enhance participants’ (both patients and healthcare staff/educators) ability to manipulate their ideas of bodies and pleasure.

In sum, in this symposium I will interact with the other panelists and participants around the role of pleasure management in the very construction of the body-mind of chronic pain and physical disability by highlighting the differences between enjoyment, sexual pleasure, and pain reduction.

Critical scholarship on resilience often holds that discourses focusing on individual resilience reify neoliberal governance. Such critiques rightly emphasize the socio-politics surrounding persons from whom resilience is socially expected. However, they risk reducing resilience to simply another appendage of neoliberal ideology. This ideological reductionism often contradicts itself, by implicitly acknowledging the important role of individual agency in dealing with adversity, whilst simultaneously conceptualizing ‘resilience’ as something that unfolds exclusively in ideological discourse. In equating resilience with neoliberal governance, such critiques often stop short of appreciating the mental toughness often required by individuals facing adversity, for fear of implicitly endorsing neoliberalism. In this paper, I make the case for individual resilience, by appealing to examples related to chronic pelvic pain syndrome. The private, pervasive and unpredictable nature of pelvic pain, alongside the often contrasting modes of pain management, make individual aspects of resilience essential in dealing with such adversity. Here, individual endurance features as indispensable, contrary to ideologically reductionist views of resilience. I argue that, once unpacked, most documented instances of resilience in this domain are ultimately about the life projects that sufferers still pursue despite their affliction. I conclude the following: (1) psychology requires a re-conceptualisation of resilience as embodied ‘endurance for’ life projects that re-orient individuals’ approach to their chronic pain; (2) a focus on individual resilience does not imply neoliberal ideation, but can actually be accompanied by other theoretical counterparts at the societal level. This work re-orients narratives on resilience by questioning the influence of competing power structures.

Identity, by its very nature, resists fixity — it is fluid, contextual, and responsive. How we are seen, or imagine we are seen, influences the articulation of self in any given moment. This presentation examines that dynamic through the lenses of art-making, camouflaging, and neurodivergent identity to explore the gaze as both a shaping and a shifting force in the construction of identity in neurodivergent adults. Drawing from our ongoing research with students at Landmark College (a higher education institution that serves neurodivergent learners) we will present a series of artifacts that reflect how identity can be masked, revealed, or reshaped through artistic expression. These artifacts demonstrate the reciprocal relationship between perception and self-representation, particularly within populations that often exist outside normative frameworks of cognition and behavior and self-expression.

In this section of the symposium, we will reflect on our time spent as part of a research team doing participatory ethnographic interviews with neurodivergent college students on topics related to social camouflaging/masking, art, and identity. Given that we are also neurodivergent college students, we provided unique insights from previous experiences we have had with social camouflaging/masking and art in college and beyond. We will outline the importance of doing participatory research like this in general while also contributing to the overall panel themes related to disability, neurodiversity, and embodiment.