A while back I was watching a video about a woman who works with "problem" horses and helps them overcome, usually, trauma and neglect. And she did it very gently. Yes, she established boundaries with them and there were things they were not allowed to do. But at one point a stallion was behaving in an agitated way and she pointed out his combination of anger and fear in his body language, and she backed off and said something like "This behavior is all right. It is healthy. It isn't what I was hoping he would do, but that doesn't matter right now. What matters is that he feels threatened, and he is right to let me know that."
And then she said something that just stabbed me in the heart. She said, and I do remember her exact words:
"He is allowed to defend his body."
It was a watershed moment for me both in thinking about how I approach animals, but also in how I suddenly understood my own trauma from childhood that occurred in school, home, and in medical contexts, and how I suddenly understood my adult reactions to my ongoing and neverending retraumatization at the hands of the medical and psychiatric professions.
I have the right to defend my body and my core psyche. And I had that right as a child as well. That wasn't well acknowledged then, and still is not, I live in a very toxic and controlling environment because I am disabled and mentally ill. Not being allowed to draw your own boundaries and decide your own fate fucks you up, man. It's literally killing me.
So yeah, a ton of this, now that I think about it, applies to disability as well.