Disabling a person by labeling them "disabled"

Aimee Mullins gave a TED MED talk called "The opportunity of adversity" that brings up some interesting thoughts.  Aimee Mullins is a double leg amputee. In this talk, she is speaking about being disabled and she mentions recently looking up the word disabled in a thesaurus.  The results included negative words such as crippled, weak, and hopeless.  She says that she would have been crushed to see these definitions as a child.  She shares this thought: "In our desire to protect those we care about by giving them the cold, hard truth about their medical prognosis, or, indeed, a prognosis on the expected quality of their life, we have to make sure that we don't put the first brick in a wall that will actually disable someone."  It is so important as therapists, parents, and care givers, that we do not limit others by defining the things we believe they can or cannot do.  We must challenge them to be better through positive encouragement.  She expressed that her pediatrician positively challenged her as a child when she was struggling to enjoy physical therapy and she believes it made all the difference.  Let us be careful not place labels and boxes around the disabled in our lives for fear that we only disable them more.