Re: ESA Health and Work Conversation and Face to Face Medical
I understand the sheer dread that such propositions carve within you, the face to face assessments are absolutely miserable and exhaustingly cruel events where you have to hope you get a compassionate and considerate human being who views yourself and your life as meaningful and doesn't seek to massacre the excruciating confessions they extract from you. I have encountered what I believe genuinely kind employees of these grotesque companies, one of them was not as balanced however and did not really understand much of anything about the complexities and severities of my conditions, so even if you get a good hearted person, you have to worry about whether they are even qualified to grasp mental matters. They are all there to remove as many points as they believe they can get away with and the preferable outcome is to put you back in the torture rack of a job centre which many of us found out the hard way we are not equipped to handle, or to make you vanish from the statistics game sadly. They'll use anything you declare as ammunition to twist and shoot you with if they find a way to glue it. They take a snapshot of you and fill a lot in that they don't know about you, some is innocent and understandable, some is completely unacceptable. They have a tough job to do and many are decent people, many are bordering on disturbingly impassive although I have not personally encountered these yet, read innumerable accounts of the zero points, zero empathy type. I understand why it's necessary with invisible illnesses in particular but I am not sure this process is suitable, it doesn't translate the same way as purely physical ailments and being subjected to it constantly does not yield improvements or cause one to magically mend their brain, they should listen to the support workers and specialists who know the claimant, not one bloody random person who has an hour with them.
Complete transparency is how I always approach it, I cannot disrespect those who are in acidic pain each minute or cannot even pull their own pants up or see a sunrise or are in and out of psych wards for trying to ram a pen in their heart. I know deep darkness and go through it daily very intensely, I do my best to explain it to them in each relevant section, nothing more or less, I am aware of how I'm affected as I am a student of my own mind. Be weary though as even presenting your case, no matter how many days you were awake 24 hours and shaking and doing things that harm you because of the distress can be held against you as evidence you can function and communicate lol. The only thing you can do is be confident in your knowledge and feeling every single gnarled branch of your own journey and the depth and scope of your smothering struggle, there is dignity in being peaceful with the truth you have to spill, it can't be stamped out of you or erased and if they don't give you the respect for what you go through, you will have to be willing to fight for it. Gotta play ball with the system, not much else you can do if you're trapped by your circumstances. Those evil brown envelopes turn my blood into ice!
Last edited by Confetti; 01-04-18 at 09:32.
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''...an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium - the bitter lapse into everyday life, the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart, an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime.''