The Day I Was Told I Was "Fit for Work" (A Rant)

I can barely leave my room some days. I avoid the kitchen at night. I've had panic attacks that sent me to A&E. But sure. I'm "fit for work."

I recently had a work capability assessment. For those who don't know, this is a process where the Department for Work and Pensions decides whether you're "fit for work" or have "limited capability for work." It's a functional assessment. It's supposed to measure what you can actually do, not what your diagnosis is.

They found me fit for work.

Let me tell you what "fit for work" looks like in my actual life. It looks like waking up at 4am with my heart pounding for no reason. It looks like avoiding the kitchen at night because I can't face a housemate. It looks like executive dysfunction so severe I've given myself bladder infections because I couldn't execute the sequence of standing up and walking to the bathroom. It looks like panic attacks that have sent me to A&E, convinced I was dying. It looks like days when I can barely leave my rented room, let alone commute to a workplace and perform "competent" for eight hours.

But sure. Fit for work.

The assessment is a tick-box exercise. It asks: can you walk? Can you stand? Can you lift things? It doesn't ask: can you manage the sensory overwhelm of an open-plan office? Can you navigate the social demands of colleagues? Can you function when your executive dysfunction has paralysed you? Can you cope when your anxiety is so loud you can't hear yourself think? The things that actually disable me—the invisible, cognitive, sensory, emotional things—don't fit neatly into tick boxes. So they don't count.

I'm currently waiting for the result of a mandatory reconsideration. I've provided more evidence. I've explained again, in painstaking detail, why I cannot work. I've asked my GP for support. I've done everything I'm supposed to do. And I'm still waiting. In limbo. Not knowing if I'll be believed.

This is the reality of navigating the benefits system with an invisible disability. You have to prove you're "sick enough." You have to perform your illness for strangers who hold your financial stability in their hands. You have to describe, in humiliating detail, exactly how you can't function—and then hope they believe you. It's dehumanising. It's exhausting. And it's designed to catch people out, not to support them.

I'm not sharing this for sympathy. I'm sharing it because this is what it looks like. This is the reality behind the headlines about "benefits scroungers" and "workshy" claimants. Most of us are just trying to survive. Most of us have been failed by a system that doesn't understand invisible disabilities. Most of us are exhausted from having to prove, over and over, that we're struggling.

If you're in the same boat—waiting for a decision, fighting a rejection, trying to prove you're "sick enough"—I see you. I know how hard this is. I know how demoralising it feels to have your reality questioned by people who've never met you. I know how scary it is to not know if you'll be able to pay rent next month.

You're not alone. You're not faking. You're not "not trying hard enough." The system is broken. Not you.

I'll update you when I hear something. In the meantime, I'm here. Still in my rented room. Still avoiding the kitchen. Still very much not fit for work. Whatever the tick boxes say.

Anxiously Ever After is written by me, Jennie, a 50-something-year-old woman currently fighting a work capability decision. I'm not fit for work. I know it. Now I just need the DWP to believe me.