For those who think it is easy to obtain disability pay for mental health issues, you are very wrong. It is a grueling process that takes years for many of us fighting to get it. During these years, we keep trying to work at positions that trigger our illnesses and worsen our conditions. We burn bridges with out failures, we lose friendships, relationships, rack up bad references and a reputation for being ‘flaky’. No sooner than we hit a solid patch, we can backslide in a few weeks’ time. This DOES make us seem like less worthy candidates for many jobs.
But unlike laws that protect the physically disabled from discrimination and employers are required to accommodate their disabilities, the mentally ill are protected only in theory. In practice, we are often shunned because of our checkered pasts. Instead of an employer seeing a slew of jobs as you continuing to try to support yourself, they just see someone who can’t keep a job. If you fall into depressions and stop bathing (as I have currently) and your only true joy is sleep…You are perceived as weak and lazy. I am anything but. I have been fighting to raise a small child on my own for 7 years while her father gets away with spotty child support that often leaves us in the lurch. I am bounced around my psych practice to providers varying in competence, few of whom are really invested in my mental health. I am constantly facing unexpected expenses and I try to play to my strengths and seek what I perceive as ‘possibly doable’ jobs. Babysitter, dogwalker, light housekeeping, secret shopper, virtual assistant, proof reader. I WANT TO WORK.
At the same time, I can’t deny my limitations and pretend everything is okay. It is not. I can’t even get a good reference from friends and family because they think I am unreliable and they’re not entirely wrong. But since much of my disability stems from trying to interact with my mental illness in situations that I can’t even manage for basic functioning or enjoyment, I am almost doomed from go to fail. People trigger me. Crowds trigger me. My anxiety makes me twitchy and paranoid and sometimes, my brain convinces me that if I don’t cuss and scream, my brain will claw its way out of my skull. I cease rational thought in these situations and it happens over and over. I’ve put in 30 years of counseling. I have tried every med known to man. I bully myself, I pep talk myself. My disability simply isn’t going to go away nor will I ‘snap out of it.’
I accept this. Others do not.
How wasy it is for them to think me lazy or weak. How common to not be given an opportunity to prove yourself because your past is so unstable and you can’t look someone in the eye and say much has changed. You want to work, to earn your keep, but you’ve grown wise enough to know what simply pushes your boundaries and leads to breakdowns. So where does that leave me?
Working from home by computer, ideally. But most of those jobs are scams or require some sort of degree and familiarity with software I can’t even afford, so again…I pawn off what I can, I have fundraisers, I offer to cook a meal or do someone’s dishes. I am TRYING everything I know to makes ends meet. I can’t even get a call back from a place where all I’d have to do is wear a ridiculous costume, stand in the cold, and wave at people. I don’t think I’d be very good at it because I have a perpetual ‘fuck off and die’ look on my face when ‘out there’, it is all terrifying and frightening so the porcupine quills come out whether I want them to or not. But to not even get a call for an interview, Geesh. I know I brought it on myself, but hey, if I had been granted disability sooner, I wouldn’t have burned every employment bridge in this small area.
You have to be given an opportunity to earn your keep. Until that happens…you’re really at the mercy of fate. And no one cares if your intentions and motivations are pure. I would likely flourish working from home in some capacity but those jobs just aren’t plentiful or realistic, I am told. So I keep trying to live in the ‘stable world’ even though I am far from stable and get nowhere in those pursuits. At this point, I’d do creepy fetish porn if I thought someone was paying for it.
So before you dismiss the mentally disabled, before you deem us lazy or weak or unwilling to work…View us as you’d be required, by law, and morality, and decency, to view someone with a physical disability. Someone with a cane is obviously not going to be able to wait tables and move quickly and carry trays of heavy food but they might make a good greeter or sorter or even dishwasher. You just have to be willing to find a position that their disability and limitations don’t exclude.
For me, anything outside my safe space is at the moment beyond my capabilities and still, I am making the effort to try and get one of those jobs. Yet if someone would give me the opportunity to do some sort of work from my safe space, at my own pace…I’d probably excel and flourish instead of languish or crash and burn.
I just need a chance.
Employers need to stop, intentionally or unintentionally, counting out the mentally ill when in fact, we’re capable of quite a bit if you play to our strengths instead of expecting us to suddenly overcome lifelong limitations.
Finding a way to support yourself that does not drive you to a breakdown shouldn’t be a luxury or lottery winning. It should be common sense. And there should be far more employers out there offering this type of work for the mentally disabled.
You want to preach about teaching men to fish as opposed to just giving them a fish, but you don’t want to give lessons. That is illogical to a degree even I can discern.
