Disabled, but Not in the RIGHT Way

When I was awarded Personal Independence Payment, it wasn’t for the reason I expected.

It wasn’t for the fatigue that makes standing unpredictable.

It wasn’t for the mobility issues that forced me to use a walking stick at 31.

It wasn’t for the neurological condition that has permanently altered how my body functions.

It was for anxiety.

On paper, it was my mental health—not my multiple sclerosis—that made me eligible for government support. The same multiple sclerosis that had cost me my job. The same condition that required mobility aids, lifestyle changes, and daily negotiation with my own body.

According to the assessment system, my anxiety was the more convincing disability.

It was a decision that left me feeling both validated and erased.

Validated, because anxiety is real. It is debilitating in ways that deserve recognition and support. Erased, because the physical reality of my MS—the fatigue, the instability, the unpredictability—was somehow considered less relevant. Less measurable. Less worthy of acknowledgement within a system designed to assess disability.

It revealed something uncomfortable about how disability is viewed in Britain: it must fit into specific, measurable boxes to be believed.

Personal Independence Payment (PIP) is supposed to support people whose conditions affect their daily living and mobility. In theory, it recognises the additional costs and barriers that come with disability. In practice, it often becomes an exercise in translation—converting lived experience into descriptors that may or may not reflect reality.

The system does not assess diagnosis. It assesses function.

This distinction sounds reasonable, but it creates gaps wide enough for people to fall through. Multiple sclerosis is unpredictable. Symptoms fluctuate. Fatigue is invisible. Mobility varies from day to day. There is no single, stable presentation that neatly satisfies an assessment checklist.

Anxiety, by contrast, can be easier to articulate within the system’s framework. It can be described in terms of risk, distress, and limitation in ways that align more clearly with assessment criteria.

The result is a paradox: my physical disability was real enough to reshape my life, but not legible enough to be the primary reason for support.

This isn’t just about me.

Across Britain, disabled people are navigating assessment systems that prioritise consistency over reality. Fluctuating conditions are difficult to quantify. Invisible symptoms are easy to doubt. Neurological fatigue—one of the most disabling aspects of MS—is almost impossible to demonstrate in a single assessment.

You cannot perform exhaustion on demand.

You cannot prove unpredictability in a scheduled appointment.

You cannot compress a chronic condition into a one-hour conversation and expect it to be fully understood.

The burden of proof falls on the disabled person.

You must explain yourself clearly, but not too clearly.

You must appear honest, but not capable enough to undermine your own claim.

You must demonstrate limitation without appearing composed.

It is a system that quietly rewards those who present their disability in ways that match expectation, and disadvantages those whose conditions exist outside visible norms.

There is something deeply political about which disabilities are recognised and which are overlooked.

Disability in Britain is still understood through a narrow visual and functional lens. Wheelchairs are legible. Visible impairments are legible. Conditions that fluctuate, hide, or resist easy categorisation are not.

This creates a hierarchy of credibility.

The irony is that MS is a recognised neurological disability. It is incurable. It is lifelong. It affects mobility, cognition, and energy. Yet, within the assessment process, it became secondary to anxiety—not because it was less real, but because it was less easily measured.

The experience forced me to confront a difficult truth: disability recognition is not just about medical reality. It is about administrative interpretation.

This has consequences beyond paperwork.

Financial support like PIP exists because disability often makes employment inaccessible. Workplaces remain inflexible. Adjustments are inconsistently offered. Disabled people are routinely pushed out of roles they can no longer perform safely.

When support systems fail to fully recognise physical disability, they reinforce the same structural barriers that excluded disabled people from work in the first place.

Something has to give.

Britain cannot continue to rely on assessment models that struggle to recognise fluctuating, invisible, and neurological disability. It cannot continue to place the burden of translation entirely on disabled people. It cannot continue to operate systems that acknowledge disability only when it fits predefined templates.

Disability is not a performance.

It is not a checklist.

It is not a fixed state that behaves predictably for administrative convenience.

I am grateful for the support I receive. It allows me to live with dignity and independence. But I am also aware of what my assessment revealed: that recognition is not always aligned with reality.

My anxiety is real.

My MS is real.

Both deserve acknowledgement.

But the fact that one was legible to the system while the other was not speaks to a larger issue.

Disability in Britain is still viewed through a lens that prioritises visibility, consistency, and simplicity. Until that changes, disabled people will continue to navigate systems that only partially see them.

And being partially seen is its own kind of invisibility.