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Aug. 31st, 2016 04:56 pmMy Jobcentre appointment was awful. Apparently, since the last time I was on ESA about 6 years ago, it's become a much stricter regime - to the point that you're expected to spend five hours a day searching for jobs, or filling in application forms, ideally with the government's jobmatch website open so they can monitor your activity. Given that filling in forms is one of the things that still triggers my OCD, and that I'm not even looking for 25 hours of paid work, this is really not what I was expecting or hoping for. So I cried pretty much throughout the appointment.
Luckily, the advisor I was seeing was also a disability advisor - the one who trained the disability advisor I used to see while I was on ESA, in fact - and she was very sympathetic. She said she'd put me on her disability caseload, and I could have all my appointments with her since she knew about my problems, and they could restrict some of the requirements since there were greater barriers for me getting back to work than a lot of people. She also suggested I go back to therapy, since I was obviously 'still very emotional'. We had a long talk about my circumstances, and she suggested a lot of things - getting my parents to help me, getting family therapy - a lot of which were kind of no-goes, but some of which should be helpful. So. We'll see. I knew the Conservatives were fuckers, and I suspected that Jobseeker's might be more demanding now than when I used to be on it - but even thinking about what I used to do, essentially just apply for three jobs a week, made me anxious, so this was really out of the ballpark. But. We'll see. I'll give it a go, and we'll see how it goes.
Luckily, the advisor I was seeing was also a disability advisor - the one who trained the disability advisor I used to see while I was on ESA, in fact - and she was very sympathetic. She said she'd put me on her disability caseload, and I could have all my appointments with her since she knew about my problems, and they could restrict some of the requirements since there were greater barriers for me getting back to work than a lot of people. She also suggested I go back to therapy, since I was obviously 'still very emotional'. We had a long talk about my circumstances, and she suggested a lot of things - getting my parents to help me, getting family therapy - a lot of which were kind of no-goes, but some of which should be helpful. So. We'll see. I knew the Conservatives were fuckers, and I suspected that Jobseeker's might be more demanding now than when I used to be on it - but even thinking about what I used to do, essentially just apply for three jobs a week, made me anxious, so this was really out of the ballpark. But. We'll see. I'll give it a go, and we'll see how it goes.
