Should I declare my anxiety to potential employers?
Sarah Rosenthal of Nervous Wreckage asks if her anxiety is a declarable disability
Hello!
It’s an exciting week at The View From Down Here HQ because we’ve got our first guest post!
As a chronically anxious person, I’m a keen reader of Sarah Rosenthal’s brilliant newsletter, Nervous Wreckage, in which she explores all the ways anxiety shows up in her life.
I connected with Sarah during the Substack Grow workshop series, and we started chatting about the ways anxiety (and mental health in general) overlaps and intertwines with disability. There was so much to say that we decided to collaborate by swapping posts, and today I’m delighted to bring you Sarah’s contribution.
In her piece, Sarah explores a question many people with invisible or non-apparent disabilities have asked themselves: do I tick the box on the hiring form marked “disabled”?
Any time I apply for a new job, I’m confronted by that inevitable application page: the voluntary disability disclosure.
Typically, this page lists a number of possible impairments like autism, blindness, deafness, autoimmune disorders, heart conditions, the list goes on. And inevitably, when I scan this list, I see the option to check “depression and/or anxiety.”
For context: I have panic disorder and a history of anxiety. And this page of job applications only serves to provoke said anxiety: should I disclose this? Is my anxiety truly a disability?
Anxiety is, after all, a difficult sensation to describe and categorise. Sure, I can list the clinical symptoms: excessive and/or generalized worry, catastrophizing, muscle tension, sleeplessness, inability to focus, etc. I struggle to stay in the present moment and not analyse every single thing that could go wrong in the future.
But anxiety is also just an integral part of how I experience the world, and has been for as long as I could remember. There have been times of my life where my anxiety has been extremely difficult to manage, and times where it’s been relatively in check. Like many, I’ve adapted and developed ways to cope with anxiety, especially in professional settings.
So: is this something I ought to disclose to an employer? How much anxiety is enough to merit letting them know? Do I alert my employer that I could need an accommodation someday, even if I’ve never asked for one at any previous positions? There’s nothing legally that will force me to disclose my history of anxiety, but to not check the box still feels strange somehow.
I’m an American. Under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), anxiety can be viewed as a disability if it severely impairs my daily life. Legally, if my anxiety makes it difficult or impossible for me to hold a job, I can request social security. But figuring out whether anxiety “impairs” me when it’s all I’ve ever known is an impossible question for me to answer.
For what it is worth: this isn’t just a question for folks with anxiety and depression. Folks within the autistic community and other neurodivergent communities have struggled with this question as well. When you experience an invisible condition like anxiety, depression, or another form of neurodivergence, the question of disclosure feels especially fraught. Should I be honest about the ways in which my brain works right away? Or do I keep this information to myself, aiming instead to just cope? Am I really that different from anyone else, enough so to call it out?
The honest truth is that I’ve never checked the anxiety disability box on a job application. A part of this is purely logical and practical: I’ve never been unable to complete job responsibilities due to my anxiety. But as an anxious person, I pretty much specialize in ruminating on future possibilities. What if I say I don’t have a disability, but my anxiety skyrockets at this job?
I’ve been able to handle my anxiety privately so far, and arguably, that could be seen as a strength. My tendency to be anxious and panic means I can be a perfectionist. I live for small details and deadlines. I’m careful with how I compose emails or phrase things in writing. In other words, the mental health issue that can require accommodation can also make me a good employee.
This isn’t to say that the disclosure page of a job application is useless or even harmful. The disability disclosure page reminds me of what I already know: that employers cannot legally discriminate against me in the job search process if I do disclose a disability. I have the right to request accommodations in my place of work, and my employer is required to at least engage me in discussions regarding said accommodations.
But my worth is not determined by my ability to perform a job in a manner that others tend to agree with. It’s worth noting that asking a person to “disclose” implies, to me, that my anxiety is something to be ashamed of, or that i is something my employer should hire me in spite of, rather than viewing it as an advantage. This page, which is meant to provide legal protections, implies that disability is something to be “overcome” on the job rather than merely a part of the applicant’s set of strengths. And every employee, regardless of what they do or don’t disclose, has their own unique set of strengths and weaknesses. Why are disabilities the only ones we must declare?
What do you think about disclosing disability to potential employers? Have you ever chosen not to? Let us know in the comments?
Don’t forget you can subscribe to Sarah’s newsletter here. Look out for my contribution, about how being physically disabled has contributed to my anxiety, coming soon.
See you next week,
Lucy
Link of the week
Brain fog, a horrid condition common to people who are chronically ill, is often dismissed by professionals. So it’s great to see one of the world’s leading science journalists, Ed Yong of The Atlantic, take it seriously in this insightful piece