Introducing “Energy Limiting Conditions”: The Emergence and Evolution of a New Impairment Concept

The terms “energy limiting condition” (ELC) and “energy impairment”locate the embodied experience of chronic illness into a category of impairment for the purposes of social policy and administration of disability. This article discusses the origins of these concepts in the UK-based Chronic Illness Inclusion Project (CIIP). Selected findings from the CIIP’s mixed-methods participatory research demonstrate how energy impairment, and related terms, arose as a practice of resistance against the invalidation of “fatigue” as impairment, giving rise to a transdiagnostic disability identity, and a strategy for self-advocacy. Theoretical tensions between the rejection of impairment within disability studies and the emancipatory aims of the CIIP are discussed, as well as the political history of fatigue within the disability category. Impairment labels, as a necessary evil, should reflect disabled people’s experience and identity, and further research should uncover their conditions of production.