Federal & USPS Disability Retirement: The Advantage of Persistence

If there are innate, underlying underpinnings of genetic inlays which provide for greater advantages in the evolutionary progression for those who consider survival of the fittest to be the teleological force behind man’s advancement, then the character trait of persistence must be one such data entry.  It is certainly a personality pre-condition for the meanest, most hostile and unrelenting individuals and organizations across the spectrum.  Like the wild dog with the unbreakable jawbone, persistence is that trait where relenting is not an option, and where right or wrong is not the standard which guides or otherwise influences the decision-making process of an individual who embraces a course of action.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, it is important to recognize and identify one’s friends, enemies, and those stuck somewhere in the middle, whether because of indifference or apathy; as well as the worth of avenues to pursue, those best left to abandonment, and what reactionary efforts should be engaged.

Federal Disability Retirement itself is a long, arduous administrative process which will require insistence, persistence and an intractable quantity of good, old fashioned stubbornness.  The identified adversary, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, as well as one’s own Federal agency and the U.S. Postal Service, are entities known for persistence already.  The Federal and Postal employee who takes on the Goliath of the Federal system, must be prepared to endure the persistence of the opponent.  This, despite the disadvantage of suffering from a medical condition, which is and continues to be the primary underlying basis of one’s Federal Disability Retirement claim, to begin with.

Federal Disability Retirement is a benefit which allows for one’s future to be secured, and it is certainly worth “waging the good fight“. Recognition of what one must encounter; the greater advantages of the “opponent” in the fight; and the unrelenting nature of the bureaucracy; these are all elements which should be recognized at the outset, and to acknowledge that in preparing, formulating and filing for Disability Retirement benefits through OPM, there is always an evolutionary and genetic advantage in embracing the character trait of persistence.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Medical Retirement: Extreme Fatigue

The phrase itself can denote at least two connotations of conceptual paradigms, depending upon which word the emphasis is placed upon:  of an overwhelming sense of exhaustion that is experientially devastating to an exponential degree or, that one is so depleted and tired from the constant state of the extreme.

To experience extreme fatigue is to have a medical condition; to be tired of the constancy of crisis after crisis, is to live an existence which cannot be sustained forever.  Both states can be experienced simultaneously, especially when a medical condition occurs, because the debilitating effects of the disability begins to take its toll upon the individual’s mind, body and soul, and further, because outside reactionary influences tend to make an imbalance upon one’s perspective.

For the Federal employee and the U.S. Postal worker who is experiencing both forms of the phrase, it is probably time to consider filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset.

When an overwhelming sense of exhaustion and tiredness beyond mere overexertion begins to overtake, it is an indicator that the medical condition is taking its toll.  When the daily circumstances of one’s life tend to be interpreted as a constancy of extremes, like the proverbial “boy who cried wolf” once too often, and the daily events become skewed to such an extent that one becomes overwhelmed by the persistence of events, and where the extraordinary becomes the daily norm, then it is also a sign of portending causes to recognize.

Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is not an option of the extreme, although it may be one of the few and limited alternatives left for the Federal or Postal worker who has been struggling to maintain a linear level of normalcy for years on end.

Rather, it is a recognition of human frailty, and the limits of endurance, and ultimately a choice of reflective wisdom in recognizing when the extreme of life’s circumstances begin to take its toll, the resulting impact is often the mental, emotional and physical exhaustion beyond mere tiredness, and where the signs become clear that time is not on the side of health, but where health must accept the timeless constancy of changing extremes.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

 

OPM Medical Retirement Lawyer: Life’s Series of Decisions

As activity is the fingerprint of life, and inertia denotes death (or at least a somnolence of sluggishness), so the parallelism between thought and life follows the logic of movement versus progressive decomposition.  Thinking, according to Aristotelian tradition, constitutes the essence of human-ness.  Other species may have characteristics which define and distinguish; for the human animal, it is the process of thinking, or thought-engagement, which differentiates and identifies by uniqueness of quality.  Part of that cognitive process involves decision-making.

For all species, this cannot be the essence of being, because such a principle applies to every genus, lest we conclude that determinism is ingrained in one’s DNA.  Predators must decide when and upon what the advantage of a chase will result; frogs must affirmatively choose when to snap that elongated tongue in the split second of time to satisfy its appetite; and men and women must resolve issues short of confrontations engaged in a prior state of nature, to confirm that civilization is indeed a progression of culture and sophistication, and not based upon brute force.

The underlying principles, then, which distinguishes human decision-making from other species, must be some other component; perhaps that of the formulation of a paradigmatic criteria upon which an option is considered.

In the process of thoughtful decision-making, what criteria do we apply?  For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who are considering filing for Federal Employee Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal worker is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the criteria-based paradigm of choice-making may be limited:  You can remain within the inertia of present circumstances; you can walk away in order to “save” your health, while also partly engaging in the first option (i.e., change into the inertia of a different set of circumstances); or, you can file for Federal OPM Disability Retirement benefits.

If the third alternative is the one opted for, then a series of additional questions and answers must be posed and resolved:  How many years of Federal Service; how long will the process take; what are the chances of success; will my doctor support me in this endeavor; and multiple other queries.  For some of these, further research and investigation will provide the answers; for others, seeking legal counsel, expert advice and general wisdom of experience will be helpful.

In the end, inertia should be disengaged, as lifelessness should never define the essence of a living being; and the thoughtless void which modern society and technological dominance tends to cower us all into, should be pushed back and resisted, like the days of yore of Masada and other uprisings which manifest the destiny of humanity, that life on any planet, Mars or Earth, is indeed a rarity even among a plenitude of apparent activity.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire

Federal & Postal Medical Retirement through the OPM: The House of Doom, with a Spare Room

Psychiatric conditions and early medical retirement in the Federal Government workplace or the U.S. Postal Service (USPS)

The inescapable tangles and chains of oblivion are often those dark recesses within one’s psyche; Houdini merely performed to the public the capacity and ability to escape physical constraints; the greater challenge for most continues in the deterioration of the psychology of despondency.

Whatever the paradigm of modern medicine bases its treatment approach, whether on an organic component, subconscious repression of childhood trauma, the spectrum of tolerances unique to each individual; or perhaps a combination of neurological origins and excessive overload upon synapses and brain circuitry; whatever the myth of origins may be embraced, the reality of psychiatric conditions must be acknowledged.

Fortunately, for Federal and Postal employees who are considering preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal employee is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the good news (as such information can be deemed “good”) is that psychiatric-based medical disabilities (including, but not limited to, Major Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorder, Bipolar Disorder, Schizophrenia, components of paranoia, suicidal ideations, etc.) are not analyzed, approached, evaluated, or otherwise decided upon in a way or manner different than physical ailments.

More than a decade ago, the concern may have found some reality of support in bifurcating the distinction between physical and psychiatric conditions; but with more recent judicial clarifications undermining any conceptual and legal distinctions previously made by OPM concerning “objective” medical evidence as opposed to “subjective” declarations of such conditions, the walls separating psychiatric and physical medical conditions have crumbled to nothingness.

Today, it is more likely that it is the individual, and not the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, who remains the singular obstacle to proceeding with an OPM Disability Retirement application. For, within the hellish confines of one’s psyche, men and women create a House of Doom — that cage of insular fears within the deep recesses of one’s mind, full of anxiety and self-doubt, compounded by submitting to an artifice further complicated by the lack of support from the Federal or Postal workplace; but what must be done is to acknowledge and recognize the existence of that House of Doom, and to make certain that within the labyrinth of madness, one must construct a spare room, where exit and escape allows for a reserve of quietude, and where the soft winds of time bending the hollow reed of rye echoes with a future peace in the whistling tune of hope.

Sincerely,

Robert R. McGill, Esquire