An applicant or potential applicant for Federal Disability Retirement benefits under FERS or CSRS exhibits tendencies which can range on a wide spectrum of behavior, thoughts, fears, actions and reactions. Some individuals believe that his or her application is so self-evident and self-explanatory, that all that is necessary is to obtain the medical records, list the diagnosed medical conditions on the Applicant’s Statement of Disability, file it, and… When the Denial letter appears from the Office of Personnel Management, there is the surprise and shock, and the: “I thought that…”
Then, there is the other extreme of the spectrum, where there is an almost irrational fear that unless every ache and pain is detailed in long, explanatory narratives, and pages of pages of “personal experience” diary-like formatted chronologies are submitted with the packet, with tabulated references to justify each and every medical experience from two decades before until the present, that the Office of Personnel Management will deny the application. Remember this: It takes just as short a time to deny the first type of application as it does the second. The Office of Personnel Management does not read through any materials which it deems “superfluous“. Somewhere in the middle between the two extremes is normally the correct balance. Or, as Aristotle would say, it is important to achieve the mean between the two extremes.
Sincerely,
Robert R. McGill, Esquire
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Federal & Postal Service Disability Retirement: Personal v. Objective
Filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits is a personal matter. It is personal precisely because it is considered as an admission of a disability; it goes to the heart of what a person does in life — one’s livelihood, one’s means of support; and it goes to the perception in our society of the “worth” of an individual — financial worth, productive worth, worth in terms of the ability to support a family, and worth in terms of one’s contribution to society. Because it is so personal, it is difficult to “objectively” assess and evaluate a disability retirement claim, by the individual who is thinking about filing for such a benefit.
That is often why it is important to have an attorney represent an individual who is considering filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits. Often, when I am hired at the second or third Stage of the process, I read the initial submissions of the client, and find that the “personal” has indeed overtaken the “objective”, precisely because the very subject of the disability retirement process — the applicant — had to undertake the very personal process himself/herself. Such personal subjectivity cannot see beyond the very personal nature of the medical condition, and when that happens, it is almost too personal for the OPM representative to make an objective assessment of the case.
Sincerely,
Robert R. McGill, Esquire
Filed under: OPM Disability Actors - The Applicant, OPM Disability Actors - The Attorney, OPM Disability Process - 1st Stage: OPM Disability Application, The Job of a Federal Disability Attorney | Tagged: a rational approach to opm disability retirement, an emotional vs. reasoned personal account of disability, an objective evaluation of your opm disability claim, attorney federal disability, blogs owcp and opm disability issues, civil service disability retirement, CSRS disability retirement federal attorney, describing a medical tragedy without too much emotionalism, disability retirement in the post office, emotional comments won't always help to get opm application approved, federal civil service disability, federal employee and its acceptance of being disabled, federal employee disability, federal employee disability benefits, federal employee medical retirement, FERS disability retirement, FERS medical retirement, fighting feelings of worthlessness during the opm disability application, filing for usps disability, focusing on medical substantive issues not emotional problems, getting rid of emotional baggage during fers disability application, helping the opm disability specialist to evaluate your claim objectively, helping the opm representative to assess your disability claim, how to get approved for federal employee disability benefits, keeping emotions under control will help an opm disability applicant, keeping your tone cool and rational during application, Maintaining an Objective Perspective in a Disability Case, making rational arguments along with sound medical evidence, no work available for injured postal workers, not getting too personal during the applicant's statement of disability, nrp and defending injured postal workers, OPM disability retirement, OPM objective methodology, owcp disability retirement really is usually meant "opm disability retirement", postal service disability retirement, presenting a personal disability matter objectively, problems with personal disability retirement statements in opm application, rational perspective into the fed workers' medical condition, story of human tragedy, taking lwop for owcp medical condition, the fine balance between rational and emotional factors, the human side of a disability story, top federal disability retirement attorney, us post office disability attorney, usps rehab employees, value of a human being not defined by disabilities, when personal emotions overtake rational thoughts during application process, when the opm applicant can't handle the disability paperwork, why it can be difficult for the opm disability applicant to prove his claim | Leave a comment »