Your Residual Functional Capacity (RFC) is how much you can still do despite the limitations caused by your disability. An RFC can include limitations that are exertional (like limits to sitting, standing, walking, lifting, carrying), non-exertional (like avoiding environmental factors or hazards), or mental (like limits to remembering, concentrating, interacting with others, or adapting to stresses and changes). A Social Security factfinder at any level of the administrative process (initial application review, reconsideration, or at a hearing) will make a decision about what they believe your RFC is. They will consider what you have to say, but they will also review the objective medical evidence. This can be frustrating because most impairments can cause a range of effects, and so the factfinder may be inclined to believe that the record just isn’t as supportive of disabling limitations, even though you know from your lived experience that you are dealing with much more than they will accept.
Following Doctor Recommendations Will Strengthen Your Case
The best you can do is to tell your story truthfully and to make sure that you go to doctors’ appointments to address all of your conditions. Make sure to note your symptoms and any medication side effects whenever you see your doctor, even if it’s a follow-up visit with a doctor you’ve seen many times before. If a doctor refers you to treatment or testing, you should do what your doctor advises. If you are concerned about a recommendation, talk it over with your doctor, and if you remain seriously concerned, consider seeking a second opinion. One of the worst things you can do, for your health and for a potential disability case, is to decide just to not follow a doctor’s recommendation, to ignore a treatment or testing referral, and “live with it.”
Coping with Frustration During the Disability Claim Process
One of the hardest parts of the disability process is learning to let go, recognizing that you can do everything right and still cannot guarantee a positive outcome. You may feel at times that no one believes you. A “soft benefit” of having an attorney representing you is that you know that you have someone in your corner. Your attorney can advise you about concerns in the case but can let you know that at least someone believes you while you keep fighting. Even with an attorney, it can be deeply frustrating and depressing to get repeated decisions that basically say, “Yes, you have serious limitations, but we just don’t believe you that they’re as bad as you say.” And yet that is how the agency works. It’s easier said than done to not take it personally.
How An Attorney Can Help Your Disability Benefits Claim
The federal court team at Keller & Keller often has to appeal hearing decisions at least in part because the Administrative Law Judge (ALJ), the factfinder at the hearing, has inappropriately disregarded a claimant’s report of their symptoms and lived experiences. You’ll often see the same recitation of basic activities of daily living, like doing some light cleaning sometimes or going to the grocery, as a reason that someone is not as limited as they say—often ignoring all the issues a claimant has when trying to do those things, or how often those tasks get put off. ALJs will often use evidence of “conservative treatment” to downplay symptoms as well, even if the “conservative treatment” is the gold standard for treating a condition (like taking medication routinely and engaging in talk therapy for mental health symptoms, instead of being hospitalized).
Common Mistakes Administrative Law Judges Make When Denying Claims
What ALJs so often overlook (or, worse, don’t care about) is that Social Security’s rules and regulations are written in such a way that a claimant’s symptom report should be credited so long as it’s consistent with other evidence in the record. If you have objectively established the existence of a condition, you don’t technically need to objectively establish the severity of the condition, as long as you are honestly reporting the same symptoms throughout the record and engaging in treatment recommendations. Because of how these rules are written, appealing ALJ decisions on this basis is often a good call, at least in the 7th Circuit (courts in Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin). Still, having to appeal even further, when getting to a hearing already can take two years or more, is yet another frustration.
At the end of the day, what you have control over is being an advocate for yourself with your doctors by making sure to talk about everything going on with them routinely and being a good patient by following all treatment and testing recommendations. While you can’t guarantee an outcome, you can at least set up the best hand of cards you can muster.
