Federal Disability Retirement Application and Process: The Foreign Menu

Certain processes and endeavors in life are tantamount to a foreign menu; one knows that, within the undecipherable and incomprehensible letters and symbols presented before one, amidst the evocative smells and provocative sounds emanating from the kitchen in the back, and behind the sounds and voices formed and learned in another land in distant places beyond the horizon of one’s familiarity, there is a dish of choice which one would, if one could identify it, choose for the occasion before us. But the menu is in another language; the words and symbols are undecipherable; and the waiters, waitresses, cooks and managers speak not a word of one’s own; […]

 
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Medical Retirement for Disabled Federal Workers: Identification Recoil

Is it the identification which, if recognized, prompts one to engage in a commensurate reaction? Does recognition of the identified condition require a societal conditioning, such that fear becomes a learned response as much as a sudden movement…? […] Read More …

Disability Retirement for Federal Workers: The Universe of the Possible (Part I of II)

Children are brought into the extensive and unlimited world of the “possible”, precisely because (we believe) it provides for greater expansion of the fertile, creative mind. But for the adult, the world of the “possible” is conceptually meaningless, and without objective […] Read More …

Disability Retirement for Federal Workers: Unwanted Change

Stability is what we seek; yet, with stability comes habituation and a staid routine of repetitive boredom. Adventure, excitement and stimulation; these come at a price, and so we revert and remain in the cocoon of safety, daydreaming of that potential, […] Read More …

Federal Worker Disability Retirement: The Anxiety of the Unknown

It is a testament to the complexity of human intelligence which brings about unsolvable medical mysteries such as panic-induced physical manifestations and chronic, progressively deteriorating somatic illnesses which reveal no clear organic orientation. […] Read More …

Immediate Medical Retirement for Disabled Federal Workers: Complex Simplicity

Often enough in life, the most complex of conceptual constructs is constituted by its very simple nature; and, conversely, the seemingly simplest of tasks is characterized by its concealed complexity, only to be revealed upon an attempted unraveling of its internal […] Read More …

Federal Employee Medical Retirement: Lives of Trepidation

Most of us live lives of subtle trepidation. Whether borne of childhood experiences of insecurity or fears, psychologists and mental health professionals can perhaps shed some light upon a theory or proposed paradigm of explanatory adequacy. In adulthood, it turns […] Read More …

OPM FERS/CSRS Disability Retirement: That Sense of Doom

It can often be noted in the quivering voice at the other end of the telephone line (or, would it be more accurate to state, in the modern vernacular, at the “other end of the satellite signal”?) — that sense of impending doom that filing for Federal Disability Retirement […] Read More …

Medical Retirement for Federal Workers: Fear and the Masking of Medical Conditions

Fear can exacerbate, and simultaneously hide the underlying cause. The Western philosophical quest for the essence of a thing never considers whether the human element of fear is part of the problem; instead, the focus has always been to unravel and lift the veil […] Read More …

OPM Disability Retirement: The Foreigner

The “foreigner” reflects a dual-edged phenomena: on the one hand, the individual perceives the strangeness of his or her surroundings; on the other hand, those strangers from the “other” land may similarly view the foreigner with interest, suspicion, hesitation, etc. […] Read More …