One of the most important factors causing disability is pain. That’s inconvenient for Social Security. They like things that can be shown by a test. They want some foolproof way of measuring how bad some condition is. You may have noticed that there’s no machine in your doctor’s office to measure your pain. In fact, if you think about it, pain is an intensely personal experience. No one else really can feel your pain. One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that people have a hard time describing their pain.

Social Security’s approach to pain is to pretend it doesn’t exist. They routinely deny claims where the patient describes horrific pain. Social Security may acknowledge that a certain medical condition causes pain but they say, with some accuracy, that there’s no clear relationship between the medical condition a person has and how much pain they suffer. That doesn’t mean that a patient is fibbing when he or she says they suffer great pain from a medical condition while others with the same medical problem complain of only mild pain. While it may look like the same medical condition, there may be subtle differences causing much worse pain for some patients. Pain is a complicated thing. It’s well known that the perception of pain is worse for those who also suffer from depression or anxiety. The pain and the depression or anxiety is all processed in the brain. Wouldn’t you expect some interaction between the two?

Despite the problems, you certainly can be approved for Social Security disability benefits based upon chronic pain. That’s actually almost routine. Cases based upon chronic pain get denied at the initial and reconsideration levels and then approved by an Administrative Law Judge. That doesn’t happen every time but it happens a lot. Don’t give up. Get help from a lawyer who knows Social Security.