How Functional Limitations Affect Your Disability Claim

The Social Security Administration (SSA) awards disability benefits to people who are unable to work due to a medical condition. When you apply for benefits, the agency reviews your medical records to determine what functional limitations you have that could keep you from performing certain job tasks. Functional limitations cover a wide array of physical and mental activities that are important to complete your daily routine or work full-time.

Evidence of functional limitations provides Social Security with the basis for your "residual functional capacity," a major factor in the disability determination process. Therefore, it's important to know how you can document your functional limitations in a way that shows you should be considered disabled according to the agency's rules.

What Are Functional Limitations?

Functional limitations are any restrictions on activities that you have difficulty doing because of an illness, injury, or other health problem—as opposed to activities that you don't enjoy or don't know how to do. (The SSA doesn't formally define the term, but discusses what kinds of activities they consider when assessing limitations rather than providing a single definition.)

Functional limitations can be physical, mental, or both, as long as they stem from a medically determinable impairment. Physical limitations generally involve restrictions on the types of movements you can perform, while mental limitations involve cognitive activities like concentration and memory. Here are some examples:

• You're unable to walk farther than 30 feet since you underwent a hip replacement.
• You can't lift more than 10 pounds due to a pinched nerve in your neck.
• You need to take several breaks per hour while doing chores due to fibromyalgia fatigue.
• You can't finish preparing dinner because your ADHD makes you easily distractible.
• You read large-print books due to vision issues caused by diabetes.

As these examples illustrate, functional limitations are best described in terms of basic cause-and-effect relationships. When telling Social Security about your functional limitations, it's smart to keep your descriptions in a similar format, such as "I'm unable to sit upright for longer than one hour due to pain from a bulging disc in my lower back."

Why Are Functional Limitations Important for Disability Claims?

Social Security is interested in the impact your functional limitations have on your ability to work. At almost every step of the agency's "sequential evaluation process" for evaluating disability claims, a claims examiner will look closely at your doctor's notes and your function report in order to decide to what extent your medical condition limits your activities. The SSA looks at your functional limitations to determine the following:

• whether you have a severe impairment that significantly impacts your daily routine
• whether your limitations are serious enough to meet a listed impairment
• whether your limitations prevent you from doing your past work, and
• whether your limitations prevent you from doing any other jobs.

Functional limitations are especially important in determining what, if any, kind of work you can do. The agency takes your functional limitations and translates them into terms an employer would understand in a process called assessing your residual functional capacity (RFC).

How Do Your Illnesses Limit Your Ability to Work?

Social Security doesn't expect you to be able to work at a job that's outside of your capabilities, mentally or physically. Your RFC reflects the functional limitations you have with your activities of daily living because it makes sense that anything you struggle with at home (such as standing long enough to vacuum or mop) would be difficult to do at work.

Exertional Limitations in Your RFC

If you have any functional limitations from a physical condition, your RFC will almost certainly restrict you to a certain exertional level. Exertional levels are defined by how much weight you can lift and how long you can stand and walk. Social Security recognizes five exertional levels (sedentary, light, medium, heavy, and very heavy) of work.

The more restrictions you have in your RFC, the lower your exertional level will be. For example, if you can't walk longer than 15 minutes as a result of knee surgery, your RFC will have a restriction to sedentary (sit-down) work. If you can be on your feet for most of the workday and can lift up to 20 pounds, your RFC will have a restriction to light work.

Non-Exertional Limitations in Your RFC

Restrictions that aren't about how much weight you can lift or how long you can be on your feet—but still affect the types of jobs you can perform—are called non-exertional limitations. Non-exertional limitations include the following:

• Manipulative limitations restrict how often you can use your arms, hands, and fingers to reach, grab, and move objects. Conditions such as carpal tunnel syndrome and shoulder impingement are likely to cause manipulative limitations.
• Postural limitations restrict the amount of bending, stooping, crouching, or crawling you can do. A variety of conditions can cause postural limitations, including digestive disorders, slipped spinal discs, and heart disease.
• Sensory limitations reflect any loss you have in your ability to see, speak, or hear. Examples of sensory restrictions include prohibitions against driving or working in low lighting.
• Environmental limitations restrict the type of job setting you can work in. Conditions that would be aggravated by exposure to dust, fumes, or extreme temperatures—such as asthma or COPD—often result in environmental limitations.
• Mental limitations limit what types of tasks (skilled, semi-skilled, or unskilled) you're able to perform and who you can perform them with. Anxiety and depressive disorders that have an impact on your mood and focus usually cause mental limitations.

The RFC describes non-exertional limitations by the amount of time that you can perform the activities in a workday. How often you can perform a particular action depends on the severity of the condition causing the limitation. For example, if your arthritis causes daily, intense swelling in your hands, your RFC might restrict you to "occasional" manipulation of the hands and fingers. But if your arthritis causes only a slight tingling in your fingers, your RFC might restrict you to "frequent" manipulation.

Combining Limitations in Your RFC

Most disability claimants have an RFC that contains both exertional and non-exertional limitations. Because Social Security is required to consider the combined impact of all of your functional limitations, the more you have, the better your chance that the agency will approve your disability claim.

How Does Social Security Use the Functional Limitations In Your RFC to Determine Disability?

Social Security needs to see that your RFC not only rules out any of the jobs you've done in the past, but also prevents you from performing any other jobs in the national economy. The agency uses a tool called the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT) to categorize all jobs according to their physical and mental demands. Social Security will classify your past work by looking at the DOT description of the job duties, then compare the limitations in your current RFC with the exertional and non-exertional requirements of your past job to see if you could do the job today.

If you can't do your past job duties with your current RFC, Social Security will then need to determine if there are any other jobs you could do despite your functional limitations.

For more information about how Social Security evaluates your RFC to find out what (if any) jobs you can perform, check out our article on getting a medical-vocational allowance.

Your Treating Doctor Can Help Describe Your Functional Limitations

Because establishing functional limitations is such an important part of a disability claim, the SSA will be on the lookout for any doctor's opinions that can help the agency determine the scope of your limitations. If you have a supportive medical source statement from one or more of your doctors, you'll have an easier time qualifying for disability.

The best medical source statements are written by providers who treat you in their area of expertise and point to the diagnostic criteria they used to arrive at their opinion on your limitations. Keep this in mind when deciding which providers you'll ask to complete an RFC form. For example, a statement from the psychologist who you regularly meet for counseling is more persuasive than a statement from a family doctor who you saw once for anxiety.

Establish Functional Limits With Help From an Attorney

You may wish to consider getting help from a disability attorney or advocate. An experienced disability lawyer will determine which of your doctors is in a better position to provide an opinion about your conditions and can work directly with your treating doctor to document your functional limitations properly. (For more information, see our article on what Social Security disability lawyers do to increase your chances of winning your claim.)

If you're hesitant to get a representative due to the cost of hiring one, it's important to know that disability attorneys are required to work on contingency, meaning they don't get paid unless (and until) you win. Most also offer free consultations, so there's little risk in asking around to find a lawyer who's a good fit for your case.