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I know that my situation isn't exactly like yours, Berries, but I can tell you what happened to me. I am on SSDI now but wasn't always.
I began working at my first job when I was 15. I came from a family that worked. I worked all my life, working up to 3 part-time jobs at once while putting myself through university. I always supported myself and worked constantly except for a period of weeks right after I had my son.
I worked some pretty high stress jobs in government investigation for a long time until I burrned out in that line of work. Then I switched to IT.
After I moved to Arizona (1999), I worked full-time until my knees and back wouldn't allow me to crawl on the floor and pull cables in my chosen profession as a computer technician. So, I changed to a bench technician. The stress began to get to me. So, I changed to software support. That was even more stressful. I changed jobs several times and went down in responsiblity until I couldn't handle a full-time job anymore. This was because my bipolar got worse.
Eventually, it became more clear to me that with my physical limitations and my intolerance of stress, I needed to apply for disability. This went against my entire life of working. But I had to face the reality of my illness. I was precisely the type of person that SSDI was meant for. I had worked for 34 years and could no longer do so.
I think that you are also in that situation. You would work if you could do so and be comfortably successful. But it is so painfully distressful for you and exaccerbates your illness, so it is not healthy for you to work. Why treat your illness with medication and therapy if you are going to go to a job and undo all of that?
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 Vickie
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