For me I came to terms with it through a horrible year of being suicidal and terrified and angry. Mostly now I am sad that I had to give up my career. But I realized first that I am and always will be an occupational therapist. And I know that I did some good things in that capacity and while I wish I could have done more of them doing good things is a pretty good thing to have done in life. I also just have to look back at my work history. From my first job after grad school until the 6 months leave I took from my last job before I had to leave for good it was a mess of job changes, being fired twice, major problems at work, stress I couldn't handle and which made my bipolar worse, etc.

Not working made a difference in my episodes, frequency and severity, for a good long time which helped. And then this one hit and my therapist has reminded me several times that this just answers the question of "can I work" very clearly and right when my SSDI renewal is being done. And so I know that if I tried working and something like this hit I'd immediately not be able to work, even if it was just part-time and that just isn't an option. Not that I haven't kept my license because I can't bear not to but it just was too much and I think I did it until that was so clear that there was no other option available.

But it is still hard. I've made myself learn to not blink when I say I'm an occupational therapist but I'm not working now because I'm disabled. I just don't care what people think (except politicians, I send angry notes to politicians when they say stupid stuff about being with mental health disabilities) because I know that I did the best I could do for as long as I could do it. And that's all that I could do.

I'm pretty much at peace with it except when I start missing it and get sad or when my brain decides to replay every bad decision I ever made while working or that kind of thing (makes me feel like a failure although I wasn't).

How is ECT going?