I'd just like to point out that most (informed) people don't group SSDI recipients into the "do nothing and burden" category like with unemployment and some other social assistance programs, so you shouldn't feel bad at all about that.
I worked as an SSI/SSDI paralegal at a law firm for a year, and after experiencing first hand what a truly mind-blowingly terribly run organization the Social Security Administration is I would never say an SSDI recipient is a freeloader. It took us about 3-5 years, multiple applications/appeals, and a court hearing with a hopefully sympathetic judge to win SSDI, sometimes even for clients with undeniably legitimate disabilities no one could possibly question like missing limbs. We were the top firm in that half of the state too, so the other firms actually took even longer. Fun fact, SSA doesn't consider stage 4 cancer worthy of collecting money for it unless it's "in a vital organ"....despite the fact that stage 4 means it is metastatic and has spread to all parts of the body, which is almost guaranteed death. I saw about 7 of our clients die of their disabilities while waiting for a hearing because their appeals were denied for not being disabling enough.
True story, I worked with one client in his 50's who had over 20 surgeries, a 10,000 page medical record of at least 5 serious conditions (which I had to read and digitize in its entirety for court preparations......) who was genuinely illiterate to the point where I had to read him everything written down and he signed his name with an X, who while waiting for the hearing fell off his porch and broke his spine/neck.....and the judge STILL denied him and said he was capable of working a month later.
SSI is different, most of our SSI clients were just homeless people looking for free money because there's no medical component required for it, and yes we frequently dropped clients after discovering they were doing hardcore drugs or were dealers, or had been sentenced to prison (part of my job was looking up jail records to see how many of our clients got arrested that month....it happened that often) but it is nearly impossible for someone to get SSDI without a legitimate medical reason for it which really does prevent them from working, along with a crapton of medical documentation showing years/decades worth of pain, so they are not a freeloader. There are lots of legitimate SSI cases as well like mentally handicapped people without physical impairments and children, but it's harder to judge that one due to the very low criteria to get it.
The income limits do indeed basically trap people permanently into the SSDI income level for life. If I remember correctly, it was something like $800 is the maximum they were allowed to make per month in addition to their SSDI from a part time job, and the average SSDI was like $1,100 per month. So essentially none of our clients could ever make more than like $22k a year for the rest of their lives, if they tried they lost all their benefits and had to spend 3-5 years reapplying, and if they couldn't get a part time job they only made like $13k per year for life.