Golden Retriever GFI think a lot of my posts give me a really negative appearance. I'm actually a very positive, cheerful person. I sing at work. I dance and make jokes about how if I stop singing and dancing and bouncing that my blood will stop.
But behind all those smiles and laughs and good times, my family is prone to severe mental disorders. My grandmother had severe Schizoeffective Disorder, my sister severe #Bipolar, my brother severe #ADHD and myself severe #OCD.
My first symptoms arrived on schedule in 1st grade. They manifested to their fullness in puberty and now after 2 hospitlizations I've kinda fallen into a weird invisibility zone. A woman with a severe chronic mental condition that's nearing 40.
I did hella therapy but it largely just makes life livable with no medications. It will never erase my symptoms. My disorder has largely shaped my person for positive and negative but it's not something that's easy to live with. I've lost several partners and a marriage and after lots of therapy, I don't blame them.
My current partner and fiance, to aer credit did research on my disorder before I moved in. I had to teach aer how to deal with panic attacks because I have them frequently. There was a time of heavy stress with German Courses and overtime work where I collapsed in front of the fridge, blacked out and continued counting. Ae knows to grab ice to shock me out of severe panic.
The thing to really consider before saying "Yes, I can handle your chronic disorder" is really to understand there will be bad days. I got dumped by a woman whose brother also had severe OCD but it proved too much for her. You might appreciate my devotion to order, punctuality and perfection but can you handle that not going to MY grocery store or MY burger king or MY DM will cause me stress and even still if there are people messing with the order, say construction it's likely to stun me to almost non functional?
The photo included is from last night. I knocked a cup off the counter, a counter I was ashamed of because I did not have the energy to clean it, and then it moved a thing I owned from a "good" state of intact to a "bad" state of broken and just my girlfriend trying to make sure I didn't have a panic attack in broken glass resulted in 2 further panic attacks and a great deal of weeping and insomnia. Ae didn't even do anything really wrong outside of phrasing something a little differently than my panic attack brain could understand.
The thing is that I do a great deal of therapy. Not all of the things my disorder does to me are bad but I have severe trust issues and abandonment trauma not just from friends that thought I could be cured by triggering panic attacks but from partners that said "Yes I can love you" but ended up leaving instead. Dating a person with a chronic disorder is not all bad. I even like a lot of what OCD has done but it is still a commitment with a human on the other end of the bargain.
It doesn't matter if that person has chronic pain, Fibromyalgia, OCD or even Autism and backing out is human but being hurt by abandoment for something outside of my control is too. Luckily in my thirties I started finding partners that did love me, that did mean what they said, that did research instead of guess or just recommend ableism like sunshine and going for a walk as a cure but that doesn't mean it doesn't take me YEARS to trust someone.
#mentalillness #chronicdisorder
But behind all those smiles and laughs and good times, my family is prone to severe mental disorders. My grandmother had severe Schizoeffective Disorder, my sister severe #Bipolar, my brother severe #ADHD and myself severe #OCD.
My first symptoms arrived on schedule in 1st grade. They manifested to their fullness in puberty and now after 2 hospitlizations I've kinda fallen into a weird invisibility zone. A woman with a severe chronic mental condition that's nearing 40.
I did hella therapy but it largely just makes life livable with no medications. It will never erase my symptoms. My disorder has largely shaped my person for positive and negative but it's not something that's easy to live with. I've lost several partners and a marriage and after lots of therapy, I don't blame them.
My current partner and fiance, to aer credit did research on my disorder before I moved in. I had to teach aer how to deal with panic attacks because I have them frequently. There was a time of heavy stress with German Courses and overtime work where I collapsed in front of the fridge, blacked out and continued counting. Ae knows to grab ice to shock me out of severe panic.
The thing to really consider before saying "Yes, I can handle your chronic disorder" is really to understand there will be bad days. I got dumped by a woman whose brother also had severe OCD but it proved too much for her. You might appreciate my devotion to order, punctuality and perfection but can you handle that not going to MY grocery store or MY burger king or MY DM will cause me stress and even still if there are people messing with the order, say construction it's likely to stun me to almost non functional?
The photo included is from last night. I knocked a cup off the counter, a counter I was ashamed of because I did not have the energy to clean it, and then it moved a thing I owned from a "good" state of intact to a "bad" state of broken and just my girlfriend trying to make sure I didn't have a panic attack in broken glass resulted in 2 further panic attacks and a great deal of weeping and insomnia. Ae didn't even do anything really wrong outside of phrasing something a little differently than my panic attack brain could understand.
The thing is that I do a great deal of therapy. Not all of the things my disorder does to me are bad but I have severe trust issues and abandonment trauma not just from friends that thought I could be cured by triggering panic attacks but from partners that said "Yes I can love you" but ended up leaving instead. Dating a person with a chronic disorder is not all bad. I even like a lot of what OCD has done but it is still a commitment with a human on the other end of the bargain.
It doesn't matter if that person has chronic pain, Fibromyalgia, OCD or even Autism and backing out is human but being hurt by abandoment for something outside of my control is too. Luckily in my thirties I started finding partners that did love me, that did mean what they said, that did research instead of guess or just recommend ableism like sunshine and going for a walk as a cure but that doesn't mean it doesn't take me YEARS to trust someone.
#mentalillness #chronicdisorder
Bill Auchter
๐'s Belle
Archaeothoughts (Bill Auchter)