Mental Health is my passion it is easy to help others when they are going through something but when it comes to my own Mental Health that is where it gets tricky. Having my own problems sometimes makes me feel weak because I always must be the supporter of everyone. In my Neurotic mind I tell myself “ That it’s not ok to have a mental illness because you have to be strong for everyone else, if you’re not strong and something happens it’s all your fault”. Ha! I know that is not a rational thought process, but we are all human with crazy emotions that do not make any sense sometimes. So, we must acknowledge at those moments when our thought process is not making any sense because it can lead to serious damage.
Welcome to my world! I am Golda and I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and Body Dysmorphia. Yay! That is fun stuff to deal with, right? No, It really sucks my OCD gets so bad that sometimes I have to take three showers a day, I shave constantly even if I don’t have any more hair left on my body , I have to do my house chores before I eat which my house chores may take me half of the day to complete which then I only eat until dinner time. It is hard for me to go through change such as if I had an object for so long and it broke, I refuse to give it up.
My GAD is induced by stress one minute I will be ok, next minute I start to think that a family member is going to die. I pull my hair sometimes which is also called Trichotillomania so sometimes I get bald spots. I get anxious a lot for no reason it is like a light switch.
My Body Dysmorphia stems from me having a Physical Disability because I am not proportional. My legs and arms are very skinny because I have Muscle Atrophy but then I have a tummy that I do not like and when I try on clothes it does not look right on me. Things that I find when shopping look ok on someone who is able-bodied, but because I sit all the time clothes either do not fit me in the same way, don’t look right, or are uncomfortable. I also am very insecure about my stomach area and my body weight. I do not weigh very much but because of how I look I feel like I must maintain a certain figure to look “Regular”. I know I may never look “Regular” but that is something I must work on internally. That is how it is with living with my Mental Illness.
As many of you know my beautiful wife Teneshia who created this website has her own Mental Illness and us having a Mental Illness and being with each other is wonderful because we can relate to each other, but it can also be tough. We have hugely different illnesses and sometimes we clash. For example, my GAD can stress her out by me catastrophizing that she may die which is overstimulating because my thoughts are not rational. Or for instance when my wife is stressed, having mixed episodes/ irregular mood due to her Bipolar Disorder or showing signs of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) she will make a mess to clean a mess to cope with a situation, is hypervigilant and become very agitated and dissociate. The mess she makes sets off my OCD and GAD I start to feel closed in and like I cannot breathe. So, we both do things in our relationship where we trigger each other.
Despite that we have been getting better with our communication and telling each other how we make each other feel so we will try to prevent that from happening. We are a union and we love each other we do not want chaos in our relationship so that is why it is important to communicate. We are not perfect, but we are made for each other we are Mentally Ill together.
-Golda Rae
