Well it's been awhile since I lasted posted my thoughts. My life for a few weeks was very stressful and there seemed to be no light at the end of that dark tunnel. Well it seems I am digging out once again and in the past month I have stumbled over something about myself that I don't think I really took to heart or really understood. I was told I have bipolar disorder years ago and I have been under treatment for many years. While in therapy I was also told I had OCD, (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) as well as social anxiety disorder. Being told that I had these two other mental illnesses was really no surprise as they do run in my family and I was familiar with them. I was also told that having more than one mental illness is not that uncommon but I just thought to myself....Isn't Bipolar Disorder enough? When will the punches stop coming. I have since learned through a lot of hard times that they never do you just have to adapt and try to be strong and get through each moment.
With my OCD I am a recovering checker. This means I use to check my front door 15 times before I went to bed every night. It meant that I would check the stove each morning and night that it was turned off. I don't just mean one or two times I would literally have to put my hands on the burners at least 15 times each to make sure that they were not on. This was even on days when I did not cook anything. While I have received much therapy in this area and I do take a medication to help, there are a few days that I have a slip and I have to walk back inside to check the stove or oven. I tried what is called cognitive-behavioral therapy which will expose you to whatever is causing your anxiety and you have to experience the anxiety of not checking the items and seeing that nothing bad happened. On most good days I can get through each day without over checking as I call it. Most of my checking steams from my fear that I will leave something on that will burn my place down and not just destroy my property but it could harm others in the process. I think my fear of harming others as well as my beloved cat when she is home alone is what really is behind my checking. I believe I think I have a good understanding of this mental illness and have it under control.
The social anxiety was something that I thought I understood and didn't think it was much more than having panic attacks in public when I am alone. I have now arrived to the point that I will not go out in public alone unless it is an emergency. This has hindered my life so much but I have never paid it much attention or tried to understand why I felt this way but it makes so much sense now that I look back at my life. I think I have spent so much time in therapy concentrating just on the bipolar disorder that I never really looked into my 3rd mental illness. After looking up my illness further on the net after watching a show on television about anxiety disorders I was surprised at how much it described me as well as why I had overwhelming panic in pubic so paralyzing that I could not move. You can find one of the articles I read at the following link http://www.webmd.com/anxiety-panic/guide/mental-health-social-anxiety-disorder but I will list what what struck me the most later in my post.
