“Thanks to a very loving and understanding partner, I was able to work through more of the anxiety I felt.”
My struggles with emotional and mental problems began at age 12, when I experienced my first nervous breakdown. At age 20 I was diagnosed with major depression. By the time I was 30 that diagnosis had changed to chronic major depression with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). Later, ADHD and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) were added to my diagnoses. At age 40, and after three suicide attempts within two years, my therapist began to suspect that I suffered from bipolar disorder. After lengthy testing, it was determined that I did indeed have bipolar, and my medications were changed accordingly. I found some relief in knowing why I behaved the way I did and having medications that seemed to make a difference.
My relief was to be short-lived, however, as a man I loved very much committed suicide by hanging eight months later, and I was the one to find him. For the next six months my life went into a tailspin of intense pain and sorrow over his death, complicated by the divorce I was going through at the time. The posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) I suffered as a result of his death took over my life, and it became almost impossible for me to function. Brus