- Anxiety, Depression, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Perfectionism, PTSD, Recovery, Schizoaffective Disorder, Schizophrenia
Our Relationship – Navigating Life Together With My Mental Illnesses
I’ll be honest, I’m difficult to live with. My obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) has me hyper schedule and detail-oriented. My anxiety makes me clingy at times. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) turns a relationship into a mine field of intrusive memories. And schizoaffective disorder is always throwing out curveballs like depression and hallucinations out of nowhere. But despite all of my symptoms and the issues that go along with them, my boyfriend, James, has stuck around for four years. Honestly, at one point, I wasn’t sure anyone ever would. With my colorful cocktail of disorders, I know my actions and behaviors can be difficult to understand. James and I knew each other…
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The Impact of my Illnesses on my Significant Other
Meet James. He’s a hardware and software engineer from the same area of California that I’m from. We met back in high school and didn’t really like each other. But 8 years after I moved to Illinois, we reconnected through Facebook. Now he lives with me in Illinois and we’ve been dating for 3 1/2 years. His support is vital to me, and he regularly supports me through symptoms and setbacks related to my obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and schizoaffective disorder. Typically on this blog, you hear my perspective. To give you a fuller idea of the impact my illnesses have on those around me, here is…