Having one mental illness then, bam! Here comes another
I was at a point in my life that I was starting to accept that I have anxiety. I didn’t like it, but I knew that it wasn’t just going to magically go away, I had to learn to understand and manage it.
Great I thought, I am now ready to go forward with this. Why is it though, that when you feel you are in a place in your life where you think, yep, I do seem to have a handle on things, BAM! Out of the blue life throws you another thing to deal with?
This other thing was my husband’s redundancy. But this was a second redundancy within only six months of his last redundancy. Yes, two redundancy’s in one year. It took its toll. I felt that we had only just scraped through when he got a job the first time, but then six months later he walked through the front door just as I was cleaning out the oven (irrelevant info I know but I just had to set the scene and cleaning the oven is a job I really hate) to say his post had dissolved and the company had no more work and oh we have two weeks notice.
We managed to keep it together, be strong for the family, prepare and organised ourselves and luckily he has found another job.
I seem to have this knack though of being strong for everyone else but not for myself and this is where my anxiety really took off and I also started to have an unhealthy relationship with food, hence the second illness.
The best thing I did was to go to my GP and to talk about this and I am now getting help for it. It is only now with the help I can understand just what a huge trauma redundancy is and the impact it can have. Getting the right help also teaches me that we do not have to suffer in silence, that there is something that can be done about mental illness.
Talking about it also has shown me that it is absolutely right to acknowledge that I have been through a trauma, and it is perfectly normal to have it effect me.
I have also seen that there are so many of us out there going though tough times, traumatic, stressful, depressing, anxious days. We are not on our own, we are all in this together. By talking about it, we can support and build each other up because that is something we all deserve.
