During an appearance on Renee Paquette’s podcast, Dax Harwood talked about various mental health struggles during his lifetime:
Bulimia: “It was right after high school. I got into high school, I played high school football, and ate whatever, because I was a lineman and so I was trying to get big. I got to like 285 pounds, I’d always been a big kid, but I just got really, really, really big. Then I continued to eat that way after high school. So without that extra physical activity, I just put on so much weight. I was embarrassed and I was just ashamed.”
Body dysmorphia: “It was very scary when I realized, like, I can’t go a day without doing this. The body dysmorphia, like how I viewed myself and how embarrassed I was of myself, and then I was embarrassed of what I was doing, you know, and then it would just become this cycle thing because I was thinking, ‘Okay, well, if I can get to this weight, I’ll stop and then not be embarrassed about anything.’ I would lose the weight, but the body dysmorphia would never go away because one, you’ve got it stuck in your head. But when you’re doing that, you’re not getting any nutrients in your body. So as hard as I was working out, I was never building any muscle mass. So I got what’s called skinny fat. My body would get, in my opinion, I would look worse than when I was actually heavy. So more than physically, it just wrecked me mentally.”
Panic attacks: “Maria (my wife) had a miscarriage. She and I still lived in Orlando and we were going to the mall. She was like, ‘I don’t feel right, but let’s just go to the mall.’ She kept telling me how she didn’t feel right,” he shared. I said, ‘Let’s go to the hospital or go to the doctor or whatever it was, and let’s get you checked out so you’re not worried about it, and then we’ll go on about our day.’ So we went there, she checked in, she sat down. They said ‘Maria Harwood’, and as soon as she stood up, she lost everything. She ran to the bathroom and I followed her there. She had our little, tiny baby in her hand. She was so broken. She was so worried and so upset, and so scared and so embarrassed by all these other emotions she was going through, so I had to be strong for her. I didn’t want her to see me worried or upset because she had so much to worry about. So I hid all that stuff. When I would drive to the Performance Center or whatever, I would break down almost every day. It was one of these things where I broke down and I would question God, because I had, and I do now, have a relationship with God. But I said, ‘God, why? Why did you do this to us? Just give me an answer.’ I never was mad or angry, but I just wanted to know why this happened to us. I think what happened was so much stuff just piled up and I lost it.”
