What do you do when you don't want to die but can't see how to live?

[colourdilemma]

That really. I'm pretty sure I'm not suicidal but I do feel pretty despairing about my ability to live a normal life.
I've had undiagnosed (until teo years ago) depression and anxiety for most of my life and also a diagnosis of adhd a year ago. Take meds for all of those, which perhaps help.
But this morning, as often, I can't cope with mornings with three children and am dreading half term. I dread it because I can't comfortably let them "get on with it" and watch telly and bum around, and yet have no motivation to help them to do stuff and no patience to feel with normal squabbles.
I sound so moany actually. On the surface I have pretty much everything; husband, nice house, three kids after huge fertility issues, no actual financial crises although cash tight because we stretched financially to extend our house.
I can't handle stress. I shout at the kids a lot (mostly mornings actually, but not a nice way to start the day.)
Dh doesn't deserve a wife like me and dc deserve better from their mother. I am worried that ive messed them up and that I can't do well enough to recover things. I know my anxiety focuses on them, I can tell you just what I should do to to make things better (cbt helped me with the theory) but in the heat of it my anxiety builds up and I blow and shout horribly.
I bumble on with most people thinking I'm doing an okay job and in fact tomorrow my kids will have amazing costumes for dressing up at school, perpetuating the myth that I and they are okay.
I just want someone to tell me that if I just stopped they'd be okay and I could go away for a month or so. But obviously that would be worse. My mother is bipolar and was an inpatient for two years so in the back (actuslly front!) of my mind I feel I'm turning into her.

I need to do the small steps but actually believe that there is a point to them and that I haven't messed up too badly already.
Sorry about this garbled mess. Off to sort out crisis over sticker ownership!

[Absentmindedwoman]

Handholding.

Do you take any medication?

Looking after three kids is a big lot of work - do you have any time to yourself, to properly relax?

Are you sleeping ok?

[Absentmindedwoman]

Sorry you said you do take meds. Did these help more at first? Perhaps they need re-adjusting?

Are you happy with who prescribed these, I'm assuming since you got the adhd diagnosis you went privately - was this a psychiatrist specialising in adhd?

If so, and you still have the financial resources to go private again - I would see another psychiatrist who deals primarily with mood disorders.

[colourdilemma]

Bless you for replying. I didn't go private for adhd-I have an amazing gp who referred me even though she said that she'd never have imagined adhd for me by the way I present in surgery.

I am seeing a counsellor privately again and we are going to focus on properly relaxing, which I suspect I don't do very often. Dd1 is now 10 and stays up later, meaning that the evening, guilt free switch off time has been squeezed.

Today has been a better day, in lots of ways, probably because I've voiced how I've been feeling. Essentially, I am fairly hopeless about lots of stuff but that mornings are my worst times. I am tired, meds haven't kicked in and I'm trying to get three kids to do too much. So I end up shouting, which then sends me off in a guilt train leading to more irritability.

I had coffee with a friend and realised something else-it doesn't help me to talk about mental health to those who don't have it/get it because I then feel that I am summed up by my problems there. I kind of fake normality and then feel more normal. So friend and I discussed plans for Christmas crafts and I felt a but of a fraud but have set up dates to actually make stuff which will make me feel better.

I also decided that its okay that I'm not running marathons, my own business or even working more than I do. And I'm going to believe that my kids will be okay as long as I am truthful with them and do my best to get better. They would not be better off without me (even as I type that I am faking that thought in the hope I will believe it).

I am going to try not to waste time worrying about whether I will ever be truly mentally well and get into the spiral of panicking about wasted time and the effects of how I've been.

I still feel that I have inflicted myself as a mother on three children and that the world would probably be better without me having kidded myself I could do it well. But here I am and I have to make the best of it.

[colourdilemma]

Oh, and meds wise, I also take citalopram, which was initially miraculous but I fear the anxiety resulting in shouting has crept back again. I'm loathe to up the dose and really think I need to do the stuff that I have time and space to do, in theory.