Good morning Ikea - and Nana, Scamp, Bardolino and anyone else. Ikea, I'm really sorry that you had such a lousy time of it last night but glad (sort of( that you were able to come on here and post about how you felt. I can't, as you know, advise on meds but I have heard fluoxetine mentioned here more than once - is this something you are on or is this an option, even a short term one to get you back on track? I know you said that you had started ads and from friends' reactions in the past, these take time to kick in.
First and foremost, if you are crazy then I must be too, because such a lot of what you say makes so much sense. Yes to the obsessing about particular news items and stories that we hear and making them a kind of focal point. Part of this might be guilt, that we (in our comfortable homes) don't have the kind of obvious and immediate suffering that others have. You do NOT have to have any kind of mental illness to experience this - people with no history of MH have been known to sell all their possessions and go abroad to help others. My own brother, years ago, read a news article about a mother who died of a heart attack in her house, with two very small children who starved to death. This affected him so badly that he could not concentrate and, although a caring soul, he is a hard headed financier with so MH issues of any sort. That can happen to anyone.
However, other aspects that you almost obliquely allude to do suggest that you carry guilt for being happy. Does this go back to a childhood of being expected to achieve the highest standard and feeling that you had fallen short? Or of seeing approval and somehow not getting it, or of not feeling worthy of happiness and having a self destruct mechanism in place? I could just be projecting here, of course ... my parents (and I am not in the least in favour of assigning blame to anyone, incidentally - I feel responsible for all of my own emotions and reactions) have always been quite distant and expectant of perfection in their offspring. Therein lies the road to disappointment ......
If you really feel that your doctor doesn't care, it's the doctor you need to change, not yourself. And you DO deserve your DH - I know that's a hard thing for you to accept, but you come across on an anonymous internet site as intelligent, articulate, compassionate, strong and empathetic. Someone whom you describe as wonderful has seen fit to marry you (definitely not as a charity case or to rescue you) and you have produced children whom I am sure are equally wonderful. You offer to proofread personal statements of the DD of a stranger on the internet - even in the midst of your own soul searching - thank you very much indeed for that - I'm a proofreader myself in my spare time and one of my own crazy obsessions is misplaced or missing apostrophes and general grammatical errors. I have corrected so many signs with an eyeliner and written various stroppy emails to DD's school (a grammar school, no less!) about their use of the reflexive pronoun and the dative case. I wish I wasn't so obsessive about this - I have often been told to "get a life" and "you can't have much to worry about". Paranoia is another one - I've walked around town convinced that people are talking about me. Most people are wrapped up in their own little worlds and do not consider others as much as we think they do.
I really hope that you managed to get some sleep. Post today if you feel like it but put no pressure on yourself at all (if that's possible) - I try not to write too much because it can be overwhelming, but unfortunately am one of life's ramblers. The sun is shining here in the South East - get outside for a while if you can - yes, cliched but the air is healing in its own way. Sending you positive energy, Ikea.