Depressed and feeling trapped

[colourdilemma]

I've had depression and anxiety for years and have been diagnosed with adhd too. Recently, I have been trying so hard to find strategies to help me without going higher dose on citalopram but I can't seem to get started.

I realise now, after a particularly hard couple of weeks where I feel alternately wound like a spring and feeling like snapping at anyone (mainly my three dc )who dares interact with any kind of challenge and yet unable to achieve anything when on my own.

I realise that I need to make my life simpler and easier to manage but just can't; have three dc and don't want to limit their existence to what I can cope with (basically get them to and from school, feed them and get them to peaceably watch telly) and our finances can't really do with me being permanently at home (I work two days teaching). I feel as if I'm inside "the cube" and I've used my simplify ten times over but still have to play the game.

I want to let go but I don't. Although this is scary to say, if I knew the dc would be okay and that it would be pain free and simple I'd end things but yet because I know it wouldn't be I don't consider myself suicidal. Just exhausted by life and unable to see how I enrich anyone's lives by existing (there is good stuff I do but I feel as if I more than balance that our by the rubbish stuff I do).

Not sure what I'm saying really. Just feel very low. Started to get on top of things a few months ago but feel back to square one and just daunted by life.

Hello. Sounds like you are trying to do too much, especially given your diagnoses

If you even start to think of suicide again, please phone the Samaritans

Are you worse than usual today? Lots of lovely people here will try to help

Take care x

Have you been given tablets at all for your ADHD, OP? Once you get these at the right dose, they ought to help with the feelings, though there can be a bit of trial and error to get it sorted in the beginning.

Can you try to let things go a bit for the moment, until you get stable again? I totally understand that you don't want to limit your DC, but I think for the whole faimly, it will be better to take a little time to get yourself sorted out and your life manageable - then, in the long run, you can look at increasing work and doing more with your children: because you'll be able to! When things are tough, it's a major achievement just to get out of bed, in all honesty - I know it's difficult, but please try not to be too hard on yourself just now. Can you make an appointment and go and talk it through with your GP or psych? The best thing in the interim might be an increase in citalopram - or they might have other suggestions.

And please remember that your DC absolutely won't be fine without you: and you do enrich their lives, even if right now you are just existing. Believe me. Please - give the Samaritans or MIND a ring: they are great, and MIND might also have some stategies to help you feel better. You sound really, really low right now, and I know when that happens, it's hard to give yourself a break - but please, do: it's your illness talking, and it's twisting everything in your life so that it seems your DC would be OK without you. Try to hold on to the fact that depression is like a fairground mirror, and doesn't accurately portray life - I know it's so, so hard: so please, keep posting here, and speak to your doctors too

It's an odd place I'm in right now. I can talk myself round because I've had enough cbt to be able to tell myself all the "right" things but fundamentally I don't believe that the feelings are wrong. I believe myself to be pretty worthless (except on a day when literally nothing has gone wrong that I can tell, then I just have the guilt about all the days when things have gone wrong and the effect on my kids, and whether I've damaged them for life, yada yada, etc) but I also know that not being here would be worse not better so I'm stuck with plodding on in an unsatisfactory manner.

I have meds for adhd and have been lucky enough to get a good referral from my gp to a specialist service. I'm still, a year on, juggling doses of concerta xl and have given myself a week's break before going down a dose as I think I just edged too high and was getting side effects. The meds have given me an abillity to focus and get stuff done that i have just never had before, although typically I've had a period of disappointment that I'm not totally "cured" (habits are hard to break and meds can only do so much). Getting a diagnosis was a brilliant thing; the guy I saw said it was very clear cut, he was amazed that I'd managed to function as I have for forty odd years but also that the adhd might well have protected me from my erm...challenging childhood.

Part of the reason I'm so desperate to keep things together and then some is that my dm is bipolar and was very unwell and often suicidal for most of my childhood. It wasn't something she could help but since I wasn't told anything about what was wrong, and it took me until studying medical sciences at uni to twig, I am mistrustful of her and we are not close. This sounds a horrific thing to say when I know I should be living and supportive, but I am not strong enough to help her, look after my family and keep sane enough myself. I do see her and keep as much contact as I can but its very tricky and I have had to forgive myself for not doing more.

Thing is, I'm terrified that that is how my kids will see me when they're older. I can see how it would both be justified and reasonable. My depression and anxiety make me hugely irritable and I struggle not to get cross at ridiculous things, especially when the focus of my anxiety is them when I'm bad.

Aargh. Sorry for the life story vomit I've just done. I know I'm not as unwell as many of you guys but there are days when I just want to be a mum who is really truly able to get her stuff together to be there and do stuff with her dc. Simple stuff like playing, baking, drawing and the endless chit chatter and small disputes make me scream internally and want to run away to stare at the nearest blank wall. I always, always apologise if I shout, I tell dd1 who is ten that my brain is poorly and I just can't do whatever it is she wants and that it makes me sad that I can't. I want them to grow up ideally with a well mother, but if I can't do that, I desperately want them to know its not their fault when I'm snappy and worse.

Feel better this evening as dh took the dc out and I managed to make my brain stay at it long enough to get the house tidy and uniforms and lunches done for tomorrow. Mornings are the worst and the less I have to do the better.

Gosh-if you e read all this then sorry for the self indulgence.

By the way, don't please read into this that the reason my childhood was challenging was because my dm had bipolar. It wasn't. It was because there was so little said about it, because events in my life were told with lack of clarity and because of all sorts of other things too. I'm clinging onto the idea that with openness and love, children can be close to parents who are mentally ill.

Thank you so much for replies . Super encouraging just to know that some soul has read my meandering posts and written kind words x