Hello Bluelady
christmas is also a hard time for me having had a mental illness for many years leading to life not following a path that as a young person you hoped it would, and as you are experiencing things can go catastrphicaly wrong, catastrophic may seem an over the top word to discribe your situation and some people may say, well worse could happen , but your feelings are relivant , there is a better word than that but i can't think of it just now, I keep forgeting to take my memory loss pills,
To you this situation is catastrophic, you are at your wits end, which way do you turn, as you said , you cannot make yourself be happy or positive and for many years you have probably tried to push your negative thoughts and feelings aside and just get on with life, but the feelings, moods, behaviour keep surfacing and greatly affect your life.
Something that has been of great help to me is knowledge of mental illness, to try to build a picture of what is going on and understand it, i spend hours reading research reading forums, articles and of course there are some snake oil practitioners out there, but if you read enough from reputable resources you will see common themes. you will see that others experience the same problems as you and that mental illness is real , it is recognised and there are many people working on solutions to it.
There are a few theories of depression and I am only guessing that is an issue with you, I am not a professional in the field, but I would say I am an expert at being depressed, I have been doing it for a long time, those theories if you can understand them give you some power to discuss them with your Psychiatrist as to what might apply to you, for example professor Gordon Parker who started the black dog institute works with the theory of melancholic and non melancholic depression and I recommend you to read up on those theories, it can be greatly helpful in helping you chose forms of therapy, for example melancholic depression is thought to not respond that well to talking therapies so there may be little benefit in spending many hours and dollars with that therapy.
There is also the cytokine theory of depression which is becoming more and more understood.
Once you have some understanding on what is going on in your head or at least our best theories, you can then try to explain that to people around you, those that have not had a mental illness, will have trouble comprehending what is happening with you, so you have to make allowance for that, its a bit like a woman trying to explain childberth to a man, he will never realy get it.
Another thing that may apply to you are emotional outbursts like you describe happened at christmas, if they are full of anxiety, anger, frustration, others around you can see this as an attack and will not tolerate it. they will return fire and avoid you, this is what normal people do when confronted with threat, if you can gain some knowledge, you can explain to them that you mean no malice and can they just ride it out with you.
You can say and do some pretty nasty things when you are mentaly unwell and it is rare that others see this as the problem that it is and instead conclude you are a mean unfriendly nutter.
My opinion for your new years resolution would be to read up on depression and if you think it applies to you then make a long appointment with your GP, and discuss your situation, even write down your thoughts before you visit take that with you, it would also be good if your husband can come with you to get greater insight. the Dr may suggest some medication but you can also ask him for a mental health plan, that will give you 10 appointments per year with a psychologist covered by medicare. you may find psychology of benefit, you may not, if not then you might try to see a psychiatrist, they can add other medication to the mix, you can research the medications used, you could see a psychiatrist first but they are expensive and there are not many of them so you could wait a long time, many months, for an appointment. while your doing this you could try to make contact with your children and parents explain the situation and ask if in some small way they can help you, it may be just to go for a walk in the afternoon something simple. have your children given you any indication as to what their grievance is?
If you have had mental illness for a long time, years, you can not fix it on your own it is beyond something you can "just get over"
You may do all this and find it does not fix the problem, but it is the best we know how to treat it at this time, it will be slow work, but you need to persist, there will be setbacks. the alternative is to continue as you are now, which does not seem to be working for you.
On the other hand you may find treatment that greatly improves your state of mind, as many people do, so it is important that you try.
I hope that helps
