@Anita:
What about Buddhism did she expose to you? It’s been a while, but she basically taught me about mindfulness and meditation, and breathing exercises… really didn’t delve much further than that as far as I can remember.

What is your understanding of the origin and development of your anxiety, depression and adult ADHD? My anxiety and depression have really taken off since moving out of my parents’ house. At this point it is not really a viable option for my little family to move back with them. About 2 years ago, we moved from my fiancée’s mother’s house, to a 5th Wheel Travel Trailer, sitting next to their house (because we can’t afford to live off their property right now). At first it was just a relief to be out of there and have some space, but as we have a toddler now, and two dogs one weighing 100 lbs the other weighing about 60. It is a small space as you can imagine – aprox. 26 feet long, and maybe 10 or 12 feet wide at its widest? With all of our stuff in there, as well, it makes it very hard not to bump get on each others’ nerves.

We have been trying and trying to get into our own place – but every time there is hope we seem to have it yanked out from underneath us. It has really taken a toll on us, honestly… and it has gotten real old, real fast, about 10 times ago. It has been literally every time we have some glint of hope… I try to stay positive, and I try to keep thinking that there is something out there that is going to work but it just keeps not working out.

As my son grows things get more complicated and less and less suitable for living in a trailer. I have been feeling this ever growing sense of urgency every since my son started walking more and being more active. Something has to change in our living situation and soon, or it will become a hell of a lot more intense (in a potentially bad way).

The ADHD has been a thing since I was a kid – not really much to say there.

@Jennifer – Thank you for your support! I do think the taking a moment to breath and center myself will help.

Any time my son does something, is a happy moment for me. His smile lights up the room, he is sweet as can be…
I love to draw, and I love animals. Those things make me happy. I wish my life was simple again and I could just focus on those things, as well as my son obviously.

I have a lot of difficulty feeling positive, because any time I feel positive about a situation it tends to go wrong. My fiancée feel like we have been cursed. Everything goes wrong. We have been trying so, so hard to get to a better place for over 2 years now. It is driving us insane. I don’t know how to cope or what to do. We need space, we need a house, we need support. But everyone around us seems to either “not be able to help” or put all sorts of impossible conditions to meet, or people are just greedy.

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Thank you all for your responses and support, it is what I need right now.

@Anita – We feel cursed because of how often things go wrong for us.
The specific people we are trying to get help from (which keep saying they will, but have mostly just been helping us stay where we are, honestly… which helps, but isn’t the direction we are looking for.) want us to jump through hoops to get their help, we are more than willing to put a fire under cleaning our stuff out and moving once there is solid proof that is actually happening. We still try to make progress, even without the “hope”. The conditions of their help seem to always change, or grow, or become impossible. It would be impossible to detail it here.

I am also ashamed to say sometimes my anxiety gets to a point where I am compelled to force myself to vomit, and not for any stupid self image reasons. I just feel some sort of anxiety relief afterwards, and sometimes when the anxiety levels just get too high, it seems like the only option other than having a mental break down. I do not do it every day, but there have been weeks where I have done it almost daily. There have also been months and months where I do not do it at all. It just feels shameful every time, I feel like some stupid teenager looking for attention but I’m really not. I guess the only reason I really do it, ever, is for the brief anxiety relief. Sometimes it even breaks a cycle of anxiety and allows me to at least move on for a short period of time.

Yeah, we cannot cover rent in our area, at all. We are trying to scrape enough together to at least buy a place, and have rent for a few months for me to get a job, or hopefully be doing Medical Transcription by then (something I am studying, and it is a work from home job). My boyfriend / fiancée is disabled in a way that makes him unable to work right now, so he is largely a stay at home daddy, which is nice so we don’t need to pay a sitter or anything like that. It is difficult though, living off of one income. Long story short, I support him and understand his situation, so I try to make ends meet the best I can.

We were never really taught “how to be an adult” and have social anxiety and other social handicaps as well which have made our lives more difficult as you would imagine.

@anita: We always dream of a house on a few acres, surrounded by woods and land and few people. We want to eventually be self sustaining, growing our own fruits and veggies, and hunting / growing our own meat. I would have my own office for work and art, and general use, my fiancée would have his man cave, my son would have the best bedroom, we’d have a nice kitchen that I could finally feel comfortable cooking in, and a nice big fridge/freezer, and another bigger freezer for stocking up for the winter and stuff like that. We want to be off grid as possible – it just seems to be the only answer for us to work as people. We shouldn’t have to conform to what people want us to be, and instead be able to work with what we have and grow from there.

We both feel like we were never prepared for “the real world” of being an adult. Our anxiety makes it difficult to learn on our own, and also detracts from confidence levels.

He grew up in a really bad situation, didn’t really have proper parents, and wasn’t really prepared for functioning as an adult either. My parents just kind of let me do my thing and did not really try. I wish they had been a little more strict with me, and made sure I learned the skill sets needed for adult life.

I’m not sure how else to explain it, I just feel like a kid in adult shoes.

I feel like I have forgotten how to learn, too, my brain just overloads with anxiety and i can’t think. I sometimes feel like Dori from finding nemo, the way she forgets things every 3 seconds or whatever. I cant seem to hold on to information purposely. I end up offending people in conversation cus I can’t remember things they just said.