Family ties that bind

Seems that this craziness runs in the family. Somebody drank some bad water some years down in the gene pool. Seems that everybody in the entire family has some sort of mental illness. My grandmother died in a mental hospital. My mother has extensive mental problems, my father has issues of his own but just will not admit them. My fathers issues played into how he parented us and he made our lifes miserable most of the time he was around. He always had a reason or excuse for what he did.
My aunt is mentally ill and has spent years in and out of the mental hospital. My cousin has problems as well but like my father she will not admit to them. My brother has problems. 3 of my 4 children so far show signs of problems. 2 of them are medicated already. My grandfather had anxiety issues and had agoraphobia so badly that he never even took the trash out because he did not go outside and when he died he had like 10 years of trash in his house. I remember when we were younger that he wanted us to call him every night at 5pm. He told us that if he did not answer then to call the ambulance because it meant something was wrong with him. We called him everyday at 5pm for many years, I did not realize until recently that he was probably thinking that he would die alone and nobody would know.
All of my relatives on my moms maternal side of her family is mentally ill. SOme more then others but all of them are diagnosed with something.
The thing is, most of them were diagnosed in their teens. My mom and aunt were mentally ill at a young age so I figured by the time I hit 30 I had lucked out..guess it was just waiting for the right time to pop up for me.
Looking back I had lots of signs and symptoms of mental problems growing up but just never came out about them. I had bouts of depression where I would write poems about killing or harming myself.
I also self harmed myself numerous times, sometimes to make myeslf feel better, sometimes for sympathy and love. I will make another post about my self harming as this post is getting rather long.

Looking for a purpose

I have decided that part of why I am so depressed and anxious is because I feel like this is all there is to life. Suffering, grief, problems, pain etc. I feel like death is some scary event and is the end of everything. I started thinking that maybe if I thought about it differently then maybe it would not be so scary. I started thinking about the religious people who have faith that this is not all there is. That there is eternal life and that this is just a very small part of the entire scheme of things. Thier faith allows them to know that they will have more then just this life. I think if I knew that for sure, then I would not be so depressed or anxious about death.
I have OCD and my thoughts are all on death and dying and illness. I sometime go over in my head about what I will feel like when I am on my death bed, what will I feel what will I think. I focus on how I will die, who will be with me. It is not a good thing to think about and for me it is all in a negative view. If I could find a positive out of it, maybe I could stop worrying just a bit.
I have started meeting with a very very nice gal, we shall call her R lol.....just for her privacy. Well she is teaching me about the bible and about being saved. She is not pushy about it and I really want to learn. I have some devotionals that I am reading. I also found some really neat passages in Matthew that actually sound like they are talking about not worrying about things because there is a plan.
The last few days when I started to feel a panic attack coming on I would just think about my visits with R and try to focus on the fact that there is a plan and to just say to myself that if it is my time to go then that is fine..for some reason that has helped me relax a bit. To just go with the flow I guess. I figure there is no point in fighting it, if I am going to die then I guess I will not worry about it anymore.

June 2006

Well...June is over now but it was not a very good month.
I had panic attacks on and off in the beggining of the month. I have not had a panic attack now for almost 3 weeks but have been on the verge of one on and off the past week. I am definatly not doing as well as I had been. I do have good days. Some days are very good days. I have gone shopping. I have gone out more. I just do not feel like my panic is as well under control as it used to be.
My mornings are rough. I wake up wondering if I will have a panic attack.
I feel like an awful mom because the days that I am not doing well I do not want to do anything with the kids. I just can not deal with them and a panic attack at the same time.
I also felt betrayed by some of my friends from a forum I go to. I was very hurt and it caused lots of panic and upset for me. I am trying to stay away from feeling like that but I am sensitive to stuff and it hurt me that friends would question something about me like that...

april and may

April was a fairly good month, I got my decision letter about getting ssdi and it was my sons 4th bday.
I feel like I missed out on a lot of his last 2 years because i have been consumed with my own problems but in reality I feel like I spend lots of time with him and he loves me and knows I love him.
I had gotten out more. I went to the mall and even went to the clinique store....oh wow. I have not been to the mall in ages. I felt like a kid in the candy store. Well, I started not feeling good that day with a headache etc.
I had just raised my wellbutrin dose to 400mg so thought maybe that was it. We went out to dinner ( another big thing for me...) and I could not eat. I just did not feel right. By the time I came home I had a feeling that it was anxiety. I had done so well for almost a year. I went to bed but could not sleep. My husband had to work the next day....and I started with a huge panic attack. My oldest child was not home to help me with the younger kids. I was having such a bad panic attack I thought for sure it was not panic and that I was dying. I was moments away from calling an ambulance. I called my husband at work. I was crying and I could hear the dissapointment in his voice. Not with me, but with the fact that I started having panic attacks again.
I begged him to come home but he could not. I was taking more xanax but really just wanted to go to bed. I called my mom and for the first time in many years she was willing to help me, she took the 2 younger kids for 2 hours. I laid down and slept. I woke up still feeling out of sorts and very depresses. I cried the rest of the day.
I then talked myself into thinking that maybe it was just a one time incident. That maybe the panic attacks are not back, it was just one attack. Even though I had a feeling that maybe the lexapro was not working anymore.
Well...I had another panic attack the next day, and the next. I called the psych dr crying. The first thing he did is tell me to take more xanax and then to stop the wellbutrin....thinking maybe it was the increased dose of wellbutrin. He thought it was unlikly but was not sure, so I stopped taking it. I had a few good days so breathed a sigh of relief that it was the wellbutrin. Well....more panic attacks.
I was sooo frustrated. I actually asked my husband if he would help me kill myself. This freaked him out. I just do not want to live this way at all. I can deal with most of the symptoms of anxiety, the GAD, the social anxiety, the agoraphobia etc but I just can not deal with the feeling of the panic attacks. The feeling that I can not breath and that I am dying
I called the psych dr again....we discussed either stopping the lexapro and taking zoloft or raising the lexapro to an above normal dose. I was a bit skeeved at taking a dose of lexapro above what is a normal dose but was willing to try it. The dr had me take the extra dose while we were on the phone...and some more xanax.
I felt a bit better that at least we were trying something new.
I spent the next week just sort of depressed. Had some smallish panic attacks but took xanax as soon as they started and I got through them.