Hello Everyone~ this is my first post here, just need to find some understanding right now. I am diagnosed with Cyclothtymia, currently taking Lexapro and in therapy. I am under so much stress right now and for the first time in a long time I am getting depressed again and I hate this. I was off work for a while due to coming down with three different infections and my medical problems are still not resolved and all my questions are not answered. I go back to the specialist next week. My grandmother passed away and it was so hard to say goodbye. I am having trouble with my afterschool care for my daughter, but that will be resolved by friday. (I switched her) But it is causing me a lot of anxiety. I hate when things pile up on me. The person that is providing care for my daughter is a friend and there seems to be a problem and she doesn't seem to want to watch her anymore, but can't seem to tell me. I am met with a lot of attitude from her and i just don't need that right now. Sorry to unload, but I am having a really hard morning here and just don't have anyone other than my therapist to talk to about all of this. Any suggestions to cope? Everything feels so out of my control right now. thanks for reading.

Hi Snow,
You have come to the right place if you need someone to talk to. I do not clinically suffer from depression, but my mother does. And from time to time with the pressure from my relationship with her and other stresses of life, I feel I am very close to heading that way as well. So I came to this board, to understand more about it.
Trying to balance everything is very stressful and for sure can get on top of you and trigger depression. For me sometimes I wonder if maybe I feel more anxiety than depression, not sure......
But its just plain hard to manage some days.......right now, I am dealing with a tremendous amount of tension in my family....mom with depression and too many other aches and pains to write about, a grandmother who is 93 and suffering from dementia, ridiculous bitterness in a family that was once close but now has drifted apart because of my grandmothers illness....so many other things. On top of that, I struggle every day to get out of bed to go to a really hectic and chaotic job and of course come home to a husband and incredibly energetic 3 year old son.
My parents watch my son twice a week and my husband does the rest because he is on shiftwork. It's always an issue for my mom now because there's always someone ill, or she herself is ill, we've always had to juggle our daycare situation. About two months ago, we also found out my husband will be moving to full time day shifts and so all of a sudden we were left with a problem, what to do with my son. Had to stress so much about having to prematurely put him in daycare environment.....find the right one that we felt comfortable with...just struggle after struggle. Some days I just get plain fed up thinking why is everything so difficult? You solve one problem only to move on to the next. But what can you do? You just have to look at your joys in life, whether it's your family, your career, your friends......whatever it may be...and hold on to that.....But know that its tough to manage everything and only natural that sometimes things get so on top of you that it's completely normal to just want to give in to it for awhile.........
Like when you have a really bad cold, you dont want to be home miserable in bed sick, but sometimes, you just have to let it be and run its course and then the sun will hopefully come out again and you will feel well for another while......
just my two cents......hope it helps,
Carsam :)