Anxiety/depression/ADHD I've been a mess

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As I've mentioned previously, I've had a lot happen the past year, and this week in particular, but I've found myself feeling depressed a lot, which isn't uncommon given the circumstances and the fact that I have anxiety and mild depression. I went two days without eating while my husband was in the hospital, and I didn't sleep much. I just kind of stared off into space a lot. I didn't feel like doing much of anything. Typically, I love reading and writing. I love watching movies, and lately I've struggled to really enjoy much of anything. I'm trying to slowly get out of my rut. It's difficult when it feels like everything around you is falling down, and you can't process everything, and your brain is trying to shut down to all of the things you usually love. I have never taken medication for any of it, but I was diagnosed with severe anxiety quite a while back. I never realized I had depression at that point because I always linked depression with suicide, and I've never been suicidal or wanted to self-harm. It wasn't until I started realizing there were many different layers to depression that it hit me that that was what I was dealing with. Over the years, I started realizing more and more about my mental health. A lot of this started when I was a kid. I was always a by-the-book kid who was terrified of getting in trouble; I struggled with my emotions and cried really easily. The adults in my life made me feel terrible about it by mocking me and making jokes about how I was a crybaby. It got to the point that when my teen years hit, I almost never showed emotion. I stopped being a cryer. I held everything in, and that made everything so much worse in other ways. Working with kids, I've learned that both my anxiety and depression are probably ADHD related. Something I never thought I had until I got older and started seeing the signs in myself. They are guessing my son has ADHD, which is causing a lot of his issues. I didn't realize until a couple of years ago that anxiety and depression can be linked to ADHD. When I was talking to my son's therapist, things clicked. My son is going through a lot of the same stuff I went through as a kid, but his is a little more severe. He also gets help because it is better understood than it was when I was a kid. I also have never made him feel like his emotions don't matter, the way I was made to feel. I was taught at a young age that no one wants to see your emotions. It made me hide them and has caused me to hide everything, and it has made it extremely difficult for me to open up. By working with my son and other children, I have started seeing bits of myself mixed in, and it has been an eye-opener. In the 90s ADHD was just becoming a thing. They separated ADHD and ADD instead of using one label like they do now. Girls were very rarely ever diagnosed with ADHD because they were diagnosed based on symptoms that boys showed, which were typically more physical, and boys often struggled more in school than girls did. They have found that girls are typically better at masking and do better in school despite their struggles. Girls are often diagnosed much later in life. I have never gone for a diagnosis due to insurance reasons, and having lived like this for my whole life. I have learned to mostly cope. When I was in therapy, they were shocked I already used a lot of the coping skills they taught, because I taught myself. I was older, though, and had lived with it for so long at that point that if I didn't learn how to cope, I wouldn't have been able to function at all. I'm still incredibly socially awkward and have always struggled with talking to people. I don't like big social gatherings where I am forced to talk to too many people at once, especially people I don't know. I struggle with stepping out of my comfort zone. I think the biggest reason for that is because of how socially awkward I am. I'm always afraid I'll make it worse. As I recently mentioned, I've been dealing with some depression that I've been trying to slowly work my way out of. It's a struggle knowing everything that is going on, but I've been trying to watch movies or write. I've been trying to do basic daily things like making dinner and eating. I am someone who can't eat when I'm worried; it makes me feel sick, but I've been trying to slowly get back into existing in the world. The hard part about depression is that it makes you want to do nothing. The best way to work your way out of it is to live and attempt to do small things you usually enjoy, at least that has been the case for me. I'm working on it. I haven't been able to read a book all summer because of the way my life has been working out. It's a struggle to read when your mind is everywhere else. Movies have been a little easier. I am trying hard to focus on the positives and take a breath. It might be a little easier if the world would ease up a little and stop throwing everything my way, but this seems to be how my life has always been. I always wonder how some people out in the world can go years without major life-changing events happening. Are there people out there who actually don't have at least one major monthly crisis? How does one subscribe to this kind of life? I'll be ok eventually. I know that. I'm trying to rewire my brain to believe life is going to be ok. It's just a struggle when I always seem to get a bad phone call telling me someone I love is in a crisis. It's to the point where I have some serious PTSD over my phone ringing, because it's usually bad news. I also struggled with sleeping for a bit because I kept getting woken up by a bad phone call. I was afraid to sleep. I'm slowly trying to get myself to remember that it's coincidence, not causation, which I know me sleeping has nothing to do with bad things happening, but being awoken so abruptly is such a difficult thing to deal with. It leaves me in such a panic because I can't process things right when I wake up. My husband called me on break from work earlier, and I freaked out, and he had to immediately tell me "I'm ok, I'm just calling to talk". He understands why my brain goes there right now. I'll be ok eventually, but right now I'm taking some baby steps to try and remember that life can be hard, but it doesn't always stay that way, even if right now it sure feels like it.