[skyblue22]

Dear Ben,
Thanks so much for your replies to my questions about my breakdown and subsequent depression and anxiety.
It`s taken me a long time to reply, partly because you gave me a lot to think about, and partly because I went on holiday with my mother aged 88, and she was
very agile, but three days after getting back she was knocked down by a big dog and broke her hip. You can imagine how distressing that was, I even thought about suing the dog owner!
Now my mother needs 24 hour care. I'm thinking about hiring a housekeeper to help look after her, so I can spend some some time in my own home, and see my partner who lives 50 miles away.
It makes me feel guilty though not as guilty as putting her in a home would do. I do want to look after her, but I'm having so many problems in my own life that I can hardly cope with running my mother's life as well. She's so frail now and she really needs a lot of help.
You helped me to see that GUILT played a big part in my breakdown: guilt that I was not with my mother when she wandered off in the night; guilt about having had an abortion, guilt about getting caught with a shoplifting friend when I was 14;
guilt about being away on holiday when my father died. But I don't know what to do with that knowlege, nor how to move on from it.I can't relate it to any previous trauma, though it may have been unconscious as you suggest.
My partner came to live with me in my mother's house after my breakdown, but my brother, who lives in France, came over for a visit and picked a fight with him, so my boyfriend went back to live in London, and I stayed on with my mum in her rickety house in the country in the middle of nowhere. It's so isolated, I feel cut off from the outside world. This website is great, it really helps to read about other people's predicaments, and your replies are so insightful, you must be psychic!

Also I'm worried about money, my mum helps me out at the moment, but she won't be here forever. Any suggestions for ways I could make some money and get off benefits while still caring for my mum and keeping my relationship going??
Thanks again for any light you can shed.

[Benjamin Fry]

Thanks for the positive feedback. I appreciate it. Iím sorry to hear about your motherís accident. I can appreciate how hard it must be for you to know what to do now given all the issues of guilt in your past. Perhaps this is another way of the universe unconsciously bringing you what you need?

Perhaps you can get a better mix of your time at your motherís house and with your partner. On a practical level it sounds like a good idea. You might even start to appreciate the positive aspects of a house in the middle of nowhere fifty miles from London. That would be many peopleís paradise. Then you can use the guilt it creates as a good catalyst for some therapeutic inner work.

Iím afraid I canít offer any financial advice. Make sure you are getting all the benefits you qualify for. Generally I feel that if you follow your nose to some emotional resolution the resources that you need seem to turn up to help you along the way, but I can understand if thatís a bit more woolly than the kind of plan you would like.