It is time to come clean about the past few months. My depression is really affecting me again and I find this quite hard to admit to as it has been a life-long battle that I thought I had beaten.

On the surface I appear that everything is okay, I live each day as a lie and give others advice on how to cope when I'm really not coping myself. I find each day a real struggle at the moment and just want to hide away from the world. I dread waking up each morning as the dark cloud descends on me as soon as I wake up and I can't shift my thoughts into positive ones. At the moment the only thing I look forward to is sleep as it allows me an escape from my own mind.

I feel like I shouldn't even be feeling like this, I have a house, a job, a beautiful daughter and a loving SO.

I'm already on a shed-load of medication for bipolar disorder amongst other things, see a psychiatrist regularly and have tried working with a therapist. I have all the self-help books, a list of coping mechanisms and resources from group work in the past but nothing seems to be working at the moment and I feel broken and unable to implement them.

Nothing seems to give me pleasure anymore, food all tastes bland, I have zero energy, I dread social occasions, I even dread the days I have to pretend to be cheerful for my daughter at the moment, I dread planning for the future as every time we do something goes wrong. My SO is wonderful but I feel guilty for burdening him with all this all the time and it seems every conversation we do have at the moment is just me moaning to him which I fear is going to drive him away.

I don't know what to do anymore. It just feels like my whole life is going to be constant spirals of mood and every time I think I'm winning I get knocked back down.