Debt and Mental Health - How have your debts affected you?

I suffer with severe anxiety and depression and am just recovering from my 3rd 'episode' and second period off work in just 2 years. I have had this since I was 6 and have been in debt since getting my first credit card at 18, 13 years ago. It is such a vicious circle as I spend when I'm depressed or anxious which makes me feel good for a nano second but then the guilt kicks in and I feel a million times worse. I have tried countless times to pay everything off but now I'm feeling a lot better I owe it to my boyfriend, 2 girls and myself to sort this out once and for all. I grew up in a family with no money and I don't want that for my girls. I have made plans on how to manage my mental health so that I can hopefully avoid another episode, now to make plans to sort out the debt. I'm gonna need a lot of luck and determination as its gonna be a rocky road!

I was very ill with stress and depression when I was in debt. Even now, when my debts are cleared and I have completely changed my attitude to money, I hate it when the phone rings or the doorbell goes, or when the post arrives because it reminds me of when I was being chased by debt collectors.

I still take anti-depressants, and I'm very anxious compared to how I used to be. I hate it.

There is no once answer, of course. I was a big fat person, and I thought losing weight would "cure" my depression. Lost 6 stones, but nope, didn't feel better. I'm paying off debts, and do see that though as a "light at the end of the tunnel." Hopefully.

On another thing, when I was training to join a certain telephone based organisation which "helps" people in dispair, one of the trainees was looking at a case study, and he said "Oh, she says she has depression but she's been shopping at the weekend. She obviously can't have depression if she's going shopping!" And he meant it seriously. Make of that what you will.

I am finally debt free. I took a £36,000 loss on the sale of my house which was a blow as I had put most of my time and energy in the last three years into getting repairs done and making it saleable. I don't have a private pension or anything so my house 'was' my pension. However I have sold it, paid off all my debts and have a tiny amount of savings.

I have a history of depression (very difficult childhood, two years of PTSD after an accident involving myself and DS3 when he was only six months old, marriage to a gambler who refused to pay a penny maintenance for our 3 sons after I divorced him).

I've nearly always been 'poor' (a survey I did last year which showed where you come in the UK range of incomes put me in the bottom 10%, officially poor and liable to slip into extreme poverty or words to that effect) and the depression is something I 'manage'. I feel as though it is something that will always be with me, I have lots of little tricks for cheering myself up and 'manage' to be happy most of the time but can get dragged back into the overwhelming blackness some of the time.

I have followed this column for sometime and wanted to contribute but not known quite what I should say.

I am still seeing a counsellor atm as I have various (mainly family) issues to deal with. Being the 'sensible one' in my family (a designation given to me when I was 2 years old) I have spent most of the last week moving my mother (and her partner, although he missed the moved after collapsing on the bathroom floor and being in hospital being fitted with a pacemaker) into a bungalow.

The timing was not of my choosing and it has been at times chaotic and exhausting (I had a hip replacement a year ago and have gone beyond my physical limits). I wanted to wait until the modifications and safety measures were in place. Just being with some members of mum's partner's family (mostly loud, some of them are routinely racist, sexist and homophobic - one worked hard but did the wrong things) has also been stressful.

However what I really wanted to say was that, it is only since being debt free (only 3 weeks tomorrow and only this week have I got my savings pot) that I am starting to see what a pressure cooker I have been in.

On Friday I went shopping with DS3 (done too much, could barely walk by Thursday and felt sick and dizzy when I moved). I bought 2 dresses, a twin pack of leggings and 2 tops. With the two pairs of jogging pants I have (bought to get through winter) I should be okay for the next 3 months. In the past two days I have gathered up the skirts that don't zip all the way up, the things I squeeze into if I need to, the once black but now faded grey - most of my wardrobe is over 8 years old. I have only bought things in the past year because if it rained for a few days consecutively I had to stay in (because I couldn't get clothes dry).

We moved back to this 'old house' (my original property) 15 months ago (the week before my op). It has taken 13 months to sell the up for sale house and I have been paying utility and council tax bills on 2 houses for all that time on reduced earnings (went self-employed to cope with the bad days after my brother died - I alternated between being super efficient when dealing with the Inland Revenue and the 3 pension companies and days when I hid under the bedclothes) caused by mobility problems before and after my op.

This house needs some work but I have had to live with it because until the other house was sold I had no money to pay for what needs doing and whereas when I was young I have (through necessity) tackled most of the repairs that needed doing, and even before the diagnosis which lead to my op I was still trying to do repairs even when I could only go up the step ladder for 5 minutes at a time, I am finding a lot of things beyond me atm. I am grateful every day that I am no longer in any pain but still hopeful that I will improve on my current state (kneeling down and anything at floor level were the last things to come back).

This is not as coherent as I would like but it is just the realisation of how much I have gone without over the past eight years.

Going forward I still need to be fairly frugal to get through the next 8 years to retirement. I am determined to get there and to live as happily as I can. My needs are fairly simple (the debts were as a result of supporting my 3 sons through university - the middle one had recurring health problems, including 2 rare conditions, which meant he had to repeat each year and was unable to work in some of the holidays). The other house was also a large commitment and probably I should have rented as was me original intention ( a series of minor disasters followed the purchase, starting with DS1 and his then gf being flooded out of their rented cottage and joining us the month after we moved in). I am very happy to be back in my original little house, now that it is just me and my youngest. Will be even happier when the repairs are done.