I’ve been dealing with a lot of anxiety and depression lately caused by stressful situations. I wanted to know what coping skills you guys use for dealing with anxiety and stress.

Get to know me: I’m a 17 year old mom of a 7 month old daughter. I’m also a cancer survivor. When I was undergoing chemo, I had depression and anxiety so I was on an antidepressant. I stopped the antidepressant because it was bad for the pregnancy. When I had my daughter, I didn’t get back on it because it would make me feel like I had brain fog and I don’t like that feeling mostly because I’m a straight A student starting senior year and I’m a mom. I go see a counselor every week but I still feel like I’m drowning in anxiety and stress.

So the dad isn’t in the picture anymore. We never lived together but we would always stay at each other’s houses. His mom is moving in with her boyfriend in a city 3 hours away from us. He just turned 18 so I told him he can move in with me and our daughter at my moms house and I’ll help him get a job and enroll in my school. Well his family started telling him that he should move with his mom because there’s more job opportunities and he’d be getting paid more, so he asked me to move with him but I had already made plans to stay and go to college here and finish school, also I don’t want to leave my family just yet. It was just too much of a big adjustment for me. So I told him “it’s me and your daughter or your mom” and he picked to go with his mom.

The stress and anxiety hit me so hard because the thought of I have to do this by myself and I’m going to be a single mom in school plus I’m going to have to hold down a job so I can support both of us. Yes, everyone tells me “you can do it” “there’s people in worse situations” “lots of moms do this” and I understand that but the fact that all this is happening so fast like it was like I was fine then out of no where a car full of stress and problems hit me. I feel like I’m dealing with so many stressors at once and I started getting anxiety attacks and I’ve been to the hospital twice for it already. I can barely eat and my family gets mad at me because I can go days without eating due to depression and nausea.

Anyways back to the story, he was here the day before he moved and I cried to him and told him how stressed I am and it hurts me how he’s leaving me and our daughter. He told me that he’s going to come back after he graduates, he just wants to make money to buy us a house and support us. I told him that he can easily find a good paying job here now that he’s 18, but he was consistent of going with his mom. So I told him I can’t wait for him for 9 months to come back and suddenly appear back in our lives. So he chose to stay with me and he called his mom to tell her. I heard the conversation and when he told her that he chose to stay, his mom started offering him a brand new car and all these things basically begging him to go, so he changed his mind and chose his mom. I broke up with him and he started begging me to wait for him because he just wants a “better life” for us. After all the job applications I’ve done for him and the school registration papers, even though I told him I would get a job too and we’d do this TOGETHER, he moved today.

He has been calling me and texting me all day but I don’t answer at all. He showed up the night that he moved expecting to stay the night one more time but I kicked him out so he kissed our daughter and left.

I have this stress of raising a baby, going to school, keeping up with my health, finical problems and now dealing with a horrible breakup. I feel overwhelmed in stress. Now the littlest stressors get to me really bad. I’m so stressed out that when I went to pick up my schedule, I had an anxiety attack in the car. Everyone tells me “move on” “you can do this by yourself” “you’re stronger than that” but no one understand that i need help coping with all this. Yes people can tell me that I can do it and I know I can do it, but when I have my anxiety episodes, I freak out and they get really bad. Breathing techniques do not work for me. I use to pull out my eyelashes to deal with the pain but i need to stop that habit.

Any tips on coping and dealing with anxiety/stress for moms? Please share your tips! TIA

P.s. he’s on child support and he gets her every other weekend.