I have severe clinical depression with anxiety side effects, along with severe ADHD. These mental illnesses have impacted me in negative ways all my life. As far as I can remember my ADHD has been a problem in the classroom. I can never focus and every prescription I was prescribed never did much for me, they just made me feel worse and didn't help. My ADHD has been a problem since I was in 1st grade when I was diagnosed after the teacher rudely told my parents I have ADHD and need to be treated. She was right but that didn't mean she had to tell my parents that I needed to go to the doctor because "there was something seriously wrong with that boy's head". That teacher was terrible to me just because I had ADHD and made no effort to try and help me. She only ever excluded me and punished me for acting "out of line". I've been prescribed meds for my ADHD, but none of them ever worked. I've learned to live with my ADHD rather than trying to supress it. I embrace it rather than dread it, and its been great to me. I've learned alot about ADHD in the past years and how to almost use it to my advantage. I embrace the certain way my brain does things like putting off work until the last minute. Or even needing downtime between activities or just being forgetful. Putting off work is probably the hardest part for me (ontop of being forgetful), but what I've been doing is preparing myself for when I end up doing my work last minute, so its not as painful and goes alot faster. Even if that includes doing 99% of the work before last minute only to wait until the deadline is minutes away to finish. It gets stressful sometimes, but I manage. Now, my depression didn't present itself completely until I moved from Missoula, MT to Fairview, MT in 5th grade. Since then I've noticed myself become distant when things upset me or I cause problems for people. I'm a very indecisive person already so the depression has never been nice about my decision-making. I'm constantly belittling myself for mistakes that I shouldn't get so upset over. I also blame myself for things that are out of my control. I've attemped to combat this by doing a sort of self-coaching thing that I've found helps somewhat. If I find myself depressed I'll stop whatever I'm doing and do something that I enjoy or enjoyed doing even if i'm all burnt out from my depression. I'll talk to myself and write myself little notes that are possitive affirmations for myself to read later. It really helps flip my mood. Lastly, I have taken initiative by going to therapy and talking to my parents about what's going on in my head. This has helped greatly by helping me cope with these feelings in healthy ways. It took me some time to get comfortable with talking to my therapist about things. Over time it's been extremely helpful as she helps me with everything that I'm willing to share with her.