My own home is making me depressed and anxious. How can I deal with it?

Oh, that sounds like a tough situation! I guess selling the house, even at a loss, is out of the question right now? (Because that would be the obvious thing to do from my standpoint.) 

If you are going to keep on living there, I would think this is more of a practical problem than a mental health problem, honestly. I would get the house assessed to see what is wrong so you have no more surprises coming and can plan to slowly start fixing everything, and meet with a financial adviser to assess what is within your power to do and what would be a bad move. 

That does sound stressful. One of the main solutions to situational depression is solving the cause of the depression, of course. Moving. That would remove the cause of your depression and probably make you feel a lot better.

You could also try seeing this situation as a unique challenge and use the chance to learn more about DIY. For me at least, mastering DIY projects gives me a great deal of confidence (especially as a woman). I read on the internet that one woman built her whole house on her own just with YouTube instruction videos. Gotta admire the courage! And just think about all the money she managed to save that way as well.

How about you get all your furniture out, have a look at it all one by one, and then do them up one by one in the style that you like? Get your friendly neighborhood electrician and plumber to go over the house and maybe in your neighborhood, they even have this, what is it, bartering system going on where you get someone else's skills in return for yours without paying any money.

I understand you are anxious, but there may be a solution to your problem. Being proactive always makes me feel better, anyway.

I experienced something that might be slightly comparable. We moved to the country from the city, and more and more, it became clear to me that the lifestyle simply was not healthy for me. I didn't relate to the community and felt terribly isolated, more and more as time went on.

In the end, I buried myself inside, and spending that much time at home only made me more down. I loved the house itself, but the atmosphere surrounding it was bad, bad, bad for me. In the end we moved back to the city at great cost, and I have been feeling so much more myself since that time. I know where I need to be now and I will never repeat that again.

In the end, a way out has to be found.

Well, that'd make anyone depressed and anxious! 

You can still use the normal range of techniques for anxiety though, and that includes imagining the worst outcome, really living it in your mind. What's the worst that can happen? OK, it's happened now. Life goes on. In one way or another. Worst case scenario thinking can help you realize that. 

Other than that a systematic approach to fixing these problems seems to be the way forward. Don't sit around feeling bad about it, make a plan to tackle this!!! Doing something ordinarily makes people feel better than sitting back and feeling bad. 

Well, nothing has broken since I posted this message. I was looking around this forum and some others, and I feel like a whiner for even posting about this. I was feeling so bad when I posted, because I had had to call the electrician in again. I basically got him on speed dial now. I could go on, but I won't bore you.

I don't think I'm suffering from a mental health issue as such, but I do genuinely feel awful. There is no break from stress. When I go home, I'm expecting something else to blow up (literally or figuratively) any second, I'm not exaggerating.

Moving is really not an option, not while the house is in this state. And I do love it, weird as it sounds. I just want things to be different, to have the lovely house I thought I was getting. There's no relaxing.

Whoah, yeah, that's heavy stuff to deal with, I can imagine how that would all pile up and really affect your mood all the time. I haven't dealt with this kind of thing myself but as a renter I've dealt with nasty landlords and landladies so I can kind of see where you are coming from... when I was a student and the landlady lived next door, it was pretty much like the landlady in cartoon Mr Bean, LOL. I was so happy when I was finally able to move on... I was constantly expecting a whiny knock on the door about noise, about people coming over, about anything and everything. But when you're renting it's easier to move on, though still difficult. I hope you find a solution...

Thanks Londongirl, it seems that you understand what I mean. I am confident enough with people, including landlords, but part of the reason this house situation is bothering me so much is that things are so much less predictable than people! And they aren't just random things, but things I depend on to live a basic civilized life. Like, you know, electricity, a roof that does not leak, that kind of thing.

I went from fairy tale to nightmare almost overnight, doing the right thing in buying a fixer upper I thought, not knowing all that was waiting for me. I went from responsible adult to feeling like a complete loser and amateur. It does dig away at me.

Hey, at least the internet is working. For now.