So sorry to hear that things are that bad for you. I can relate - for the most part but I am in a position where I can afford to go home (and I do!!!!) on a regular basis because I reckon that if DH insists on us staying here he can support my jet setting habit (and he does!).
I think you are on the right track with counselling - I hope you have a good one. At the moment I am vaccilating between ACT Therapy and Cognitive Behaviour Therapy as being the best approaches. I tend to use CBT myself but I do like ACT (If you can find a book in the bookshop called The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris, have a look at it, it gives a whole new way of viewing the world.)
Some of the strategies I use are positive self talk - whenever someone asks how I am am, I say "Absolutely fantastic!!!!!" with smile etc. Say it often enough and you do sort of begin to believe it - it's a highly technical term called fake it til you make it
Another thing I do is thought stopping - it works for me but it doesnt make the thoughts go away, it just sort of puts them on the back burner (compare it with ACT which leads you to be able to accept that they are there and get on with life). Very simple - find yourself thinking how much you want to be at home say (or think) STOP!!!! This is a going home thought and I will only think about you between 3pm and 4pm, make an appointment to come back. Then sit down and if the thoughts reoccur between 3 & 4 then spend some time with a cup of coffee and think about them, write down what the issues are and for each issue see if you can come up with a plan that you can live with. Otherwise just ignore them and make an appointment for them to crop up at 3pm the next day. You do need to have a repertoire of positive thoughts to replace it with though - like writing your novel or filling in your family tree or even replaying the latest Rufus Sewell movie in your mind (Thank goodness for Rufus, he can distract me from almost anything!!!)
Set yourself time frames - if you can plan a trip home, count down the days (they will go very fast). Get yourself another source of income so you can go home more often, engage in some volunteer activity, go to the gym and get fit - in other words, cram as much into your day as you can.
If you find yourself in floods of tears - allow yourself some cry time (OK so people who have never been in this situation thinks that is stupid but heavens forbid that they ever get to that stage in their lives!!!) For me it was shower time - DH wondered why I was having 20 min showers given the water restrictions blah blah, so I told him - talk about gobsmacked, he didnt really get the depth of the feeling until then. (For me there were a whole lot of other work related things going on which have magically resolved themselves since I quit that job but that is another matter).
I am always happy to chat - I dont have magic answers but it sometimes helps to know that you are not Robinson Crusoe, that these things can be managed - it just takes a bit of work! Meanwhile, check out the "leaving" situation and see if you can take the kids home - now would definitely be the time to do it because it could be trickier for them as they got further into secondary school and the gap between the two systems would be blatantly obvious.
Good luck with it all!
