For pretty much all of my (21f) teenage and adult years I have been irrationally afraid of having my house broken into. My fear flares up most when I'm alone at my family home, when I'm at university it's significantly more manageable as I have multiple flatmates around and my student house doesn't look very desirable from the outside. My family house is mostly unoccupied as both me and my sister go to university and my dad often visits my step-mum in America. 

My fear has become unmanageable since beginning university, as I have been spending the holidays in my family home by myself for about a month at a time. To make things worse my house makes loads of weird noises (e.g pipes rattling, wood creaking) which makes me constantly on edge. As a result of this, I've been exhibiting extremely paranoid behaviour that has become increasingly worse. It started off with sleepless nights, staying up until 5 am so I was assured no one could break in overnight, then barricading my bedroom door with a small shelving unit, but now I've started barricading the front and back doors too. The anxiety this has caused me is unbearable and it has started to affect my day-to-day life, my sleep schedule is affected and ive genuinely thought about asking my friends to stay over just so I wouldn't be alone in my house anymore. I'm close to having a panic attack every night and I just want it to stop, I don't move back to university for another 3 weeks and I don't know how to deal with it anymore. I've always suffered from an anxiety disorder and I have gotten therapy and medication for it in the past but by far this is the worst my anxiety has been.