Why am i not making progress anymore [hopefully not toxic rant]

[Glides]

Suicidal thoughts are the worst they've been in years. Not to the point where I'd do something about it. There really isn't anyone to talk to about it, I never talk to my therapist outside of sessions and if I told her how intense they were, she'd probably put me in an institution. They've progressed to being almost non-stop.

It's kind of terrifying how horrible the last three months have been, as today is the third month to the day since I broke up with my now-ex, it feels like I imagined her. My mental health has declined so sharply that people are thoroughly confused. I'd made so many leaps and bounds over the past couple years and with a single break-up, every little bit of it came crashing down at once.

Once again, I'm terrified of talking to people that I'm attracted to. I'm terrified of pursuing career opportunities, I've stopped being social almost completely. I spend most of my time that I don't spend working lying down on some kind of surface and staring at the ceiling. My appetite switches between ravenous hunger and not wanting to eat for far longer than is healthy. My drinking is slowly increasing despite warnings from my doctor that it'll interfere with my medication. I know that I'm at the place where I'd probably take any drug offered to me just so it would fucking stop for a while.

It's all come back full force, and I spent two years having the existence of another person who seemed to like me as a buffer, and now that that person has gone and stated so thoroughly how much they regretted everything about me, the progress is gone. I actually liked myself for a while. People liked being around me for a while.

I have good days, once in a blue moon. Yesterday was a very good day. A rare good day, and the day after a good day is a really awful day because I then shame myself for daring to enjoy myself without my partner.

And god, the anxiety, so much and so much at once that I can barely process it, let alone fight it. I'm not doing better. I'd only had a crutch for two years, I believed I'd done better. "At least I'm not insulting myself directly! At least I know I have the capacity to date someone!" My mind struggles so deeply to find something positive and finds those positives, but the self-loathing is still coursing at full power.

And why would anyone be attracted to me right now? Right now I hate myself, no one wants to date someone who hates themselves or at least sucks at hiding it. And I so desperately want to date someone else, anyone else, LITERALLY ANYONE ELSE, because i'm so used to someone else filling up the hole, getting rid of it, because I can't validate myself, I have no value without another person confirming it for me.

I'm not saying it's true, I'm saying that that's what courses through my head.

There's just so much anger and resentment right now, so much it's almost unbearable, so much it's obvious in most conversations now, and the only people who can tolerate it are the people who are as miserable as me now. I put off a friend of mine because she called me this afternoon gushing about the latest person she's fallen in love with, and this is a person who very easily is able to find partners because she doesn't hate herself the way I do. She knows she's attractive, believes she has value, and so she draws everyone in.

She gushes, my reaction is barely constrained envy and jealousy masked as apathy, and I put her off completely. Shouldn't They be happy for me? Isn't this easy for Them?

God, seeing happy couples in public, that sets me off like nothing else. Every couple is beautiful, and their existence is like God mocking me for not knowing how easily replace the person I thought was the love of my life. I know it's not that easy, I know it's no fair to look for a rebound, I know this line of thinking is unhealthy. But I don't fucking know how to stop feeling like this, and everyone keeps insisting I'm doing better but I sure as hell don't feel like it. I'm just desperately lonely and completely unsure of what to do about it, the loneliness hurts like nothing else, I'm feeling physical pain because of it, because I spent two years being held and caressed and loved on and all at once all of that vanished.

I don't know what to do. I'm just ranting. I don't know what else to do. I don't want to go back to the way I was when I was younger.

[Werel]

Man, I'm really sorry you're having such a shit time of it right now. This is just a rant, so I'll mostly leave it at that, but:

I know it's not that easy, I know it's no fair to look for a rebound, I know this line of thinking is unhealthy. But I don't fucking know how to stop feeling like this, and everyone keeps insisting I'm doing better but I sure as hell don't feel like it.

Sometimes, when you get slammed with a mental illness flareup and a major terrible life event like a breakup at the same time, there's not much you can do to make yourself stop feeling awful. You just gotta ride it out. And that can sound impossible, like there is no point at which the wave will break. But it will, because nothing lasts. Just do what it takes to hang on till then, whether that's talking to your therapist about a more aggressive way to deal with the suicidal thoughts (please do) or finding a buddy to sit and stare at the walls with you for a while.

And if right now you gotta avoid people whose happiness is making you feel like shit? Do it. That's a better move than hanging out with them out of obligation and spewing your shit-feelings at them because you can't help it. If you do that and create more distance between yourself and friends who can't deal with those shit-feelings, you'll probably just feel worse. If there are people who you can trust to be kind to you when you're feeling hopeless and vicious, cause they've managed it in the past, hang out with them for now. I hope you have people like that in your life.

You'll get through this. Don't worry about "progress" right now. Just worry about getting through this miserable phase, and getting some more temporal distance from your ex, and trust that you've got the resilience to get back on the progress horse pretty soon (you do, and none of this erases the progress you have made, and I state this as a fact ).

[Hielario]

I don't have much non-fucked up advice for you since I susbsist mostly on stubborness and spite, but I can tell you something you can do about your friends.

I'm pretty sure it would be a good thing if next time the topic appears, you outright (but politely) told them that you'd prefer not to hear about their happy relationships; that you're happy for them, sure, but it's a very sensitive topic for you these days, with your breakup having been so catastrophic and the fact that you're still affected by it (keep it short, it's not necessary to give/remind them all the terrible details). And then you try to change themes towards something that doesn't shake your emotional bottle of nitroglicerine.

Does that sound like something you'd be able to do without being harsh?

Also

[Enail]

Seconding Werel that sometimes flareups happen and you've just got to ride them out, as much as they suck. And on top of a breakup, it's no wonder you're feeling awful. Sorry you're having such a rough time, I hope it starts easing soon.

Since you mentioned Borderline Personality Disorder, DBT is a type of therapy used for treating that (and seems to be growing in use for other things as well) which is supposed to be good for making it easier to tolerate distress, I wonder if something like that would help you wait this out, might be something to ask your therapist about.

Also, even in this rant, while you're feeling this bad, you're still showing awareness that your self-hating thoughts aren't reality, you're still finding positives, you're still working to counter unhealthy thinking; you wouldn't have been able to do this a few years ago. Keep trying to look after yourself, keep waiting it out, you can get through this and keep on progressing even if there's ups and downs, even if the downs are really hard.

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