CW: suicide, abuse, negative coping mechanisms, relationships, etc.

31/M here, currently taking Effexor for depression/anxiety and Adderall XR for executive dysfunction. Also in weekly cognitive behavioral therapy, which I feel probably isn’t the best modality for my issues.

I have my weekly therapy sesh tomorrow and I want to have a serious conversation about BPD.

Long story short: my teens and 20s were turbulent. Started therapy at 26 because I knew I was unhealthy and finally found the strength to try to fix it. Started meds at 27, had a big crisis at 29 and spent a year dealing with it, now here I am.

I really felt like I was doing better these past few months. I had days where I felt happy, confident, and good about my self-worth.

But over the past month I felt myself slipping back into depression, and then over the past week or two I started feeling increasingly agitated, and then angry, which is very rare and was very concerning to me. And now I’m back to depression again.

At least now, after years of trying to educate myself about mental health in order to maybe solve the puzzle that is my brain and my mental health once and for all, I can recognize when I’m emotionally dysregulated in a way I can’t control, and I can recognize a couple of triggers that really put me in the hole.

I now can see the idealization/devaluation cycle I go through with women whom I perceive to be potential romantic partners. Once my delusions about them are shattered, it becomes an enormous battle not to let my pain make me say or do something I’ll regret.

It makes me miserable at work, and I’ve taken so many sick days it’s a miracle I’m still employed.

I don’t know how to fix this. I wish I could.

When I get like this, there’s nothing I feel like I can do but sleep, and then go to war with myself not to act on impulse and inadvertently self-sabotage, and then at some point, maybe do the tiniest, most basic acts of self-care if I can muster the strength to do so.

I wish I wasn’t this way.