It sucks to be alone! It also sucks to not be able to afford group therapy! Share your experiences with free support groups from whatever perspective of recovery.

I've been going to two, with a generally positive experience. My experience so far is that it's lovely to have a support group at all; that's about 80% of the benefit. The details of the remaining 20% vary.

1) Emotions Anonymous is a recovery group modified from traditional 12 Step recovery programs like AA or NA. I've been going about once a week for about a year, now. The only requirement to join is a "desire to become better emotionally." It's very diagnosis-agnostic, so there are a diversity of psychological geogrpahy. Most of the people I meet there are bipolar, BPD, or suffering from PTSD, with a couple of DID cases. Meetings are supposed to be safe sharing spaces, meaning no unasked advice or commentary on others sharing. I'd say the major benefit other than a sharing space is the anonymity. The structure of the 12 steps might help some people and might frustrate others. The major con, to me, is the higher power stuff.

https://emotionsanonymous.org/

2) The Icarus Project is a mutual-aid network and support system for people dealing with Mental Health Challenges that normally get called mental illness. I've attended about three meetings in my lifetime. Groups are organized autonomously and non-heriarchically, and groups provide a variety of functions. It is implicitly anarchist, and as such a lot of the literature it offers links mental health policy to repressive political apparati like the prison system. The major thing I like about Icarus is that it is harm reductive and self determinative regarding diagnosis, medication, and treatment options. The hardest part of making the groups happen is that it's hard to get political activists interested in mental health and it's hard to get emotionally debilitated people interested into politics.

https://theicarusproject.net/

Oh, and Icarus has tons and tons of really good resources though, including a 1 page handout of crisis advice and space to write an advance directive. I highly recommend that anyone with BPD fill out a 1 page sheet on your needs during a crisis rather than let random medical professionals guess at your needs and preferences.

https://theicarusproject.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/IcarusNavigatingCrisisHandoutLarge05-09.pdf

Anyway I'd really welcome any additions to these resources or other groups that people have worked with.