Effective therapies for ToM improvement?

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I've been having a bit of a difficult time recently. My best friend, as I've shared before, was diagnosed as bipolar II this year, and she hasn't been as available as she usually is. The times we've made plans, she has mostly had to cancel due to emotional problems beyond her control. I know she feels guilty about it, and we've already addressed this issue amongst ourselves. I don't really have that many friends, so her struggles with her own condition have had the unintended direct consequence of exacerbating my usual sense of isolation. Several times in the past few weeks, I have genuinely felt on the brink of committing suicide, because I'm just not sure how to cope with being so hopelessly alone. And it isn't just friendship that I crave-- it's also a romantic interest. I've never really had a significant other, and it tears me up inside sometimes when the friends I do have talk about theirs without considering how much it makes me feel like a leper.

Anyway, I know I've just touched on subject matter that could be taken from any number of posts on several of the different subforums here. However, the main point of my story is the one thing I've come to realize is the root of most of my problems. That is my difficulty with Theory of Mind. I realized this was my main issue about a week ago. Probably the primary reason I haven't got any social life to speak of outside of my small, tight-knit, but unfortunately also remote friend circle is my inability to wrap my head around other people's thoughts and feelings. With certain people, like this best friend of mine, I've become accustomed to patterns in their personalities, and I can sort of figure it out (although, I feel sometimes like I'm navigating a minefield when I try to figure out what exactly it is that they really want from me). Likewise, I've managed to become a master at "faking" eye contact and reading, and I'm slowly becoming more adept at small talk (even though I still honestly find it annoyingly banal and tedious). However, I've been reading Tony Attwood's Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome, and after reading the chapter on ToM, I realized that the cognitive processes I use to pull off these feats are much more intellectual exercises in mimicry than genuine ones of instinct or intuition. Inherent in that way of processing interactions are problems such as inflexibility (in the case of unpredictable circumstances), slowness (as compared with intuitive ToM), and exhaustion (because for me, analyzing people takes quite a bit of effort where I imagine it's relatively relaxed for the average NT).

Because of my ToM issues, I have experienced a lifetime of confusing, frustrating, and downright abusive relationships-- to some of which, I naively and needlessly subjected myself. My self-esteem is constantly hampered by me second-guessing my own judgment. It's so difficult for me to approach people, because there is no trust anymore-- not in others' motives, and not in myself to be able to defend against people who might hurt or take advantage of me. Even among my friend circle, which is very very intimate, paranoia resulting from mind-blindness constantly haunts me. I know this friend of mine is going through rough times herself. I know she's not ever going to intentionally hurt me. But her volatility is very difficult to take rationally sometimes, because I have an irrational fear of unpredictability.

I want to be a better person for her, and for my other friends. But most of all, I want it for myself. My entire life outlook is rooted in this issue-- socially and romantically, I feel hopeless and doomed to be lonely; the intensity of my latest depressive bouts is starting to scare me; my diminished self-confidence has, I'm sure, been one of the reasons finding a job has been difficult for me; then, of course, because I can't find a job, I have money issues, and that causes stress with my family; and on top of all of that, I feel like this also hampers my ability to write creatively, because even getting inside my own characters' heads is hard and I always feel they come out being overly simplistic and unidentifiable. Why is it so freaking difficult to put myself inside the mind of someone who doesn't think like me?

I want to be free of this paranoia and cynicism that draws me into assuming the worst of others and taking everything so damn personally. I want to be free of the sensation that I'm entirely self-absorbed, from the perspective of others as well as myself. I don't want to be so lonely anymore. I want to have enough self-confidence to try to meet people and not see it as a massive drain on my available emotional energy. And I feel like the biggest obstacle that stands in my way is Theory of Mind.

So my question is, does anyone here have any experience with or know of any therapies or systems or programs that are really effective at developing Theory of Mind?