I can't tell what is real anymore
Hi again, just needed to vent :'). I recently went on antidepressants because of suicidal thoughts that were starting to scare me as I found myself constantly fantasising about death. I cry so much less now, I don't feel like I will burst from emotion like I did before and just in general am less distressed but being like this has brought so much back. I am still mentally ill but to a lesser extent and firstly, I would like to say I am happy to no longer constantly want to die and kill myself, I'm happy to not constantly obsess over disasters I think I can tell are coming and to not binge on food so often. It has made those symptoms almost completely disappear which helps me not feel like I am going insane anymore.
This sounds good BUT, now that things are no longer so emotionally intense, I have realised that the intense emotion was actually protective and was drowing out the negative voices that I can notice now that were always there, but I was distracted from. It's taken me back to where my mental illness was 5 years ago where I had a wider range of emotions and longer periods of normality, but periods where I am weirdly hyper have also come back with the ability to feel happy again. To be honest, I was still experiencing them but I can remember them when they pass now. It has also made me realise how many memories I had blocked out and forced myself to forget, as well as symptoms I had told the psychiatrist I experienced rarely, but were actually regular and I blocked them out. I also am realising how much I was gaslit by multiple therapists, who told me what I said I was feeling wasn't real or exaggerated. So many symptoms of mental illness I was too distracted to see have also become apparent and then on top of that I found out from my therapist that I dissociate most of the time (something my previous therapist told me I was making up). I'm so confused now, it feels like discovering you are an entirely different person to who you thought you were and it is overwhelming.
Having all these memories come back that I made myself forget, and aspects of my personality I had not been in touch with for years is also so confusing. In the past I could fall back on thinking of suicide to calm down but I don't have that to fall back on now and all the memories are just triggering me constantly as they flood in. I don't know who I am anymore, and now I can't tell what thoughts are true and false sometimes or if the things that are coming back are real or not.
As a result, I have become on edge as more floods back and when that happens i start to become impulsive and self destructive and I feel that I deserve bad things. i'm currently scared because I went out and bought razors and I am planning to cut myself because I feel like I deserve it and maybe I am faking all my emotions because I don't feel connected to myself. This isn't because my medication, I've had some ups and downs but I was stable until I had a conversation that triggered me, recovered and then had something else trigger me again. I feel like I'm losing control and can't make sense of myself anymore.
