u/JustAnAloe

I guess everyone feels it differently. I would like to know how you feel this constant inner emptiness and loneliness.

Every time I am left alone with myself, I feel this emptiness as a pressure on my chest, squeezing everything so tightly that it becomes harder to breathe. It also creates the feeling of a lump in my throat. Because of this, when I’m in that state, it even becomes difficult to speak. In the most severe cases, it also makes me feel nauseous.

Does anyone else experience this too, or is there something wrong with me?

I’m a 27-year-old gay guy. For the last 3 years I’ve been suffering from depression and BPD. During these years I had several suicide attempts, but every time it ended with long periods of hesitation and desperately trying to find at least something to hold onto in life so I could continue living a little longer. The last time I mostly just cut my arm. Even though I don’t constantly try to seriously hurt myself, I often do automatic self-destructive things: tearing my nails and cuticles until they bleed, picking at pimples on my face until they won’t heal for weeks, etc.

My depression started after I was forced to emigrate to Germany. I didn’t know German, struggled for a long time to find a job, and constantly dealt with bureaucracy. At some point antidepressants and psychotherapy helped me get out of the state where I would wake up and spend the entire day lying in bed thinking “I wish this day — or my life — would just end already.”

Around that time I somehow managed to meet a guy from my home country and we started dating. But only a few months after that “better period,” I got hit again by a severe depressive episode, suicidal thoughts, and several attempts to act on them. I was hospitalized after one of those situations and tried to get treatment.

And it was exactly at that moment that my boyfriend told me he didn’t have romantic feelings for me anymore, that he didn’t want a “savior-sufferer” type of relationship, that he was self-sufficient and preferred living alone, and that constantly seeing, reading and hearing about how bad I felt was too much for him.

The stupidest part is that none of this reduced my attachment to him at all.

Even after the hospital I still tried to meet him and at least remain friends. But after one of my emotional message breakdowns he told me I was crossing his boundaries, that he would ignore me, and that I already had a psychotherapist so I should “dump all of this” onto her instead.

We broke up. But I still think about him every single day, especially when I feel terrible or when something goes wrong at work or in life.

As a result of depression and BPD I ended up losing not only my boyfriend, but basically all my friends too. They couldn’t handle it either. Or maybe just didn’t want to. At this point I’m not even sure I ever had real friends.

I had to change psychiatrists several times. The clinic where I stayed didn’t want to provide any outpatient treatment, and my previous psychiatrist refused to schedule more appointments because “we already have too many patients from Frankfurt am Main and the surrounding area.” Psychotherapy also didn’t really lead anywhere. Yes, I more or less understand why I became the way I am and where my problems come from. But I have absolutely no idea what to do with it. Mostly I just feel like a complete failure and an ugly person nobody wants (thanks to dating apps where I still couldn’t meet anyone even just to go for a walk or drink coffee together).

So what do I actually have now?

A more or less interesting engineering job in Germany. Driving school lessons. A tiny room in a shared apartment (if this dog cage can even be called a room). A few thousand euros I managed to save over the last year. And an aloe plant I bought after the breakup just so I could at least take care of something alive. Weirdly enough, it survived for more than a year.

And that’s basically it. No friends. No support from family. No real support from therapy either.

Every weekend I still lie in bed thinking about how I want my life to end faster because I can’t handle this inner emptiness anymore — this horrible crushing feeling in my chest and lump in my throat — and the constant loneliness.

Sometimes I get enough energy to do something, but usually that “something” is just going to the supermarket or drinking coffee alone in a café or park.

I would really appreciate any advice from people who have been through something similar:

How do you even continue living like this?

How do you stop obsessing over an ex?

How do you stop feeling empty all the time?

And maybe someone knows a good therapist who works in English or Russian.

I’m a 27-year-old gay guy. For the last 3 years I’ve been suffering from depression and BPD. During these years I had several suicide attempts, but every time it ended with long periods of hesitation and desperately trying to find at least something to hold onto in life so I could continue living a little longer. The last time I mostly just cut my arm. Even though I don’t constantly try to seriously hurt myself, I often do automatic self-destructive things: tearing my nails and cuticles until they bleed, picking at pimples on my face until they won’t heal for weeks, etc.

My depression started after I was forced to emigrate to Germany. I didn’t know German, struggled for a long time to find a job, and constantly dealt with bureaucracy. At some point antidepressants and psychotherapy helped me get out of the state where I would wake up and spend the entire day lying in bed thinking “I wish this day — or my life — would just end already.”

Around that time I somehow managed to meet a guy from my home country and we started dating. But only a few months after that “better period,” I got hit again by a severe depressive episode, suicidal thoughts, and several attempts to act on them. I was hospitalized after one of those situations and tried to get treatment.

And it was exactly at that moment that my boyfriend told me he didn’t have romantic feelings for me anymore, that he didn’t want a “savior-sufferer” type of relationship, that he was self-sufficient and preferred living alone, and that constantly seeing, reading and hearing about how bad I felt was too much for him.

The stupidest part is that none of this reduced my attachment to him at all.

Even after the hospital I still tried to meet him and at least remain friends. But after one of my emotional message breakdowns he told me I was crossing his boundaries, that he would ignore me, and that I already had a psychotherapist so I should “dump all of this” onto her instead.

We broke up. But I still think about him every single day, especially when I feel terrible or when something goes wrong at work or in life.

As a result of depression and BPD I ended up losing not only my boyfriend, but basically all my friends too. They couldn’t handle it either. Or maybe just didn’t want to. At this point I’m not even sure I ever had real friends.

I had to change psychiatrists several times. The clinic where I stayed didn’t want to provide any outpatient treatment, and my previous psychiatrist refused to schedule more appointments because “we already have too many patients from Frankfurt am Main and the surrounding area.” Psychotherapy also didn’t really lead anywhere. Yes, I more or less understand why I became the way I am and where my problems come from. But I have absolutely no idea what to do with it. Mostly I just feel like a complete failure and an ugly person nobody wants (thanks to dating apps where I still couldn’t meet anyone even just to go for a walk or drink coffee together).

So what do I actually have now?

A more or less interesting engineering job in Germany. Driving school lessons. A tiny room in a shared apartment (if this dog cage can even be called a room). A few thousand euros I managed to save over the last year. And an aloe plant I bought after the breakup just so I could at least take care of something alive. Weirdly enough, it survived for more than a year.

And that’s basically it. No friends. No support from family. No real support from therapy either.

Every weekend I still lie in bed thinking about how I want my life to end faster because I can’t handle this inner emptiness anymore — this horrible crushing feeling in my chest and lump in my throat — and the constant loneliness.

Sometimes I get enough energy to do something, but usually that “something” is just going to the supermarket or drinking coffee alone in a café or park.

I would really appreciate any advice from people who have been through something similar:

How do you even continue living like this?

How do you stop obsessing over an ex?

How do you stop feeling empty all the time?

And maybe someone knows a good therapist who works in English or Russian.

I’m a 27-year-old gay guy. For the last 3 years I’ve been suffering from depression and BPD. During these years I had several suicide attempts, but every time it ended with long periods of hesitation and desperately trying to find at least something to hold onto in life so I could continue living a little longer. The last time I mostly just cut my arm. Even though I don’t constantly try to seriously hurt myself, I often do automatic self-destructive things: tearing my nails and cuticles until they bleed, picking at pimples on my face until they won’t heal for weeks, etc.

My depression started after I was forced to emigrate to Germany. I didn’t know German, struggled for a long time to find a job, and constantly dealt with bureaucracy. At some point antidepressants and psychotherapy helped me get out of the state where I would wake up and spend the entire day lying in bed thinking “I wish this day — or my life — would just end already.”

Around that time I somehow managed to meet a guy from my home country and we started dating. But only a few months after that “better period,” I got hit again by a severe depressive episode, suicidal thoughts, and several attempts to act on them. I was hospitalized after one of those situations and tried to get treatment.

And it was exactly at that moment that my boyfriend told me he didn’t have romantic feelings for me anymore, that he didn’t want a “savior-sufferer” type of relationship, that he was self-sufficient and preferred living alone, and that constantly seeing, reading and hearing about how bad I felt was too much for him.

The stupidest part is that none of this reduced my attachment to him at all.

Even after the hospital I still tried to meet him and at least remain friends. But after one of my emotional message breakdowns he told me I was crossing his boundaries, that he would ignore me, and that I already had a psychotherapist so I should “dump all of this” onto her instead.

We broke up. But I still think about him every single day, especially when I feel terrible or when something goes wrong at work or in life.

As a result of depression and BPD I ended up losing not only my boyfriend, but basically all my friends too. They couldn’t handle it either. Or maybe just didn’t want to. At this point I’m not even sure I ever had real friends.

I had to change psychiatrists several times. The clinic where I stayed didn’t want to provide any outpatient treatment, and my previous psychiatrist refused to schedule more appointments because “we already have too many patients from Frankfurt am Main and the surrounding area.” Psychotherapy also didn’t really lead anywhere. Yes, I more or less understand why I became the way I am and where my problems come from. But I have absolutely no idea what to do with it. Mostly I just feel like a complete failure and an ugly person nobody wants (thanks to dating apps where I still couldn’t meet anyone even just to go for a walk or drink coffee together).

So what do I actually have now?

A more or less interesting engineering job in Germany. Driving school lessons. A tiny room in a shared apartment (if this dog cage can even be called a room). A few thousand euros I managed to save over the last year. And an aloe plant I bought after the breakup just so I could at least take care of something alive. Weirdly enough, it survived for more than a year.

And that’s basically it. No friends. No support from family. No real support from therapy either.

Every weekend I still lie in bed thinking about how I want my life to end faster because I can’t handle this inner emptiness anymore — this horrible crushing feeling in my chest and lump in my throat — and the constant loneliness.

Sometimes I get enough energy to do something, but usually that “something” is just going to the supermarket or drinking coffee alone in a café or park.

I would really appreciate any advice from people who have been through something similar:

How do you even continue living like this?

How do you stop obsessing over an ex?

How do you stop feeling empty all the time?

And maybe someone knows a good therapist who works in English or Russian.