So hello everyone, I'm Lorenzo, 21 (almost 22), diagnosed with ADHD at age 12 and BPD at age 20 (yes I am getting treated for everything). I am really having trouble going forward, even though I've been in therapy for 10 years now. I know I did a lot of progress, it just feels like I'm not "moving the right thing". If I would have to find a motivation for this post it would be :

"I am alive, I am making it even though I didn't think I would. But I am suffering, it is very hard.

I need help, I don't know what to do and I work for myself every single day, but it is HARD, I live through these ups and downs every single hour of my life and it's draining me.

I want to get better, I want to be able to believe I can get better, I keep working and going ahead in this tunnel, but when will I see the light?

I am suffering, please, I need help."

Intro and random info

So there's a lot to uncover here: being born in a small town in southern Italy, mental health was (and still is) stigmatized there, I've always been "the weird kid" and stuff like that and really never felt "right" for anyone ever. They always said I had loads of potential, that I was the smartest kid they've ever seen, yet nobody ever told me I was fine the way I was. I've always gotten corrected for anything, my behaviors, my voice, my hyperactivity, and the list goes on. Everyone from teachers to peers to my mom and dad. I have this feeling of emptiness inside all the time. That is unless I use something to fill my internal void. It could be almost anything, from cigarettes (last about a few mins) to gaming (won't feel the void for hours), to porn, to relationships (sucks btw, stopped doing it the moment I realized), etc. I've been an incredibly rational person for about 10 years, I think about everything and I feel like I'm also very good at understanding things, problem-solving, etc., never really understanding empathy and emotions yet still feeling those things very strongly in some rare cases or feeling totally numb in other cases, this is been very ambivalent for a lot of time. I'm also studying to get a psychology degree because I feel like I'm really good at helping people with words and understanding and solving their problems, while also feeling good while doing it, I am also very interested in the subject and would like to help people solve their problems before they get as bad as me, so I might want to become a therapist -> still unsure, IDK how to get secure about this, studying is really one of the hardest things to do in my life and I kinda have a rejection for it from my parents lives (so yeah also weird acting empathy if you ask me).

I am one of those so-called "quiet borderlines" so I don't lash out (usually, rarely I do and it scares me honestly) and don't self-harm, I kinda keep everything on the inside. I've been speaking to my friends about this stuff for years now, but they can't really help me better than "being there for me", cause they don't really get me I think. I also think I kind of self-sabotage so that they see I need help and come to help me, even though this just doesn't happen usually because I self-sabotage but then I don't ask for help, I don't know why but I keep it for myself. (also the self-sabotage thing was realized like 2 weeks ago)

BPD and identity

I know that BPD is largely caused by one's inability to have a stable sense of self, but I have no clue how to get a stable sense of self, I search for my identity but it just doesn't come to me. I did find a few traits, but they're not enough. Everything I try to build in my life falls off, and I think that is because your "sense of self" is the "foundations of your house" but I keep building houses without having the foundations. I tried many many times to get out of my addictions, and I think I have strong willpower and determination, but I just keep relapsing because the emptiness NEVER goes away, and it needs to be filled really, or I feel like I'm dying, worse sensation ever.

Yeah my emotions feel kinda fucked up too

Another thing I have problems with is finding my emotions... I've seen some dr.K videos about alexithymia and I can relate to them but I can't unlock the full package. I was totally numb a few years ago, then I got a GF and some emotions started appearing and eventually unlocked a lot of them, while still not really understanding how to handle them, they just kinda come in sometimes and I'm lost and wait them out or try to analyze them but I still didn't manage to control them well. The interesting part of this is that whenever one of my emotions goes over a certain threshold, I shut down. Like I'm thinking about "what is wrong" and "what should I do to get better", I start randomly to get sad, sadder, and sadder, then a few tears start loading in my eyes, then boom, shut down. No more sadness, no more thoughts, no more nothing. Emptiness at its finest, and I'm left asking myself why and how did that happen. At the same time sometimes I feel emotions incredibly strong, and I can't even describe how strong they get sometimes, I don't know what to do and usually try to distract myself from them, I'd like to let a very big sadness go away by crying for example, but I just can't cry, so it stays in. Then I go playing games and just numb it.

Small life story, and why am I alive?

I don't know why I am alive and what I live for, but at least I'm very rarely suicidal right now, I do think about it quite a bit but it's just like my "normal brain answer" to stress because he made his calculations and understood that no life=no problems, but I'm still fighting because I want to become the happy person I think I can be and I think was. I was a very affectionate and active and smiley kid when I was younger, it all just sorta became blacker and blacker over the years. Getting constantly bullied and made fun of for years wasn't funny. My parents worked 12hrs/day so I didn't really see them that much and I didn't have a good relationship with both of them while growing up (well my father didn't get in my life till I was 15, and my mom is just, IDK terrible in many ways... I still love them and I know they do love me btw, but I'm also angry at them and sad and all these things) and I started having fewer and fewer friends over the years to the point that at around 12/13 the only person who would ever speak with me was my therapist. I also have a sister but she is 9 years older than me, sho she left the house when I was 10. Feeling "invisible"?I know that shit.

I have no purpose, I can't seem to find one, and maybe it's because I can't find myself? But how do I find myself? I don't know how to find my values (although I do know like 2 of them that are very strong-> I value authenticity the most and then helping myself and everyone else feel good), I don't know how to find other things tho. I recently started a basic routine (like wake up, eat, wash, study, ... simple stuff that I never really got to become and habit) and I am trying to lose my bad habits like smoking cigarettes, weed, porn, etc. but I know it will not work in the long term, because it never does, it's like it lacks something to hold on to. I can force myself and I can be determined and work with it, but it always crumbles away anyway. The hole does not get filled.

Brain images go brrr

Another thing that bugs me is that when I try to be introspective (like 100% of the time, you get a lot of time to think about yourself when you're alone with nothing to do for years) I try to follow the tracks of my mind and a few things usually come up, even though I can't interpret them yet, so these are 3 that came up in the last few months:

- I live my life as if I need someone else to care for me. When I get into a relationship the hole is filled, because I get dependent on the other person, and if she acts nicely with me, I feel like I have nothing wrong going on, everything is completely fine, cuddling with my gf on the sofa is really the best feeling ever: it feels HEALING, it feels like the best sensation ever, the closest description I've ever heard is the one of doing heroin (never tried it, won't try, but the description looks on point). When I'm alone this never happens. It's as if I don't trust myself being the one who can care for myself, and I act consequently, sabotaging myself so that someone could come and help me do stuff because I am convinced I can't do it alone. When I have this person that cares for me it's like in the Avatar movie, where they link those 2 things from each other, and boom, everything is okay and exceptionally good. When I'm not in a relationship nothing is ok, the hole comes back, with my bad habits, addictions, negative thoughts etc.

- I feel like, in my mind, my self-representation is the one of a kid, and sometimes I even go into "kid-mode" (that's the name I gave it). So it's like the depths of my mind think I am a kid, as a 2-year-old. Kid-mode is something that happens rarely and in specific situations: with my ex-gf for example or with another girl I was bonding with a few months ago, the way it works is that at a certain point, usually after or during a moment of very high emotional stress, I literally feel as if I am a 2-year-old kid. My voice becomes lighter and lighter, I act incredibly insecure, I need reassurance for everything, I can start crying very very easily and it looks like a baby crying, not an adult, I can't stop and I need someone to comfort me to stop, I find secureness in those figures that comfort me and I act even physically like a kid (e.g. I once held my ex gf index finger with my whole hand while walking)

- I tried to visualize some things and I just want to describe a few of them that I think could be important:

• when I saw my ex gf again a few weeks ago, the next day I was feeling a very strong pain in my stomach (I somatize stuff in my stomach almost every minute, permanent nausea/burning is not fun at all) and after analyzing it for a day I understood that the pain came from the fact that I saw the person who took care of one of my needs, that can't take care of it anymore. The way my brain described the need is "There's "kid" me in a room, on a sofa, laying down with his head on a non-well-defined woman's lap. She reassures me, she cuddles my hair, she tells me that I am fine and everything is ok". Apparently, gf took care of that, and I can see it, but IDK why I need that, how it happened or how to fix it...
• Another time one guy tried to make me do this exercise of closing your eyes and imagining a big mirror, as big as the room you're in, wherever you are, and then walk towards it and see what the mirror shows you. Thing is, my brain won't let me walk up to the mirror, It just won't. But I tried to "ask him" a few hints on what I would've seen if I went up to the mirror and my brain, even if it didn't give me a clear image, told me 3 things: "1)there's a kid (and it's very similar to kid-me tbf), 2) he is holding something like a blanket/teddy bear in his hand, 3) and there's blood". That's it, no more info, and I have no clue what that means but I am surely scared of the blood thing.
• The last thing is that I was trying to feel my emotions and stop rejecting them (my therapist said one of my problems is I suffer everything, suffer as in taking stuff the way it is without acting, and I suffer my emotions because I reject them.) and I started trying to feel them and see where they'd take me, and first of all: this feels horrible, really horrible. because it always looks like something very negative, gets my throat feeling heavy, chest feeling tight, stomach hurts (also in the last months I noticed I feel pressure on my head ALL the time) etc. Second of all it takes me to places in my mind, it goes and goes and goes until eventually, it stops. There is a lock. No joke, there's a big ass wall in my mind. But I didn't stop there, I tried to get over it but I can't, so I asked myself "why" I can't go through that wall and my brain answered that "I don't want to" which kinda makes no sense, but at the same time it does because I feel like some part of me is behind there and he's also me, so we're split but also together and he is my more emotional/irrational part. Then I asked myself "why I don't want to go there?", and he said, "because it will hurt". I have a feeling that behind that wall there's a load of shit, I am not sure of anything but I kinda think it's: anger, sadness, anxiety, fear, tears, screaming, and voices of people telling me bad stuff... I just have a bad feeling about it. So my assumption is that, some time ago, I have no idea of when precisely, I just decided to take something that hurt me too much into a place of my mind where I would never find it again and close that place with a giant ass wall. The thing is that "21 years old I" wants to go there now because I have no other places to search I think, but I'm stuck. My mind creates this image of everything black around, there's nothing else there besides that giant ass wall. Also, my therapist said to "turn on the lights" after asking me what I thought was behind the wall, then he said should leave the wall there and think about what's on my side of the wall, where I can stay, and I kinda felt anxious at first after turning the light on, then saw a beautiful garden and I have a feeling that is my "present", I also perceived the presence of some good people of my life there but I didn't really see them clearly. I can see my therapist's point on focusing on what's present and making it work and getting better, but I also feel that this will get me further from the solution, I can more or less smell that something big is behind there and I am also fucking scared of it. I also try to meditate (even though I don't think I was ever able to actually stop my mind from thinking) and when I try to focus on what I feel etc. sometimes it just goes away, the other times it takes me to the wall.

Yeah so my psychiatric file needs to go on a diet

I know that's a lot to take and read, but I hope someone could help, it's also not everything, I was diagnosed and "healed" (apparently) with a social anxiety disorder, some kind of depression I can't remember, generalized anxiety disorder... I do have some "clinically relevant traits" of dependant personality disorder, obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, schizoid personality disorder, and schizotypal personality disorder, although all the personality disorder traits are pretty low on the scale compared to the BPD which is on a very high number.

TL;DR

Got ADHD, BPD, sad past, feel loneliness, anger, sadness, anxiety, became addicted to gaming, cigarettes, weed, (alcohol but I quit it for good yrs ago), feel like I need someone else to take care of me cause I can't alone, self-sabotage so I can get someone to help me, use everything possible to fill my internal void which is never satisfied, have some weird emotions locked somewhere where I can't get, got no purpose in life while still struggling to find one, got no stable sense of my self-identity, weird "kid-mode", keep trying to become a good functional human with all my heart and determination but also keep failing probably cause all my intentions and work lack a good foundation to start from, aaaaaand idk probably loads more but that's what I'd say.

If you have any questions feel free to ask everything, I will try to answer the best way I can.