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Dealing with guilt from manic decisions

Dealing with guilt from things I’ve done while manic

So this is a long one, I’d appreciate any advice.

Last year was one of the worst years of my life. I was sexually assaulted on Christmas Eve, kicked out of my house in the Spring, forcing me to live with my narcissist boyfriend who cheated on me and left me with infections right after he’d convinced me to cancel my place at uni and all of my student finance. I also experienced sexual assault in my childhood as well as physical abuse.

Fast forward to September, I had to pick myself up and sort my life out. I got back into University, I moved into my new room and I was doing really well. I met a boy who is the most gentle and loving soul I’ve ever known, genuinely. He loves me like I’ve never experienced love before. And he’s calm, and patient. We’re a very happy couple, we have a cat and live together now.

The trouble is, all of these events more than likely triggered my first manic episode. It lasted about 3 months. In those 3 months I disrespected my partner multiple times. I was taking a lot of drugs at uni, I dyed my hair 10 times and cut it all off. I quit jobs twice. Changed uni course. I also convinced myself I was a lesbian and attempted to leave my partner for this and made a lesbian dating profile. I kicked him out the flat, it was awful.

About 5 months ago, my family intervened and took me to have a mental health evaluation. I went through the diagnosis process and ended up being diagnosed with bipolar and adhd.

Since then I’ve kept a stable job, my partner moved back in and I’m in therapy twice a week. He’s forgiven me and been extremely patient.

But the guilt is something that consumes me everyday. I feel like he deserves someone who didn’t do those things. My therapist tells me with my experience with men over the years triggered me to self sabotage when someone loves me properly but I hate to think of myself as the victim here. I despise myself for what I did during that time.

How do I move past this?

Thank you
Reply 1
Thats a bit of a tricky one and one your therapist is better plasced than anyone here to help you answer.. i imagine there are certain grounding techniques and whatnot to help but other than that id just try to put it in the past and leave it there to focus on the here and now with your boyfriend and make sure he's aware that said episode is something that wont happen again. There's only so much abuse, as it were, people will take in that space before they have enough so do bear that in mind.
But just look to the future in general and try to remember that your mental health episode was just that, an episode, and to try and avoid a repeat performance by sticking with the counselling and, i presume, meds. Equally though, it might help to keep him in as part of the process so he's well aware of where he stands and what happened/happening/will happen as little is worse than being in the dark in those situations where he's left to assume the worst.

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