Trigger warning: this post will contain description of self-harm and suicidal thoughts

Hi everyone,

I am wondering if anyone can offer me advice or potentially sympathize with me if you have ever gone through a similar situation.

For the past few years I have been living in a state of near-constant panic. The main component of my anxiety has been centered around health anxiety. I have been to my GP many times about various heart problems I thought I had, and was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). As of now I have not received any medication or therapy for it. I have not talked to my GP about any of my other mental health issues and so far GAD is my only diagnosis.

About a year and a half ago I made a serious mistake. After coming home from a party (I was drunk) and having a fight with my boyfriend, I started panicking that he didn’t care about me, so I started threatening that I would hurt myself. I remember feeling extremely emotional, feeling panicked that my boyfriend didn’t care about me, and having the intention of making a small cut on my wrist as a way for me to “prove” the pain I was feeling. I did not want to kill myself. The knife, however, was very sharp and being drunk I made a deep gash in my wrist. I freaked out and thought I was dying, and long story short, we called an ambulance, I claimed it was an accident, I got stitched up and was physically fine. There were a couple of other times that I made threats of self-harm but I never really meant it other than the one incident described above. I am prone to self-diagnosing myself with health conditions, but I now suspect that I have borderline personality disorder (BPD), or at least traits of it, due to threatening self-harm as a manipulation tactic.

I have vowed to never threaten self-harm again because I realized afterward that I was using it as a manipulation tactic and it was not fair to my boyfriend. I have not made any threats in a long time after doing a lot of work to understand my own mind. I made those threats as a desperate attempt to get attention while I was emotional and insecure about myself. I regret making those threats more than anything else in my life. I still have panic attacks and sometimes lose my temper, and my anxiety will escalate during insignificant arguments, but I have developed better ways of dealing with it and my boyfriend has been really supporting me through it. I was doing much better for a while.

Right now I am currently dealing with intense anxiety that I have BPD and will never get better. That I will kill myself eventually, since BPD has high suicide rates. I am having what I think are intrusive thoughts about suicide. I do NOT want to kill myself! But thoughts keep running through my head such as “imagine how easy it would be to take a knife and slit your throat”, “look at those knives over there, what if you just picked one up and killed yourself”, “what if you lose control and commit suicide”. I know other people deal with these intrusive thoughts about harm, but I am extremely scared that I will act on them. Every time I walk by a knife I get what feels like an urge to pick it up and a movie will flash in my head of slitting my throat. I hate these thoughts and want them to go away. But given my history, and the one time I really did hurt myself with a knife (and pretty badly too), I am so terrified I will lose control of myself and actually do it. It feels exactly like the health anxiety I am used to experiencing but this time I am scared of my own mind. I went into full on panic attack earlier today because I read that most suicides are done on impulses. Are these intrusive thoughts or am I really suicidal?

I feel like I am losing my mind. I don’t trust myself. I have accepted that I need professional help and will be seeing a doctor tomorrow morning and I am hoping he can refer me to a psychiatrist. But even then, it’s not like I can try medication can I? I read that most antidepressants for anxiety can cause suicidal thoughts – which seems like it would be counterintuitive to solving my problem. I feel like there is no way I can get better, despite DESPERATELY wanting to, and I feel like I am doomed to live like this forever.

Is there any hope for me? Am I a bad person and a lost cause?