So for context, my girlfriend has depression and so do I along with some other mental health problems such as suspected BPD and some other personality disorders. We met back in August and we quickly became very close. Since we officially got together in December, we’ve both been very happy. Obviously every now and again we had a little spike but that’s to be expected as depression just doesn’t really disappear. Even so though we’ve always been able to communicate and stay strong.
However recently one of her friends pretty much left her. It was a 7 year friendship and it hit her instantly hard. Of course this is natural and I’ve been here everyday supporting her as much as possible.
But it’s been a while now and it just seems like she isn’t really getting any better. She started to slip back into some old habits such as self harming. She doesn’t class it as relapse but she pretty much put a razor to her arm and tested to see if it would cut her which obviously it did.
At first I tried taking an approach where I was very understanding. I didn’t get mad or upset and we talked it out but it seems to have not have done anything. I tried to discourage her after that which lead to her doing it in secret, it’s very obvious she doing it as she has loads of new fresh cuts.
Unfortunately at the moment she’s in Germany doing some work where I am in France. We can’t physically meet up for a while so it’s not like I can hug her and give her physical touch like I did before. I leave daily voice messages and text messages which have me ramble on for about 20 minutes straight about how I love her, I try and play games with her but just nothing seems to work. It’s starting to affect me now because I feel so powerless and I’m worried that this could cause me to end up having a serious breakdown too as I genuinely hate seeing her in pain. I’m trying my hardest and even pushing my own health aside to try and make her happy which nothing seems to work.
I know the most common thing to do is just have a talk but every time I try and voice my concerns she always lashes out on me. This happens no matter what tone or mood I use. Every time I try and talk to her about this, it just leads to her snapping at me and then she’ll cry and start punishing herself.
The only thing I really got from her was how she’s scared of me leaving too. I promised to stay and try and help her and she stated that even if I abused her she wouldn’t leave me. That really hurt me because that’s not what she should do. I told her that I would never do such things anyway and I’ll always cherish her. It’s clear that there is some abandonment issues going on here.
She’s also done some art where she’s chained up and being beaten and another one where she’s ripping out her art.
I’m seriously worried but I’m a loss as to what I should do to help her. I can’t force her to get help sadly and I fear as if this will get worse.
Should I try anything else or should I just accept that she has to go through this if she doesn’t want help and just pray she’ll come out of it ??
I really need help
(Sorry for bad English btw)