I'm trying to put my life together, trying to finally increase my level of functionality which fell quite a few years ago pretty bad.

Background... After a decade of withdrawing from people/society into isolation for the most part (living online somewhat but emotionally detached even online) was when my acute mental issues started - I'm coming back from psychotic and near-psychotic states and from very strong so-called "negative symptoms" (I will refer to that as disconnected emotionality below), i.e. being completely demotivated, apathetic about the outside world... I went from the psychosis and near-psychotic states of disorganized thinking and the strong negative symptoms to a bipolar-ish manic-ish phase, then to a borderline-ish complete loss of emotional regulation with incredible emotional pain and extreme sensitivity and extremely deeply strongly felt emotions. The negative symptoms still being there in-between the manic-ish and then the borderline-ish emotional symptoms, but slightly less strong.

I am past these phases by now.

(The psychotic, near-psychotic phase lasted about 2 years. Then the bipolar-ish lasted another 2 or so, the borderline-ish complete emotional dysregulation lasted 1 year. Just recently left it fully enough.)

But I don't understand the phase I am at. What is it called? Can someone tell me more? Give tips?

And the "negative symptoms" part is still too bad too. I know that part is very hard to fix too... So, I especially want to hear all advice that could apply to this...

So right now... I'm still trying to develop self-discipline, regulation of emotions, and fixing fallen apart functionality overall. How I am now... there is little that I feel like doing, usually can just rest or can do easy chatting with people online. The rest I usually I don't feel like doing because it would be too painful then. Usually I need an external structure to force me to do things that would otherwise be painful or sometimes fear is a motivator too. But only very strong fear can overpower other issues if the external structure is not there to help me and it often isn't. So these two things can make me do things that are otherwise painful, but even then I can't make myself do more than the absolute minimum and I get tired fast. It is so hard to get myself to do anything and all my mental-internal effort still results in very little done in the outside world. (Though compare it to how I was 2 years ago: I was TOTALLY in my head with the still half-disorganized-nonsensically disconnected thoughts, and I would come out of my head for a couple of days every 2 months to actually do something beyond eating and training.)

If I was to force myself through pain, I'd feel like, I can't even describe it, maybe having had my skin totally removed and so everything would cut at me. But quite honestly I've burned myself out over the last year trying to go against all that pain and physically stressing myself out in various ways to be able to get some stuff done to work part time (onlne) and earn money (while I couldn't get other stuff done in turn) so I'm really avoiding that now.

So I don't know what to do with this. I'm tired and my head is extra-tired. Progress is so slow in this phase. My emotional dysregulation is still ****, I can get to feel like my emotions are all over the place even if not "borderline" level, it can still make me mentally fall apart (I may not actually get up from the chair, but have emotional weirdness running around in my head anyway), and even when I have the pain reaction gone at starting stuff (at night more chance of this), I still take like an hour to start anything if I try to focus fully on trying to start.

I can't keep this up much longer as it is. What is a way to get forward with this? I realize that when I have positive motivation it gives me a spark of positive energy and then I can actually do stuff without my mind being blocked and without having pain trying to start to do stuff. But I have zero idea how to get the positive motivation. My positive emotions are in general disconnected still. This is hard to explain but it's linked to my "negative symptoms" and to the emotional dysregulation.. If I try to feel positive, or it just happens spontaneously in reaction to something, it easily feels abnormal, disconnected from reality, feels like it is "too much". So a true, real, motivating positive emotion is hard for me to get.

I don't take antidepressants for the negative part of the emotionality (not much of that left btw anymore, after leaving the extremely dysregulated "borderline" phase), because SSRIs make me even more disconnected from emotions and losing motivation even more. I can ensure that without medication too thanks lol. A big part of my issue is actually to keep the emotions connected normal. To not have the "negative symptoms". If they are disconnected, I don't deal with any of my real problems either, not taking any steps towards changing my life. Basically, taking medication or just simply disconnecting like this from feelings makes vegetating acceptable. I still run back into the unemotional disconnecting coping mechanisms, but I am improving in terms of using that less but then I cannot do anything in place of the disconnect, because I am too tired and all I want to do is rest, or when not too tired, my mind is blocked and I can't think of what to do and how, in the outside world.

Some words on the emotional dysregulation, I have improved from years ago when I couldn't function AT ALL without the coping mechanisms for disconnecting emotions, and the very disorganized thinking rendering me still quite nonfunctional was part of these coping mechanisms actually. Then when I managed to fully let go for the first time ever, of the disorganized or disconnected thinking, I instantly fell into some crazy hole of crazy emotional pain. The pain is not as crazy anymore, I do not feel it much by default, but I am still having it in the way too often when I want to do something, and I am instead needing so much rest (both physically, by sleeping and mentally, by doing only very light stuff that doesn't tax the thinking: e.g. chatting with people online, or reading easy fiction) it really is not normal or functional.

I know I'm not doing things in an optimal way probably... I am still living very isolated but it would be very hard work to change that too, and I still have a feeling that I would still not be able to function if I suddenly was thrown back to living inside society fully. I.e. 8 hour work at a workplace... stuff like that... I'd probably break down from stress still, at this stage. Though it'd be a bit better than before I had the whole issue with the psychosis start a few years back, I'm sure.

So... thanks for reading all this or at least part of it... any thoughts?