Thank you both for your thoughts and insight.

To be clear though...I am feeling vastly better in many ways - and it's not that that's gone. I'm not having a set back as such, in fact it feels like going somewhere new and unfamiliar. It's this very strange sensation of knowing I have ironed out a chunk of myself and am a lot stronger and more energized but at the same time feeling a sense of loss. Loss I'm only allowing myself to genuinely confront now. Tis bittersweet.

Maybe this is the 'grieving' part I've heard of, where I stop shying away from looking at all I never had, and should have had, and finally acknowledge it? I have never really been able to do that before. It either made me a flailing mess automatically feeling my only real option would be to die, and so I had to reverse quickly out of the feelings, or I just denied/ minimized/ gas-lighted myself, I suppose to feel I was still ultimately in control.

I had a dark, dark mood earlier after a rough day, where I thought my sense of self-worth was slipping away, but I think I've managed to hang on to it by skin of teeth. Really pleased about that, that I still believe I'm worth something to myself, even if I'm muddled and doubtful as to whether I'll ever be worth anything to anyone else.

Ick. I hate therapy.