I'm sorry you feel as though you are losing hope. Hopefully being here on PC can be of some comfort & support. You mentioned you're 60. I'm 70! My circumstances are different from yours. For one thing I'm now retired (as opposed to being under 65 when I was just unemployed.) I'm also not completely alone since I'm still married. (Her accomplishment not mine.) However, otherwise, I live a pretty-much entirely reclusive lifestyle.

I no longer see a psychiatrist or a therapist. I liked the psychiatrist I used to see. And I wouldn't say he was a quack. But he was pretty nonchalant about the whole process. The good thing was, since he really didn't much care about anything one way or the other, he'd give me whatever psych medication I wanted to take. (But, at the same time, he also never pushed me to take anything I didn't want.) It became sort-of a small problem though in that any time I would mention some problem or other I was experiencing, he'd be right there offering a medication he could prescribe. I think I could have been on a whole laundry list of psych med's if I had wanted to be. But I chose not to go that route.

Cutting your face must be so difficult for you. It's such a visible area & being that you're a professional at work, that must make it doubly difficult. I can understand your comment about people wondering but not asking. My experience is that, in most cases, people would really rather not know. I still have a few little compulsive things I do. At my age, I've just decided it's not worth worrying about. Fortunately it's all stuff I can keep to myself. I think it's an anxiety thing. My experience, at least, has been that the older I have gotten, the more difficulty I have with generalized anxiety.