Hi thanks for clicking.

I think it is best to explain our story and what is going on.

I am 26M and she is 27F.

We started dating for over 10 months now and have recently started talking about future/marriage. However meanwhile, my GF had to go to a 2 months overseas business trip. Being there, she experienced a lot of stress. She was positive for covid, health checkup found some things in her body, so she is on meds. Plus, potential career change. She finally came back about a week ago but things are not the way it used to be.

She was the brightest girl that I've ever known but during the business trip, her communication started lacking. Me being her concerned BF brought the topic and was very apologetic. Week later, it wasn't getting better so I brought it up again and she said "I am disappointing you again, I don't know why I am doing this". At this point, her flight was literally the next day I said "it will be better to work it out together face to face" and she came back.

While we were laying in her bed, she confessed to me that her symptoms came back. She said that she is having panic attacks, heart is beating quickly all the time, dizziness, decreased appetite, etc. Her depression is making her so unwilling to do anything, wants to be alone. She said, "I wanted to cut everything off and hide somewhere when I was on the business trip". This clicked to me because when I said about communication, this was part of the reason. I didn't know what she was going through.

I was thankful. Even though I do not know a lot about panic disorder and depression, the courage she had to tell me all of this, I was so thankful. Just as she said, she could have cut herself away from the society and never returned. But because she loved me so much, she confessed everything to me. From how her childhood was like since baby till now. She has explained to me that she was first diagnosed with severe depression back in college (so about 7 years or so ago). To relieve her pain, she told me she did some things that are not good, she cut herself, tried suicides, hanging out with the wrong people and most importantly hurt her ex while in the process. She confessed EVERYTHING to me.

I asked her "then, how did you get better?" she replied, "I've just kept myself very busy, only focusing on work and taking meds. Then at one point, I felt better, since then I've stopped taking meds and it came back now".

She said she wanted to rethink our relationship. She believes that she doesn't deserve to be my GF, as she fears she won't be able to satisfy me. She doesn't want me to get broken because of her, and believes that it's already affecting me. She is in a dilemma, she is a very realistic thinker as I am also, realistically, it's so much easier to end things now and move on, but emotionally, we love each other so much that we don't want to lose each other. I can 100% sure that, if I lose her now, I will forever regret it. Because of this, she wants to rethink our relationship. Painfully she said, "I don't want to be like this, I want to be normal and love you normally with my heart's content, I don't want you to see this side of me. I want our relationship to be in equal terms Not patient vs regular person."

Me, having little knowledge about her symptoms couldn't speak much but all I could say was "I want to be with you" "I know that I can't fix you as I am no doctor, but I want to be the person that you can always trust and lean on when you are at the hardest." "to be honest, if I didn't think of you that seriously, I would have already given up. But you know me, I have a serving personality I want to help as much as I can. I don't want to give up especially if I didn't even tried anything." She said, "I know you so well, what about yourself? you need to take care of yourself first, you need to respect yourself". I reciprocate saying that, "If I want to be greedy for myself is that I want to hold hands with you forever and go through this together". I've confessed as much as I could and we hung up from there.

This was literally last night, but since then I've been researching and studying about panic disorder and depression, where the problem originates from, to what kind of treatments there are. GF is currently only taking depression meds as that can do self harm but from research, she needs to treat both at the same time, as depression and panic disorders are often linked to each other. She told me that taking depression and panic disorder meds have opposite reactions. I've been searching and participating in youtube live streams with doctors and was told that that is really common. But it's only in the beginning phase, as long as you keep taking meds and therapy religiously, it will get better.

It is commonly said that you want to treat it first with meds, and slowly easing off the dosage with good Cognitive behavioral therapy for panic disorder. Relieving through med is very effective and may or may not be cured but having a proper Cognitive behavioral therapy will enhance her ability to cope with it when it happens again.

The point is that, when she makes up her mind and reaches back to me, I want to say that let's take this very slow, you have so much stress going on in your life right now. Let's to see the doctor together first, if you can't make an appointment, I'll do it for you. Let's re-learn everything about it and take it from there. I know that this will take a very long time and I don't expect it to magically get better the next day. But I know that it will be so much better to do this together than alone as I told you I want to hold your hands forever. I want to be part of this journey and witness you beat this. If you love me very much, I want you to show me you are dedicated as I am trying my best. My love for you is still the same. Even after confessing everything to me, my love for you is the same.

Wow, that was a long talk. Getting into the title is that,
Is anything here going through the same thing? Your S/O is going through depression or even, you are married.

How are you guys doing? What things work and don't, any treatments? if you are married, did you find out after or before? do you regret it now?