What do I do when I don't have a support network?

Hi everyone,

This is my first post in this forum and I'm really keen to be involved and reply to some of your posts too. The purpose of my joining was to go to someone else that I didn't know to get advice on how to handle my situation when I have no one to turn to.

I'm a student and working, I have a vast number of acquaintences, a family and a loving partner.

I've been struggling with bulimia, anxiety and depression. It comes in waves of bad and worse but over the last few months, I have sought professional help through my GP, an EAP program available to me through work and now a psychologist.

Nothing is getting better and I'm just crossing things off the list that I earnestly try and believe will work and go back to old habits and the eternal feeling that we might all be intimately familiar with now. Throughout all of this, my partner has been my only real support network. He's lovely, he's been a real support and I love him a lot.

However, it's getting to the point that whatever he says, I know and can tell that I am beginning to take a real toll on him. The late nights, the rollercoasters of emotion, the situations at a metaphorical cliff's edge have taken a toll on him. Even when I try to bottle it up and shield him away from how badly I am so clearly doing, we live together and he just sees it all the time.

I have lots of acquaintences from work and university and even through volunteering and social circles that my partner and I both engage in. But I could never see myself opening up to them and having them be a support network. My reputation and my image is one part of it, but it's just having no one to go to that I know will listen. I have a couple of friends that I've retained from high school that this sentiment is shared with too. I live away from my family and there are reasons why.

What do I do?

- What can I do that I haven't tried before to try and get better? (Not medication, not therapy, not lifestyle changes as I'm actively pursuing/doing all these)

- How do I open up to people that are very much not privy to this side of me?
- How can I be less of a burden on my partner when I have no other real support network?

Thank you all. Already, writing this out has given me some clarity but if there are any responses I'm sure I will get a lot out of it.