Hi Jo, justJo,
reading this thread I figured that even if it doesn't seem so, you're at the positive place right now. As you are giving youself a break. You're not pushing yourself forward any longer. And I find that to be a great place from which you can find your real self, dicover who you are and what do you really want to do. I'm not saying it's easy, but I'm definetelly saying you're closer to it than before when you've convineced yourself you're fine and kept on being strong, and there for everyone but yourself, so much that you've lost yourself in the process.
I was kind of mentaly in the same place not that long ago, nothing flet right, I was so tired of everything and it felt like my life is falling apart, I dind't know who I am any more, what makes me happy, what I want to do, nothing made any sense any more. It felt terrible. But now when I look back I see it as a place in which I allowed myself to free my self from my delusins, my fears, my ideas of what life should be.
I gave myself some time, doing nothing but playing arcade games for days with no end, like there is nothing else in the world, and than at some point I was able to look back at myself and start on making an personal inventory. For the first time ever I was honest with myself, I dropped down my guards, my protective shiled (that turnes out was only hurting me), I questioned the things I was always very deffensive about, and my paradigms on life as well, with the help of lovely people here.
I'm not much further down that road right now, but it feels good, like I'm reborn. I guess you could say in order to become someone else (or new me, or real me) I had to stop being how I was (or who I made myself to be).
It's a process and very hard one too, but it's wortwhile. A process of grieving my old life and all things lost in it, and finding ways to a new life.
In the beginning it helped me to make myself do things that sounded as something I should be enjoying, and some time later I did acctually start enjoying them.
I believe you did a huge step by admitting you're not as strong and fine as you wanted yourself to think, you can permit yourself now to take a break from everything you felt is right and give your self a permission to work on a new you.
Best of luck