When things from your past are still causing trouble

Okay, wall of text incoming, just need to put some stuff into words, to get it more organized in my head.

First a little bit of backstory, what my problems are today, and whats caused them. I went through a period of bullying from when I was about 11 until I was about 16-17 and moved away from my hometown.

When my parents and the school tried to help it ended up just making things worse so after a short time I gave up asking for help. The emotional state I was in was horrible, to the point where I was planning an attempt on my life when I was 12. Eventually the strain was just too much, and I emotionally flatlined. No more pain or sadness, but no joy either. Just the relief from pain made this feel great in comparison.

Over the past year Ive been going to weekly therapy sessions I've changed my look on my problems a lot, mainly by gaining much more of an understanding of how it works.

Getting closer and closer to what might be the source. I started going to my sessions thinking that my problem was that I didn't feeling anything, not really having a clue about why or what caused it.

After digging in it a while the cause that I did know about got cleared up in; the emotional state I was in when the bullying was at its worst. Back then I honestly believed that showing weakness was a bad thing, and feeling anger just made everything worse. So to stop this the "system" started developing. At first it was a very conscious thought process, every emotion would have to be rationalized and justified, if a bad outcome of an emotion, ie anger, didn't outweigh the good, the emotion was discarded. After a while of consciously doing this it became more automatic.

I stopped noticing it and eventually forgot about it, until lately. Over the past, I think 7-8 years, the system I set up back then to cope is still in effect, but it's gotten a lot more critical. It doesn't try to justify an emotion by looking at the most plausible outcome, but the worst case scenario. So, for instance, even a good feeling could lead to harming others. Acting on a feeling of joy or love could be taken the wrong way, or go further and until I eventually make a mistake and scar another person for life. So, even the best, or most innocent of emotions are discarded.

Even when facing someone honestly trying to help me, accepting help doesn't work. Taking help is taken as a sign of weakness, the main thing I tried to avoid back then.

I've looked at my problem the wrong way for a long time, thinking of the wrong things as the source.

First I thought the emotionless state I was in was the source of my boredom with life, which in a way is true. I never looked deeper than that on my own.

One layer down I found anxiety, the thing I felt when the emotions were near the surface. I then thought that the anxiety was the source of the emotionless state, and everything else. And for a while I was content with this explanation.

Now I've learned to notice what causes the anxiety, it's this old coping mechanism I put in place back then, and since forgotten about.

Whether I should think of this as frustrating or as a relief I don't know. But having seen that things just keep going deeper, I realize this might not be the real source either. But getting a better understanding of how things work makes it easier to live with I guess.