It wasn't so bad, for a while. Because for a while, he didn't know he wasn't entirely cured. Bruce mourned Talia, and the signs of illness - almost mimicking the warnings signs of impending schizophrenia in its application - were simply ignored and passed off as his normal, disconnected behavior. When he began to notice, and began to isolate the reason, the real medical reason and not just a plain old psychotic break (and who'd be surprised? the Joker's blood was not first on his list of suspicions, when he sat down at last), he worked to contain it. Bruce compartmentalizes like no other, and so he did. But he took the shutdown further. He severed contact with the outside world so that the box he made for himself in his head couldn't take anything else in, just as much as it couldn't get out. The Joker shouldn't know who Superman is, or how to operate the Watchtower, or know what Diana's hand on his feels like. Risking his family and Gotham was awful enough as it was.

"I thought I had it under control."

But wait, the announcer said. There's more.

"I thought.. a lot of things. In those months." Bruce closes his eyes. Forces himself to open them again, even though it's obvious he's not looking at anything. Staring at nothing, barely registering Clark's physical presence. "I had to drown to get back up. And for too long.. there was a window of time, where I should have terminated myself. It was my responsibility and I'd arranged it, in a holding cell in the inner city base, but the window closed and suddenly I was convincing myself it was fine when it wasn't, god, it was so far from fine."