I am in the third year of a STEM PhD at a top university. My supervisors have all been very happy with my progress since my project started in Oct 2019, and thanks in part to antidepressants and other lifestyle changes, I have shown a lot of positivity and enthusiasm and have done a good job of convincing others that I am doing A-OK. I tend to get very excitable about things that are worth pursuing although my supervisor has flagged up that I still need to tie up loose ends that haven't yet been finished (even though he hasn't explicitly told me what they are).
However, in late November last year (2021) I went through a psychotic episode which landed me in hospital and required me to take some time away from my studies. As a result, I now feel very rusty on quite a few things (including both the content of my work as well as getting into a good working day) and that I need more guidance both with the content and what to be doing at any given moment. The department at my university have been very supportive and want me to succeed, however, I feel like my supervisor at this point could have done a better job of teaching me how to do specific things in research, rather than just leaving me to it. He is very helpful and knowledgeable when it comes to solving problems, but I feel he hasn't done the best job of enabling me to learn how to do things like teach myself content from lecture notes, read research papers, structure my workflow etc. In other words, I wish he "taught me how to teach myself" rather than just sending me a couple of things and leaving me to it, especially because I took several years away from graduate studies after my undergraduate degree. I have been holding my tongue since the start of the project when communicating things he does that are not helpful to me, because I don't want to be seen as someone who is difficult to supervise or who cannot progress without constant guidance.
Given how rusty I am because of my nervous breakdown which has left me unable to do any work for a couple of months, I feel like I need some quite invasive intervention to help me to cross an important milestone in April, but I am struggling to think of a way to communicate this to my supervisor without eliciting any concerns. A recurring issue throughout my project is a general feeling of not having achieved very much, in particular having achieved much less than another candidate at a similar level would have done in a similar position to myself. I feel like everybody else in my cohort has achieved so much more than me, and that they are seemingly not having any problems meeting their deadlines and that they are able to progress independently of their supervisors. It seems like whenever I look at a hint that my supervisor gives, I still keep getting stuck and thinking "okay, what do I do now" and secretly wishing that I was told exactly what to do at every stage so that I didn't need to worry about getting the answer wrong.
I have always had imposter syndrome throughout my studies but recently it has gotten to the point where everything feels like a haze, my mood has dropped and whenever I look at anything related to my PhD I end up having very low emotional stamina and I end up Googling things like "PhD low motivation" or "how to know if you're cut out for academia" or "alternatives to academia after PhD". Conversations with my father seem to be rather circular - in that nothing he says seems to satisfy me, and at my core there is this belief that by doing a PhD I am being educated beyond my own capabilities and that perhaps this episode is a sign that I have pushed myself too far.
What are some tactful ways of communicating with my supervisor that I would like him to take a more hands-on approach to ensure that I make good progress, rather than him leaving the ball in my court all the time?