I was under the impression teasing was awful for your hair.
The outside of your hair shaft is made up of all this scales and they all point downwards towards the end of your hair. When you backcomb you're forcing the scales to stick out - this is what gives you the controlled tangling and and therefore volume - but they're also not protecting the cortex (what they're there to do) and can even chip or break off. Here's healthy hair:

And here's backcombed/teased hair:
OP, your hair does grow! No one's terminal length (the length at which your hair just sheds or falls out) is at their shoulders, there's got to be some kind of damage going on.
I have chemically damaged hair (this one time I think it was a great idea to go blonde. It wasn't.) and its way too short for my tastes (broke off then a major cut to prevent more damage).
There's no hair extension that's 100% invisible, but hair-friendly-ER methods of extensions: clip-ins (NO TEASING) or micro-loop extensions with silicone lining. I had 2-3x as much shedding with strand-by-strand glue-ins than with the microloops. and . They're easy enough to have a friend put in and then take to go get cut. They're not damage-free, but they're better than glue (weft or strands) and teasing.
I want to try skin wefts next but I'm concerned about the amount of damage they might cause. I've also never seen them in person so I don't know how realistic they would look. Its basically a semi-permanent way of getting a clip-in look that lies flatter to your head.
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