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Other I Think I Have A Problem With Friend's Suicide Attempt

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When I was 14 one of my closest friends told me she'd attempted suicide two weeks prior. I am now 17 and I have never been able to move on from this. It's like my brain is completely stuck. Whenever I hear about suicide or mental health, the memories and emotions all come back to me and I can't control them. Sometimes it feels like I'm about to have a breakdown, I just can't deal with it. I start shaking and I can't concentrate on anything else but my friend's suicide attempt.

It feels like I'm drowning in the emotions I've locked away for so long. I sometimes feel so angry and furious that this happened that I actually scare myself, and then other times I feel so guilty over feeling so angry that I end up suicidal. I've come very close to killing myself before because of my inability to cope with these memories. I feel like I'm still 14 and that no time has really passed since this happened. When people talk to me about university or getting a job or driving a car, a little part of me just thinks, 'But I'm only 14-why are you telling me this?' Everyone around me is growing up and getting on with their lives and I'm just so stuck because I can't move on and it's not getting better any time soon.

I'm not saying I have PTSD. I don't agree with self-diagnosis. I suppose I just want to know what's going on with me, and how I can get better. I know I should have got over this by now, everyone else would have got over it by now, but I can't and I just want to know why and how to move on. Does anyone have any suggestions?
Thank you, and I'm sorry if I bothered you.
 
I think you should talk to your parents and let them know what is going on. Ask them to help you set up an appointment with a therapist. Getting a therapist to talk things out with can be one of the best things you can do for yourself, as they can help you to learn coping techniques and try to recover from this so you can move on. Best of luck to you and take care.
 
Having a loved one attempt suicide can be a very emotional and terrible thing. Everyone deals with these things differently. I highly suggest investing in therapy so you can sort through these feelings. There could be an element of self-blame involved, such as you feeling responsible for what your friend did? I'm not sure but a professional will be able to help you get through it.
 
Thank you for your replies, I wasn't expecting to get some within such a short time. So I really appreciate it.

I have had some therapy for this before by which I mean I was referred to a psychiatrist for my OCD and social anxiety but ended up spending most of my sessions talking about my friend's suicide attempt. My last session ended a few months ago and whilst this was helpful I also don't feel much better at the moment. I feel really ungrateful saying that since I had a genuinely good psychiatrist who probably wasn't expecting me to spend an hour each week talking about suicide attempts.

My mother knows what's happened and I talk to her about it sometimes but I don't think she understands why I can't just move on. I can understand this because there would be weeks where I'd spend every evening talking about my friend's suicide attempt but nothing she could say would help, it would just be like there was a mental block in my brain causing me to doubt everything she said. I'm unsure if I'd be bringing the same old thing up again by talking about the same old problem.

I hold a lot of self-blame. Not necessarily for my friend's suicide attempt itself because I know that wasn't my fault but I guess I tell myself I should have seen the warning signs. She talked to me about suicide a fair bit when I was about 12-13 years old and whilst I always took it seriously and tried to help her I don't think I ever expected her to actually do it. I blame myself for not handling the suicide attempt conversation itself better because I didn't know what to do. I feel guilty because I didn't know what to do afterwards either; she never brought it up again so I didn't know if I should bring it up or just follow her lead, she never told her mum so I didn't know if I should email her myself or if that would be going behind my friend's back. And of course the anger I mentioned before, I feel guilty at how angry I feel about it because I think if I were a better friend I'd put my emotions to the side and get on with it.

I plan to see the doctor soon to talk about my anti-depressants so I'd like to talk about this with them, but I'm afraid they'd think I'm being silly. I'm terrified of telling someone and having them dismiss it as attention-seeking or overreacting because I don't think I'd be able to cope with that.
 
Okay so, I get that you have been affected by a friends suicide attempt and are stuck.
What is the status of your friend in the 3 years or so since she reported her attempt to you?
I think that would really have some bearing here.
 
She talked to me about suicide a fair bit when I was about 12-13 years old and whilst I always took it seriously and tried to help her I don't think I ever expected her to actually do it. I blame myself for not handling the suicide attempt conversation itself better because I didn't know what to do. I feel guilty because I didn't know what to do afterwards either; she never brought it up again so I didn't know if I should bring it up or just follow her lead, she never told her mum so I didn't know if I should email her myself or if that would be going behind my friend's back.
I'm wondering if you would you expect another 12/13/14 year old to know what to do in this situation? Do you think children that age are really equipped with the skills and experience to deal with suicide, or suicidal ideation? That's a lot to place on the shoulders of a young teen - and I'm talking about the responsibility you are placing on yourself rather than anything your friend placed on you. Most adults would struggle to know how best to deal with such a disclosure.

You say that you've spoken to your mum about this, was this at the time, or a long time after? Did you speak to any adults about it at the time?

I'm curious to know how things have been for your friend since - I agree with @The Albatross that that has some bearing here - if her mental health deteriorated a lot since the attempt and you are feeling guilty about not having done more at the time, or has she been able to move on from her attempt but you are still feeling unable to?
 
A couple more thoughts...
Was the OCD and social anxiety present before this disclosure from your friend?
I was referred to a psychiatrist for my OCD and social anxiety but ended up spending most of my sessions talking about my friend's suicide attempt.
I don't have OCD, but when I'm under stress, I can get obsessive about things and fixate on things and go into circles of rumination about things. Often, for me, it's an avoidance thing - not deliberate, I'm not aware that's what I'm doing at the time, but with hindsight I can see sometimes that fixating on X meant I didn't have to look at Y....usually X being something more familiar and concrete for me to get a hold of than Y.

This might not be the case for you at all, but I'm just putting it out there as something to think about. Might it be possible that pinning things on your friends disclosure as the root of everything might be keeping you from looking at or working on other things that maybe feel less familiar and more uncomfortable to tackle?

You seem to have taken on a lot more responsibility for this than is yours and I'm wondering if that might be a pattern for you and whether that might be more beneficial to look at.

It's okay to acknowledge that your friend disclosing a suicide attempt to you effected you deeply.
It's okay to acknowledge that you were 14 at the time, a child, and that you weren't equipped to deal with what to do with either the information or the emotions.

A fairly reliable test for me to recognise if my thinking on something might be a bit wonky is to ask myself if I would expect the same of someone else in the same situation as I'm expecting of myself. It's something a lot of us do - expect more from ourselves than we would ever pin on others. If you wouldn't blame another child for not knowing what to do, it's worth asking why you should have known.
 
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Okay so, I get that you have been affected by a friends suicide attempt and are stuck.
What is th...

Thanks for replying. I think my friend is doing a lot better now-she still has bad days sometimes but generally she just seems a lot better. We still talk a lot, although not as much as we used to due to personal life getting in the way.
 
A couple more thoughts...
Was the OCD and social anxiety present before this disclosure from your frien...

I'm going to reply to both of your posts in one because you so kindly wrote so much, so thank you.

No, I don't think someone that age should be expected to know what to do but I still feel a lot of pressure anyway. This may sound quite strange but you know in the media, in books or movies or even real life stories, where someone attempts suicide and everyone talks about what happened? Everyone around the person seems to react to it perfectly, and if they don't, that is used to show their reactions in a negative light. I'm not saying I did anything majorly terrible like punishing her for attempting suicide or anything because I wouldn't do that, but it's more that I feel so much pressure to have always known what to do and what to say. I also have this weird idea that I'd let a 12 or 13 yr old off the hook for not handling it perfectly, but not me as a 14 year old. I feel like by 14 I was almost an adult, in a way, and so should have known what to do. I know that's irrational but I can't shake it.

I told my mum what happened at first, but didn't mention it again for a long time. I can't remember why. I didn't tell anyone else for 2 years (except for a children's charity online counselling thing) because I was scared they'd hate me and be angry for turning my friend's problems into something all about myself. I only told my mum at the start of this year when I was starting to get very suicidal over it and I was getting scared.

As I said in my earlier reply she has gotten better and whilst she still has some bad days she generally seems a lot healthier.

I did have OCD and social anxiety before this happened but it was undiagnosed at that point. I know it really set my OCD off for a while because I was convinced I'd kill myself too, and I have also considered if I'm going back to it because it's something I know. It's been a difficult year and I'm not sure if I just go back to this suicide attempt to make myself feel better in a weird way.

I hope that's enough information. Thank you again, you made me think about a lot of things.
 
"I also have this weird idea that I'd let a 12 or 13 yr old off the hook for not handling it perfectly, but not me as a 14 year old. I feel like by 14 I was almost an adult, in a way, and so should have known what to do. I know that's irrational but I can't shake it." Feeling like almost being an adult and actually being one is two different things. If you at 14 had no prior experiences with someone who was suicidal, can you accept that it is an unnecessarily high bar to set for yourself to handle an experience like this "perfectly"?

Can you maybe take a run at this from another angle?
For instance, is it really an accurate assessment that: "in the media, in books or movies or even real life stories, where someone attempts suicide and everyone talks about what happened? Everyone around the person seems to react to it perfectly, and if they don't, that is used to show their reactions in a negative light"?
Perceptually there is a flaw there and the truth is that people deal with situations as best as they can at that time all people do, regardless of age. Does that statement change anything at all for you?

Overthinking and rumination: What Is Overthinking and How to Overcome It - can be avoidant and serve the purpose of distracting in some way instead of taking actions in life."Many ruminators stay in their depressive rut because their negative outlook hurts their problem-solving ability, said Nolen-Hoeksema": (article link: Link Removed )

Just bouncing it at ya to see what you think.
 
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