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

[The Albatross]

P.S. "It may be natural to ask, “What did I miss?” But we should remind ourselves what experts say: This kind of death defies prediction." Suicide often not preceded by warnings - Harvard Health Blog

The facts about suicide and attempted suicide are that it is a difficult issue for anyone, of any age to deal with. I would recommend you take a look at the facts a bit more and perhaps consider that you are measuring your performance against perceptions you received in books, media and yeah some real life stories - however your friend is alive, in spite of how you may personally feel about how you dealt with this.

What has happened to you that made you feel that you were an adult at 14? Something else that you felt or feel helpless for before that may have occurred (your other behaviors predated the event right?) and during your sessions in therapy you might have been avoiding something else or latched on to the event rather that deal with it?

Hacked up but just some other thoughts.

 

[digger]

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.

Might be worth considering how many adults you think would definitively know what to do for the best in the same situation? I don't think I even know for sure myself always and I come with my own history of ideation and attempts so in theory should have better insight!

she has gotten better and whilst she still has some bad days she generally seems a lot healthier.

This is good. Perhaps you can spend some time countering some of your thoughts with, 'I didn't know what to do, and that was (understandably) very difficult for me to deal with (it would have been difficult for an adult too), but it turned out okay anyway'. Even if you can't feel it yet, it's sometimes worth saying things to yourself to try and turn some of it around. You're feeling guilty and blaming yourself for something that came good. Who knows, perhaps you just listening and not doing anything further was actually part of what she needed at that time...

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 don't think this is all that weird, as I said in my other post, it's something you can get hold of and are familiar with as a source of distress and there is probably some security in that. So if things are difficult and similar feelings are surfacing that were around at that time too, it makes sense in some ways that your mind might revert to that as the cause. I know you said your sessions with the therapist have finished, assuming this is NHS, have you been discharged, or is asking for further therapy an option?

 

[youarenotarobot]

P.S. "It may be natural to ask, “What did I miss?” But we should remind ourselves what experts...

I know I did the best I could at the time...but it feels like I should have done more. I'll explain why in a minute below. Although the article on suicide signs being hard to spot did help me quite a bit, so thank you.

Yes something else did happen after that that made me feel like I should have handled it more like an adult but I don't like going into details. Which is the biggest roadblock for me and the reason I struggle to trust people when it comes to this. I don't even feel like I deserve help; it feels like I'm a fundamentally flawed person for how angry I felt/feel about this. I'm someone who gets annoyed easily but I hardly ever get angry. I don't like feeling angry, and if I get grumpy with someone I always go back and say sorry afterwards. But this suicide attempt is the one thing I can remember ever feeling completely angry about. I've never felt anything like it before. I was angry she attempted suicide, I was angry she told me about it (like I said, she never told her mother and didn't tell a professional until a long time afterwards) because I didn't know how to cope with the responsibility. I was angry she wasn't getting herself help and I was angry nobody else seemed to be taking it seriously and getting her some help. And I was angry at myself because I wanted to help her but my anger kept getting in the way. I would spend hours looking at research on depression and suicide and wanting so desperately to understand but everything I read just made me feel so much more angry and I didn't know what to do with it. I think now, in hindsight, that was the start of me getting triggered by the subject of suicide-becoming angry when I heard about it, even though it was to help my friend. But I didn't know that back then and thought it was a flaw with me, and that I was being a self-centered friend and so I forced myself to keep reading about depression and suicide, kept triggering myself, and kept getting angrier and angrier. I wanted to tell people how I felt and try to get help for how I was feeling but it didn't end very well. And now I'm too scared to let go of the anger again in case other people don't like it. I didn't tell anyone I knew what happened for 2 years because I thought they'd tell me I was wrong for the way I felt. I was convinced that if I told my friends and family they'd all hate me for feeling this way and wouldn't want to know me anymore. So I am incredibly hard on myself because it feels dangerous not to be. If I'm not hard on myself, I'll start feeling the emotions again, and then someone will tell me I'm handling it all wrong. Which is why I feel like I was an adult at 14, and should have controlled my emotions more. But the emotions keep wanting to come out and I want to let them out too but I'm terrified of them at the same time.

 

[The Albatross]

With all due respect your perceptions about what people will do or say is ruling your life and that is detrimental. Anger is a normal and natural response to an event. But you have a proclivity to self censor that is not common to your years. BEFORE the event with your friend, what was going on then?

 

[The Albatross]

Perhaps I am misunderstanding, the reason for your therapy was NOT for you're friends suicide attempt, though you latched on to that for some of your sessions, right? Am I understanding this correctly? Your friend survived, you are stuck, but what was the reason for you're therapy to begin with and can you see that avoiding that by the compulsive obsession with how you handled it may have been a way to distract from it?

 

[youarenotarobot]

Might be worth considering how many adults you think would definitively know what to do for the best in...

Probably not many adults. I don't blame them for that, because it isn't something people really expect to come up against in their lives.

It is good she survived, yes. I suppose that is one way of looking at it-I don't even know what I'm blaming myself for, because she's never mentioned feeling upset with the way I reacted and tried to help. I just..do.

This is the NHS, yes. I hope I can get some further therapy for this because I feel like I need it.

 

[youarenotarobot]

Perhaps I am misunderstanding, the reason for your therapy was NOT for you're friends suicide atte...

Yes and no. I initially asked my parents for therapy because of the way I was struggling with my friend's suicide attempt, but they didn't know that back then and thought I wanted to see someone for my anxiety. I tried to focus on my anxiety in the sessions but eventually all I wanted to talk about was my friend's suicide attempt.

A lot of things were going on before then, mainly health problems in my family, including my own mental illness getting worse. The 6 months leading up to my friend telling me about it had been pretty difficult (although I'd prefer to keep this part personal since it's about my family, hope you don't mind).

 

[The Albatross]

Don't mind at all. And you're being great by the way considering I am not a parent, am 56 and you are a younger woman.

 

[The Albatross]

So at present, you're friend is okay, you are not and you still haven't dealt with the underlying anxiety issue. You are though willing to participate here and dialogue... perhaps that is a good place to start and there can be others who can assist you?

Maybe when your ready start a new thread about your own issues apart and away from your friend's situation? It got you here, after all maybe we can help?

 

[The Albatross]

When I was 16 and on a swim team, I had a friend who was largely outcast except for me swimming behind me. She had an aneurysm and while swimming laps grabbed my foot. Twice. I had slowed in the lane to let her pass, and twice she didn't. When I got to the end of the lap, I turned back to the lane and saw her floundered in the last 1/3rd or so of the lane. I hollered for my coaches and got her to the side. We activated emergency and they started CPR. She was alive when we got her in the ambulance but died in route to the hospital.

I asked myself for a good long time if I could have done anything differently. But really? At the time, I couldn't.
Just food for thought. K? I was angry too, but really... I did the best I was able to "at that time"... k?

 

[Abstract]

You've done a great and brave job describing the situation. I think you and those who have responded to you have done a good job clarifying what is likely going on for you.

I can see why this experience was life changing for you and no wonder. At a guess I think you need to discuss it fully and in detail (in a way you haven't yet been able to do) and also look at other underlying difficulties for you in your life at the time. For example why you felt you needed to be so perfectly behaved and adult in your responses. Why you had a difficult relationship with anger. Where your support network was. How your family and you dealt with anxiety and difficulties. I think its really important for you to speak about the other things in your life at the time as well as this experience. Sometimes other scarring hides in the scarring of an event and compounds it making it hard to shift. Especially if our minds have a tendency to latch onto things (like they do when we have OCD). Be sure to do more than discuss this event and as I think that will help you.

It might be that your friend being OK now is really pretty irrelevant to how you experienced this and your ongoing difficulties around it. I'm sure you care very deeply about her and are relieved. This just sounds like it goes way beyond what happened to her and may include how your view of the world changed; difficulties understanding responsibility and self protection; emotional boundaries etc etc. Things that are very hard for any young person (and many adults).

I just wanted to add that anger is a really important and healthy emotion. It took me a long time to realise that. We tend to feel anger when someone has trampled on our boundaries. I don't blame your friend for leaning on you as she too was a child but being put in the situation you were in wasn't fair at all. Anger was an entirely and normal response to the situation you found yourself in. I hope you can start to feel compassion for the younger you.

 

[youarenotarobot]

So at present, you're friend is okay, you are not and you still haven't dealt with the underlying...

Would I be allowed to do that? Since I've never been diagnosed with PTSD I don't want to step on anyone's toes or offend them.

I'm very sorry to hear about what happened to your friend on your swim team...it seems like you were a really good friend to have. I'm glad you could eventually let go of the question if you could do anything more-I hope to get to that stage one day too.