A Reason To Live: Fighting Suicidal Thoughts

[freakofnurture]

It's telling how a thread about coping with suicidal thoughts begins with people expressing their despair at suicide being looked down on. I think it shows just how hard it is to see anything else when you are suffering. It reduces your perspective until only pain is left, together with the wish to end the pain. It's tragic but you really can't blame a person for not wanting to suffer anymore.

Luckily it's been a while since I've been 'seriously' suicidal, but I have been severely so for prolonged periods of time. I have found a number of different tactics to fend off those thoughts and feelings, depending on what circumstance they arise from and how bad they are.

• The lowest level of suicidal ideation I can address by just thinking about the things I want to do, too, like finishing all my stories, getting some muscles on my bones, growing old with my husband etc. Since this technique depends on me being able to see something positive in my life it's really not a strong one and I have to catch myself quite early to employ it effectively.

• On the second level I tell myself that I'm a stupid little emo child. I ridicule my internal drama and shame myself into pushing the thoughts aside until I manage to get out of the hole. This demands that I'm still able to step out of my own perspective and therefore out of the pain.

• The third level is my fight song*. It helps me to say 'f*ck you!' to everything that is getting me down. It helps me to feel pride about having survived and about struggling on, no matter how bloody and scarred I am. I'm the monster you made, you bastards, and I am not ashamed to show everyone what you did to me. f*ck you, you can't destroy me! I'll puke my blood onto your shirt and laugh; why? because I f*cking can, that's why!

• My last line of defense is inaction. It's how I saved my life when I was feeling severely suicidal every day for nearly a year. I just lay there, clinging to the mattress and didn't move until it was safe to get up again.

Suicidal ideation is the symptom that makes depression and PTSD into actual, potentially life threatening illnesses. Mental illness can cost you your quality of life and your life as a whole, just like a severe acute or chronic physical illnesses can. There's no essential difference, only in the way society thinks about them.

-------
*'The Black Parade' by My Chemical Romance - no it's not; f*ck you.

 

[Beverly G.]

I struggled with the desire to die as a child then as an adult I was better able to deal with life so they went away. Recently that desire has returned. I tried to take pills to quiet the pain but all that did was embarrass me and leave me feeling like even less of a person than I did before. I have a backup plan now that will lead to the morgue not the hospital. I don't want to use it.

I have decided to fight on hoping that somewhere there is an answer that will give me relief. My therapist told me about something called SPECT imaging that other of his patients has had good luck with. I am scheduled to take a trip to Washington DC next month to get this test and evaluation. I pray they will have an answer that will make living a little easier.

I also remember just last year when I was totally symptom free and I tell myself that if it can happen once there is no reason it cant happen again. HOPE, for now I choose hope.

 

[Tinyflame]

Please choose it each day Beverly, and when it's impossible I hope you can tell someone and let them choose it for you when you can't.

 

[Beverly G.]

Thank you Junebug! I am trying to remain possitive and truthfully I am beginning to feel better. The problem is that when I feel helpless it is really bad. I'm having a hard time dealing with the fact that each time PTSD surfaces it seems to be worse than the time before. I am tired of fighting a loosing battle.

 

[Tinyflame]

I think it seems like a losing battle when we keep throwing the same things at it that never worked in the first place, we need to try new ways (usually coincides with what we're most scared of).
Do you think you're having Emotional Flashbacks at those times?

((((Hugs))))

 

[mamachick]

I have had several triggers in the past few weeks, and attack from a relative, a family death (likely suicide), stranded on a highway over an hour on hold with my roadside service, with a blown tire with 70mph passers in a rainstorm, a 1 am unexpected visitor, 2 straight weeks of stressful company. My body crashed for a couple of days and now I have been bawling uncontollably off and on for 4 days. My eyes are swollen shut. I learned today that the assault fro 3 yrs ago injured my solar plexus and rotator cuff on top of the cervical discs and stenosis. The pain has brought tears to my eyes and I have spent $2000 in the past year just on prescriptions. Last night after midnight, my relative called for help and I ran, her 14 yr old daughter had to call 911 as the boyfriend beat up mom-gone to jail by the time I arrived. At 5 am today, I was fantacizing of how.

All these things I just mentioned are no different than many others troubles. We all have them. Yet there is something at the core (hopelessness) that is temporarty. I think I want to die and then realize I just want the pain to stop. I am so tired and feel like it will never get better. Isnt that what we all think. We do not want to die, we just want relief from pain. The lists are great. I think I better create one.

 

[Beverly G.]

Junebug, I have dealt with flashbacks in the past but right now they are not an issue. I am however, experiencing all the negative voices from the past. I think this might be some weird form of flashback I don't know.

I am trying something new this time. My T suggested a treatment called SPECT imaging to find out about brain damage. He said things are just too unusual for all my symptoms to be completely associated PTSD. I have been knocked unconscious a few times and had multiple traumas so he believes there may be some underlying cause that has yet to be discovered.

I had a baby in late 2009 and the fact that we both came within moments of death and all the hormones associated with haveing a baby seem to have done some really weird stuff to me. I spent a year passing out on a nearly daily basis and now I am more anxious than ever. Several neurologists insisted I had epilepisy but we now know that is not the case although my EEG are always abnormal.

 

[Belle]

Thanks Anthony for this thread....
1) Because I have booked a holiday in Italy so I have to carry on until June ;)
2) My son.
3) My cats who have been there for me. I can't leave them.
4) True friends, it would be selfish to give up now.
5) Roses, I wouldn't smell them ever again.
6) I couldn't swim because I don't think I will be in heaven.

 

[Tinyflame]

Dear Brat, who wouldn't feel entirely overwhelmed. I am so sorry.
There's 'suffering', then there's "SUFFERING", then there's "OMG-SUFFERING". Not to mention to have so much at once. :(

I learned just a few weeks ago, have you heard (also) of "Pain fatigue"? I never even had thought of that (contributing to SI, as regards myself, anyway). But it's (also) very true- more stress.

 

[ericaboo]

Because "they" would win

Because I would never get the chance to feel better

Because my brother would lose the only person on earth who understands what we went through

 

[mamachick]

Junebug I have never heard of it but sure sounds like what I feel-I will check it out. Thanks

 

[Tinyflame]

Yes.
I think SRain mentioned it in her thread, "It's Raining all over the world".
xox, ((((Hugs))))