How long do i have the cloud of my suicide attempt hanging over me?

[Scarlet13]

I want to add that I want concern from my doc. But I want concern with the trust.
I think that sometimes that lack of trust in you from mental healthcare workers can seem to mimic your childhood messages. It does for me. Its that whole, "You'll just f*ck it up. Like you f*ck everything up message." Its like you just want recognition that you are capable of not f*cking things up.

 

[EveHarrington]

It's like "I'm an adult, dammit!.....I have the right to f*ck up my own life!"

 

[Sideways]

Sure, you have the right to fk up your own life.

But one of the tradeoffs we make when we start to build meaningful relationships is people are going to care about us. It's not about trust, it's about the fact that they care, and they don't want to stand back and let you hurt yourself.

Given how long you've spent dealing with SI, 5 months is not a long time.

 

[EveHarrington]

Sure, you have the right to fk up your own life.

But one of the tradeoffs we make when we start...

I have an extremely hard time accepting that others could possibly care about me. My go to response is "WTF is wrong with you that you'd waste time caring about someone so pathetic like me?"

 

[Sideways]

WTF is wrong with you that you'd waste time caring about someone so pathetic like me?"

Yet again you and I seem to be struggling with similar issues at the same time. I've said these exact words about my own friends.

And I think it speaks volumes about not just our self concept (we know how screwed that is!), but also about how warped our ability to trust is.

We know trust is important. We'd like people to trust us when we say "I'm not a suicde risk". And we can trust people who treat us like crap.

But even in the same breah that we ask "Please trust me when I say I'm not a risk to myself", we aren't able to trust people who care about us to form their own opinion about us. We don't trust them with their own feelings in a big big way. Because when they communicate to us "You matter, I care, I don't want you to hurt yourself ", we're terrified of trusting them with their own emotions. Like, you say you care about me, but I don't think you should feel like that.

In a way, it is all about relearning about trust. Our internal "trust" system has been really messed up. For me, part of my work on my own self concept, is trying to remind myself that I have to trust people with their own feelings about me. If they say I care, I actually have to learn how to trust them with those feelings. I have to learn to trust myself, but I have to learn to trust others in a healthy way as well. And that means learning to trust them when they say "I care". I don't believe they should, but I need to learn to trust them when they tell me "This is how I feel..."

That's not something I'm good at!!

 

[Scarlet13]

That is a really good point about having to trust someone with regards to their feelings of care or love. I struggle with that because it makes perfect sense that I am an alien and a monster or that I am a piece of shit so when someone comes along and actually loves me I actually want to hurt them or disprove them.
I struggle with accepting help or care because it literally does not make sense that someone could help me or care for me or remember me because I am nothing but a disgusting monster. That is on the extreme, but its there. Self care is also hard for this reason. I can hate myself so much that I cannot just do self care. What has helped immensely is validating myself using the DBT 6 levels of validation. I go to the validate with history. I can say to myself, "It makes sense that you would feel self hate considering the cruel and hateful way others have treated you when you were so young and did nothing to deserve it."

 

[KerriJ]

Not sure what to say other than...
I feel you.
It's been 2 YEARS since my last attempt and it still lingers over me like a bad plague.

With my friends, they understand that even on my bad days I've learned to cope much better.
My family and health professionals still seem to think a bad day means I'll end up in ICU.

Here's the thing, you know the progress you've made! YOU've made it darn far and know how well you are doing, even on your bad days. Don't let their inability to see progress/handle emotions lead you to doubt your accomplishments in recovery! <3