Suicide Feels Inevitable. Can Anyone Relate?

[shimmerz]

It's ideation.

No, it wasn't (for me). It was a thought. A completely compelling thought. But just a thought; over and over and over in my head. Same phrase. No reasons. Just 'do it - do it now'. I think that is different from ideation. There was nothing sexy or complex about it.

 

[Tinyflame]

Yes not ideation in my mind either. Not even complusion, though i've had impulse control times with it. More like, the hand-writings-on-the-wall, feels more like foreseeing a conclusion.

 

[Tinyflame]

Suppose it's a different form of the same temptation, maybe. The equivalent of ~see, it's inevitable anyway. (Maybe.)

 

[NatBird]

@shimmerz thanks. go well:)

 

[joeylittle]

I don't just have this thought when in a difficult place I also have it when things are steady in the nothing-much-happening-zone. It just floats up -- yep that's how it will all end, I'll kill myself. It's so casual and sinister.

I admire how you expressed it - casual and sinister. I'd say that yes, I get that quite often. For me, it's a very misleading thought, because I will not be aware that I'm low, and yet, there it is, that assumption. I try and remember that it does mean I'm depressed, even if I feel 'OK'. It's not actually a rational thought, because you can't actually know (if that makes sense). It's a distorted thought. The best way for me personally to deal with it is just to back myself up and change how far into the future I'm letting myself look. So, if I'm dealing with setting something up for many months from now, at work (say), and I get that thought - that I'll have killed myself before I make it that far - I just back up, and try and narrow my awareness to as small as it needs to go (which these days, is usually like, I can think a few days ahead, max).

I also felt better when I found out that there's a name for it. It's chronic suicidality (which refers to chronic ideation). It's a symptom, like any other symptom. It takes me a lot of work, sometimes, to see it as a symptom (because it feels like such a coherent thought). But you are not alone, at all.

I don't know that many people understand this type of thing. It isn't (for me) like being 'suicidal'. I actually don't want to Commit suicide. At.all. Makes no sense I know, but I can't imagine calling a friend about this and saying 'hey, you know, I am not suicidal but I am pretty sure I have a part of me that wants to die.'

I don't know if this helps, @shimmerz - I agree that most people cannot grasp how to even have this conversation.

But I think it does make sense to say 'I don't want to kill myself, but I am having a hard time understanding how to stay alive, because the pain and sadness is so intense.' Some version of 'I don't want to die but I don't know how to live'.

I'm not suggesting that this is something that suddenly, random people will be able to deal with, just by re-phrasing it. Only that framing it that way can help a listener move past the 'I have to stop their crisis' place (which really, they will be unsuccessful at) and into the 'I can listen because they are hurting and I don't have to fix it'. When I'm talking to mental health professionals, especially, I feel safer using that kind of frame. So they hear upfront that I don't actually want to kill myself.

I guess I'm trying to say, that I understand that feeling of not knowing how to avoid it. I don't know how to avoid it. And I still believe it's going to end up being the way that I go, when I go. Oddly, that usually makes me sad (not relieved), and that sadness can tell me that it's not what I want, it's just that I don't know any other way to think about the future right now.

 

[NatBird]

Yes not ideation in my mind either. Not even complusion, though i've had impulse control times with it....

Yes @Junebug feels like the same shit different form.

I think because it's so subtle it feels deadly and even more disturbing than when I'm more 'actively' suicidal.

It's like a haunting. Maybe I can write about it....

Thanks for your response.

 

[Deleted member 541]

Yes, I so get it... I have had this thought since my first attempt at age 11. I will most likely die at my own hand, but what I am really trying to do is kill the pain/trauma/horror/depression etc. and not myself. But in that moment, myself is what needs to die so that the pain will stop.

 

[anthony]

I don't have that specific thought process, no. Close though. Mine is not a thought that I will eventually kill myself -- I moved past that. So whilst I may have those thoughts at times, they are just that, and they flutter away as fast as they arrive nowadays.

My thought is that when PTSD does come back and kick my butt, I feel it would be easier to just be dead and not keep suffering this until I do die, but the thoughts of actually killing myself to make that happen, are just not there. It's more like... I wouldn't care if I died, as to me, that brings relief for me overall, but I recognise that it brings pain for others, and I just can't wish that on friends and family. I would rather them all die and then me, as I can keep on taking the pain, but I don't want others to suffer it.

Maybe the same outcome... mine is just vastly different logic, I guess.

 

[joeylittle]

Same phrase. No reasons. Just 'do it - do it now'. I think that is different from ideation.

Technically, it's all ideation. There aren't many divisions for the psych community in what these thoughts are called. Only passive ideation and active ideation.

For people who deal with these thoughts on multiple levels, every individual ends up with their own way of evaluating their thoughts - I know which of mine are what I'd call ruminations, which are really hypothetical, which are what I'd call 'ideating' (which is a little more towards action-based thinking)....we all work out our own system.

 

[EveHarrington]

I have future plans to kill myself but it won't happen for years most likely. Once my parents are gone, I will be completely alone in this world. Nobody will grieve my death, nobody will feel pained by my passing. I guess this makes me sound like an entitled snob, but I have no desire to be alone. (Yeah, I know, what makes me think I deserve these things in life?) It's practical above all, not so much based on depression/anxiety. (Many people kill themselves and they aren't depressed------financial issues send people over the edge quite often.)

 

[NatBird]

I admire how you expressed it - casual and sinister. I'd say that yes, I get that quite often. For...

thanks @joeylittle your comments reminded me that the thought is likely connected to depression. I've been depressed for years (if not most of my life) I think I forget because I'm not lying in bed all day!

distorted thought - can agree intellectually. however when it arrives its like walking into a thought form made of spiders silk. I often don't get enough space to become aware of it as a distorted thought, it's just on me, in me, of me. I will try. maybe putting this out there is the beginning of creating space around it.

the phrases you wrote resonated and helped to unfold the thought. it also reminded me that I have been writing and quietly thinking: I'm afraid of living.

thanks for your response.

 

[Gs172003]

that's what my therapist called it. Shes

No, it wasn't (for me). It was a thought. A completely compelling thought. But just a thought; over...