The Urge To Kill Myself Is Real Every Day / But I Don't Want To Talk About It

[new gamma rays]

I have been suicidal for over a year. But every time I think about it, the verbal part of me almost automatically shuts up. I have spent far too much time in terrifying hospitals or 'mental health' hospitals, and have too much trauma of it for me to openly discuss what I'm thinking, because the second I do I start feeling terror -either through repressed memories, or fear of what I say will make it necessary to go to those places again.

So I live with a suicide plan, and not enough incentive to turn around my state of doing nothing. I have a pretty guilty conscience, and fear and have anger of all the mistakes I made and am making and could possibly make because of this attachment, but then I just dive into distraction. The fear at everything I would have to face is too much for me to talk about it bluntly with anyone. I usually just mention it, but long enough for someone to give me some pretty conventional advice and then move on. It's not working obviously though.

 

[anthony]

Well... you're talking about it openly, and that's a step in the right direction. Like you said, mentioning it long enough for advice is useless... suicidal ideation should be discussed, so that you don't get to that point of doing it. Well done for starting to open up about your thoughts... don't stop there. I had this shit for years... and I still get bouts of it here and there if I get pretty ill, though I'm just kinda used to those thoughts nowadays and discard them. Not everyone can do that obviously.

 

[desiderata310]

This has been me for the last several years. I finally spoke to my therapist about it. It was a huge risk for me. I've been in a p-ward for attempting.

Like Anthony said: you've started the conversation. It needs to be continued.

My therapist doesn't freak out at my suicidial ideation. He says it's actually better for me to tell him about it so we can work through it. He gets that it's ideation.

There have been several times in the last 6 months- the most recent being last week- when things got really bad. Those moments scare me because I can't think clearly and I am at serious risk.

I've yet to find myself in the hospital with this therapist. His feelings are that the PTSD is bad enough without subjecting someone unnecessarily to that setting as it is actually more trauma in his opinion (I tend to agree). He has been taking his cues from me: if he can talk me down, I stay home.

Last week, when I freaked out, someone got me to actually call him (I couldn't think to so it myself) and he got me to go home and take my medication. He checked in on me regularly. Not in a freak out way, just making sure that I had done the next step, and was home, safe, and getting in bed and 'shutting down' .

All this babbling is to say, it actually DOES help to have someone know that you feel that way. It makes a difference! In so many ways, that suicidial ideation feeds off itself when left in isolation but when someone who can talk you through it knows what's going on, it fades, just a little and that's sometimes enough to make the difference in feeling better the next day.

If you have a therapist I would email them about this and your fears and open the dialog that way.
And keep talking... Typing....

 

[Laura 2]

I think it's an excellent approach to talk about your ideation. I know it's an old cliche but it's true that a problem shared is a problem halved.

Though I don't share anymore. Here the therapists go into knee-jerk if you stray near the S word.

They get all anxious and scared. But, it's not anxiety and concern for you, the patient. Rather, it's anxiety about what will happen to them if you do the deed on their watch.

So they spasm and pass the info onto someone else: the GP, crisis teams, the police, anyone - who are all similarly freaked and impotent and the way you are treated gets worse and worse by the hour as they all scramble to get rid of you in the sense of finding someone else to take responsibility.

It ends up becoming a big dysfunctional terrifying farce, more damage is done and you end up feeling far worse, if that's possible, and with even less constructive treatment because 'you've caused problems, you scared us'. You learn not to go there with therapists etc.

Absolutely nothing is gained by keeping you silent, nothing gets even a chance of being healed, the fact of your suicidal ideation is the huge elephant in the room that we all ignore....as you become more and more distrusting and isolated in your terror and pain.

I don't know, @new gamma rays, is this something to do with why you can't really speak about it? Fear of the way others will take it? How would you feel if you knew that someone would truly listen and not be freaked out when you wanted to talk it all out? Someone who would give you a completely safe space...?


We ALL make mistakes. It's sort of a defining feature of being a human being! But it's soul-destroying when blame is mixed into the picture. The blame-game that MH and other services play here is destructive and so is self-blame, as far as I'm concerned. Poor though it was, I know I've done my best - as, I believe, we all do given our circumstances and knowledge (even those twerps who work in MH services!).

But anyway, like yours it seems, my exit strategy is my insurance plan, my refuge. It's always there as an option, though I don't feel guilty or anything, I just feel it's actually quite sensible for me in my circumstances and with my disabilities (note, I am not advising or encouraging anyone else to think this way) because, as far as I see it now, the world we exist in is largely crazy, cruel, ignorant and apathetic. IMHO, it's on a whole-planet suicide trajectory of its own. My thinking is who in their right mind would want to stay?( As I wrote all this, it's made me understand why I can't plan any future - I just hang on from hour to hour taking pleasure in the very little things which somehow gets me to the next hour...it's the best I can do. )

 

[StellaBlue]

If you have a therapist you trust, I would strongly recommend you talk about it - get it out in the open as some of the others have advised.

@desiderata310, your therapist sounds a lot like mine - he doesn't freak out and he doesn't think the hospital is necessarily the best option (for the same reasons you state). That said, when I'm sinking into bouts of suicide ideation, we spend some time distinguishing whether these are thoughts or actual plans and what to do if the thoughts turn to plans. He believes the thoughts (which can be relentless sometimes) are "old tapes", which I've come to see as a valid point.

I am at the point right now where I can recognize them fairly early on and when they come up, gently tell myself "suicide is not an option". I can then try to explore what's going on that's triggering them and how to resolve it. I don't think I could have done this while I was in the midst of an ongoing episode and am extremely grateful that I can (usually) manage them now.

 

[Tinyflame]

.. he doesn't freak out and he doesn't think the hospital is necessarily the best option (for the same reasons you state). ..we discuss what to do if the thoughts turn to plans

@StellaBlue , if it's ok to ask, what does he recommend then if not hospitalization? Thank you.

@new gamma rays , not much words of wisdom but to hang in there. :hug:

 

[StellaBlue]

@Junebug, hospitalization is not "off the table" but rather a last resort because (at least for me) it's degrading and traumatizing and really just meant to be a safety measure (and, speaking from experience, I'm not sure the "safety" outweighs the additional trauma it causes). With a single exception, my experience has been that the hospital is a "holding place" that really offers no long-term solutions or therapy.

The last time I was in a state where I was considering hospitalization, my therapist and I did a pretty intensive check-in (every two hours) to get through the immediate crisis and then an in-person session the next day.

I have worked very hard to recognize signs that I'm slipping into a bad place (PTSD symptoms are increasing, I'm not showering, I'm not going to work, I'm researching suicide methods) and I let him know so that I have some support putting my crisis plan in place. I've developed a list of things to do, depending on the level of distress I've reached - for example, if I'm still at "mildly" distressed or have had a flashback that could start a downward spiral, a bath with candles might help but that would be totally useless if I'm in extreme distress and the thought of stepping in a tub of water is totally repugnant.

I've also noticed that when I start thinking the hospital looks attractive (when I know from experience it is not), it means I am feeling overwhelmed and exhausted and it's time to put emergency procedures in place. My ultimate goal is to not get to that point.

This only my experience...others may have had more positive experiences being inpatient.

 

[Tinyflame]

Thank you @StellaBlue . I don't want to discourage @new gamma rays but hospitalization would not be an option for me on so many fronts. And yes, for me, horrifically traumatizing, I have no doubt. I think a lot of people are afraid to bring it up for fear of that.

Pity when we most need clear direction we struggle to find the words the most.

 

[new gamma rays]

Well I appreciate the input, but unfortunately it just underscores what has been my thought process all along. I know the hospital is a horrible choice. Just thinking about it is more traumatic than I can concentrate on for any period of time. But that just makes me more suicidal. If I don't have some last resort, I don't know how I can keep going on. Its like part of my brain - the subconscious part, that learned from all my horrible mistakes in my years of trauma - has told me about this and I just didn't want to listen. And it would take all my hardly existing courage and willpower and shame to turn around and have some preparedness plan.

This all came to ahead last Sunday on my birthday. I have been really struggling these past several months, and often times I would just set a date in the future to say - if I can make it that far, well then we'll see. I will think about it then. And then that day finally came on my birthday, and my brain just about exploded. My rage and hurt and dislocation would not subside. Most of my trauma anger is directed straight at my mother, and then realizing I had all that, and that there was nothing I could do about it - I just felt toxic all day. And this week has been more horrible than I have felt before. I just feel like my brain becomes paralyzed with rage - rage that I know I have to bury, without any relief. And accompanying that has been a lot more vivid flashbacks and memories from my terrifying hospitalization (in the involuntary mental health ward) that I have never dealt with before, and don't have much ability to now. Its like all the stuff I hoped I never had to deal with is finally at the point where it can't be pushed down anymore and is springing back up and that's not a good position for me to be in.

 

[desiderata310]

I get it. I do. But I didn't see if you answered it not: do you have a therapist? If so, can you talk to him/her?

Meanwhile, keep talking here. I think most of us have been there.

 

[new gamma rays]

My health is sinking fast. And at the same time my rage at my parents continues to grow. Partly because they managed to f*ck up my health 99% when they threw me to the bottom of this states mental health cage. And because they gave me PTSD in doing so. And my mom, the one who was guilty of every one of the provocations when I was sick and needed help, just flits about her life untroubled by any of it. She got away with all of it, faces no repercussions (except anxiety when I get mad) and in this whole process my dad betrayed me too.

And I'm stuck with them and I couldn't do anything more than want to just die so I don't have to deal with these emotions anymore. f*ck them. I need help but they are the last people I want to help me

 

[Laura 2]

I need help but they are the last people I want to help me

It also sounds like they are the last people who are able to help. Your instincts are, going by past experience, spot on.

Can you put your rage aside for as long as it takes to get the right health support/treatment? You can sort your rage out later but for now, use that energy to focus on your needs...