Weird therapy session regarding suicidal thoughts

[parrotthepolly]

Nevertheless, perhaps for some SI is narcissistic,

They were discussing whether suicide is narcissistic, not SI.

 

[Dark.Green.Feathers]

His sort of weird response was along the lines of "Hmm, well, obviously you can kill yourself if you choose to. I guess it might be preferrable not to, tho."

Like, very low-key, very understated, a very bland response.

i guess it’s the… “i guess it might be” aspect of his answer that threw you off the most? if my T said i had the free will to commit, but that that’s definitely an unideal way of dealing with things, and throws out the chance for me to see things get better. then i’d probably understand that, but her saying “i guess it might not be ideal” would throw me off. why the uncertainty? logically i know death is not the answer, to me that’s not really up for interpretation, so why would my T (come across as) being on the fence. could the discomfort be similar for you? sorry that you're having trouble connecting

I'm not sure what to make of it... Is it some kind of therapeutic technique?

have you been able to ask / get a response about this? i know you don’t gel well but some transparency from both sides may help?

the issue of suicide/ not wanting to live is probably "too big" for him to deal with spontaneously. I probably should have told him in advance I needed to talk about it.

i don’t know… i think SI and self harm are pretty standard T stuff. someone actively in crisis is different, but just approaching SI shouldn’t be a difficulty for a T with some experience.

without needing to throw an assumption into the mix that suicidalness may be narcissistic

there’s a big difference between actually committing/attempting suicide and thinking about it. that’s why it’s ideation. i’ve been suicidal to varying degrees for most of my life and i think when we do that it’s a pretty idealised idea of dying. that’s where the comfort comes from, from all the bits you find appealing about it and not including the rest. one act and it’s over, pretty neat idea on paper. (everywhere else? not really, once it’s all actually fleshed out). even if our idealised version includes suffering, i don’t think it seriously ropes in other people, or includes them suffering, for most.

it’s why i fantasise, or more productively, make art with my self harm urges, instead of doing it anymore. i’ve got to the point where i (realise?) i really don’t want to deal with all the Real consequences of it. i just want the “appealing” bits that the urges exist to achieve. now it’s been demoted to ideation, i hope i can kick it down another step one day too.

you can’t really help getting suicidal in response to things, even animals innately self harm under enough stress, suicide is speculated to happen in some. policing unconscious emotion doesn’t get us very far, but being curious can. and obviously being self-nurturing and all the other things we eventually learn that helps with SI and other ideations of harm, and their causes, emphasis on causes. does.

i’m not advocating for SI or anything here, it is a struggle that needs helping, but it is a different beast to actually going through with it. yes it’s a concern to address, big indicator of suffering, and can be a big warning sign for crisis,, and also some people ideate massively but don’t do the thing. because it’s the special version of it that they have and not really the real thing. which is it’s own problem.

i also think the nature of our SI can be pretty insightful into what is so hard and why. i hope you get to have a proper conversation about it at some point.

that’s my 2 cents on it anyway, take what’s useful and leave the rest.

 

[Tinyflame]

Yes @parrotthepolly sorry I sort of conflate the two. I have attempted twice so it has never been a thought that brought me a fantasy of relief or was idealized. That is the problem, if one does it the thoughts have become action. And caring how it could impact others is a strong deterrent.

I think @Ecdysis you have expressed a lot in terms of the grief you are processing or needing to, including your childhood. I think someone asked, what response would have made you feel better, or felt heard or understood? And to convey to your T how you felt to hear his response and perhaps ask him to flesh it out.

 

[Applecore]

I think @Ecdysis you have expressed a lot in terms of the grief you are processing or needing to, including your childhood. I think someone asked, what response would have made you feel better, or felt heard or understood? And to convey to your T how you felt to hear his response and perhaps ask him to flesh it out.

I second this excellent question, "what response would have made you feel better, or felt heard or understood?"

It's in keeping with my responsibility for raising the word "narcissism" in this thread in the first place, which was an attempt to offer a constructive interpretation of what the under-responsive therapist might be trying to do or to consider. That was without myself meaning to cast aspersions on the OP, and I hereby own and apologize for that if that's the way it came across as it wasn't my intention.

For what it's worth I wouldn't concur that suicide, suicidal ideation or talking about suicide to others is necessarily always narcissistic. I believe suicidal ideation is an understandable response to long-term unbearable pain. This is what many people have before they apply for legal euthanasia.

If we believe nobody loves us and so nobody will be harmed by our death, and our life is unbearable, ending that life IMHO an understandable way to start thinking. It's realizing that people out there love us, and that we would emotionally destroy them by taking our own lives, that can stop us going through with it. And there are always people out there who will love us, I am certain of that.

There are many other scenarios of course, including that of people feeling entitled enough to make a mess for everyone else through suicide. Then there are those who create massive drama and even blackmail by threatening suicide or even making half-hearted attempts designed to fail.

I found that personally (C-PTSD, rumination, intrusive thoughts, suicidal ideation, sadness, anger), 'auditing myself for traits of narcissism' was an interesting exercise that seems to have helped. It's also another way of the thinking about the advice to 'replace complaining with gratitude' out there in the self-help literature.

That's not to deny or repress the underlying pain that causes the ideation, where it comes from and how to heal it. In fact, talking about that is way more important than talking about the ideation itself. I can actually imagine a therapist telling us that she isn't interested in whether or not we will kill ourselves and how we will do it, but what is going on that makes us think this way and how we can change it.

Final thought for the day. Some say one way to overcome unhappy memories from the past is to create happy memories for the future. I happen to be going out to the park later to meet a friend. We both like trees and birds and on a good day we can make each other laugh. I am way better than I used to be, and judging by your focus, intelligence, and good intentions I am certain that you can get there too.

 

[Friday]

You know what, I think people who want to guilt trip people about being suicidal are a special kind of sick, too.

Who cares about any of that crap, whether you're suicidal or not?

If I have a heart attack while driving a car, someone's gotta scrape my body off some tarmac too. SOO F*CKING WHAT???

Anyone who needs to have a rant about suicide being narcisstic needs to take it somewhere else, out of the thread I've started here.

Go rant away about it as much as you want but I'll be ignoring it. Cos you know, I'm sooooo narcissitic like that.

I’ve been suicidal, off and on, for over 20 years. I have LAYERS of plans, for offing myself. I have attempted to get myself killed… a few hundred times? Maybe more.

Your assumptions are interesting, though.

I’m ALSO hedonistic as hell, LOVE life, and am deeply & profoundly connected/responsible for others.

Do I still fit into your assumptions?

I was neither ranting, nor guilting. Simply sharing my own experience. In both first (being suicidal), second (being begged to kill them, killing them for mercy’s sake, or witnessing others begging to die), and third (losing people I love to suicide, or by my own hand, as they begged), person. 1st, 2nd, 3rd person. If that sentence got all weird.

When the pain is SO BAD that all you can do is beg to die? Or, not as bad, off yourself? It’s the same kind of peculiar self centered fixation involved in throwing up or giving birth. NOTHING AND NO ONE ELSE MATTERS.

Or, even less bad, so one can plan ahead to soften the blow to others? (Which has been me, for the better part of my life; not the first few years, and the first few hundred times, but the last few hundred times). That euphoria that can last for weeks as “final business” is put to rest? Or the rationality that being suicidal will come back, in between bouts of pain? (The euphoria is the most dangerous, by the by. You ever see someone relax & smile like they’ve just fallen in love, when they’re on the ledge? TACKLE them. You haven’t gotten through to them, they’ve made their decision, and all pain is gone).

People in pain? Are at risk for suicide. People in euphoria? Are the walking dead.

It is SUCH a selfish act, than no survivor should EVER blame themselves. But? They always do. The same way kids blame themselves for adult acts. It’s hardwired, human. Senseless, yet… real.

 

[user27357]

People in pain? Are at risk for suicide. People in euphoria? Are the walking dead.

15 words that ought to earn you a solution from Anthony. Just had to say, well put there MOD.

back to the thread about weird responses from a therapist. thanks

 

[Ecdysis]

Therapy session today was nigh on useless again.

The rapport between me and this therapist is so... I dunno... non-existent?

I feel like I'm speaking Greek and he's speaking Chinese.

We didn't do EMDR today cos I said I wanted to try and verbalise some aspects that were important to me.

I think it was good for me to be able to say it... to speak it out loud.

Other than that, I'm not sure there was any therapeutic value to it because T kept blandly repeating (bleating) back at me, the crux of what I was saying.

I assume he's attempting some kind of mirroring technique. It's not working tho.

I feel like: I drive to my dentist and tell him one of my teeth is painfully sore. Instead of doing anything about it, my dentist just blandly comiserates that the tooth looks painful. Then the appointment ends and I drive back home.

It seems so utterly pointless and useless. Just wasted time and petrol for the 1 hour drive.

Ugh

We've vaguely agreed to try EMDR for this issue next time. (In 3 weeks)

The only semi-beneficial, unintentional side-effect this ineffective therapy is having is that I'm pushed to figure it out by myself.

It feels like I'm watching Youtube videos on DYI dentistry and figuring out how to painlessly extract a tooth.

I dunno... Yay for self-reliance and DIY Youtube videos?

At least my system has shut down to numb this pain so it's not a sense of crisis, just quiet desparation.

 

[Innordinate]

Hmm, well, obviously you can kill yourself if you choose to. I guess it might be preferrable not to, tho."

Maybe because you're therapy resistant and he skipped the entire debate about why or why not you should, could or would off yourself?
You would come to the same conclusion, he just bypassed 30 minutes of your much needed discussion on it.
Maybe he's judging how serious you are about it.
There's varying degrees of SI, from waking up "I don't want to be alive" to well, completion.
You've gone like, 5 years being annoyed, angry, frustrated with your SI but you've not been actively (far as you've said neways) attempting. So it's a "meh" point now.
Not saying it's fun to live with but for me, after 30 some plus years, my therapist wouldn't bat an eye to me saying I feel suicidal. She would, has, said similar things. Because she's not going to argue with my OCD and PTSD attention seeking, need to be right behaviours.
He heard you. He wants you to remember there are reasons for not doing it.

For me, once i accepted it will always be part of my life, gets worse, gets less intense- up and down, up and down. Doesn't alarm me much anymore. But it took over a decade to get here. Maybe he wants you there faster.

ETA: came to add- i stopped feeling like i gelled well with my psychiatrist when she stopped participating in debates with my disorders.

 

[Charbella]

With 3 weeks between sessions you probably need to stop avoiding the conversation and just be blunt. You feel dismissed by the way he responds and you need to discuss how you’re feeling about it. I’m not saying that will be easy I’m just saying that you’re going to continue to feel no connection to this T so long as you avoid the rupture.

 

[Ecdysis]

With 3 weeks between sessions you probably need to stop avoiding the conversation and just be blunt. You feel dismissed by the way he responds and you need to discuss how you’re feeling about it. I’m not saying that will be easy I’m just saying that you’re going to continue to feel no connection to this T so long as you avoid the rupture.

Oh, it's been like this, ever since I started with him.
My old therapist retired and since the pandemic, finding a therapist with a vacancy (here, rurally) has become like trying to find a unicorn wandering about. Most therapists around here have simply shut their waiting lists because they're 2 years long and it doesn't make sense to run a waiting list that long.
So I feel stuck with a therapist I have little to no rapport with.
After I'd processed today's session, I was close to writing an email to terminate.
Really, I'm only keeping him as some sort of weird stop-gap because I can't figure out what else to do.
I ran it past the AI today and it became apparent that the issue that's driving the SI is literally something I can't work on with this therapist. It's just not going to work.
So, my best option is going intensive outpatient in a really excellent trauma clinic I've been to before, but that's going to take some wrangling to get organised and it'll probably be a 6 month waiting list, which is fine.
One of their intake conditions is having a normal "outpatient" therapist tho, so I've decided I'm going to keep this T for now, formally, so that I meet their intake requirements.
I'm done with trying to make therapy work with this T tho.
(In my defence, before everyone says it must be my fault for doing therapy wrong with him, he is known locally as being a "weird" therapist and I'm not the only client who's decided that they can't work with him.)
So I'm going to put my effort into getting this IOP trauma clinic thing sorted out and parallel to that I'll try and find a replacement unicorn therapist for this current one.
I emailed a bunch of therapists in a city 2 hours drive from here a while back, because it's a city that's known for being particularly well-serviced by Dr's and T's. Especially compared to the absolute desert it is here, rurally. A bunch of them replied saying that yes, they had waiting times, but they were available. The 2 hour drive there and then 2 hours back is nuts, but I could write back and ask whether any of them offer a mix of in person and phone/ video therapy?
(And yes, I emailed them a few months ago, which was the last time I considered ditching this T because therapy was so useless with him. I think I've considered it about 10 times out of the 20 times I've seen him. Sigh.)

 

[Friday]

Therapy session today was nigh on useless again.

The rapport between me and this therapist is so... I dunno... non-existent?

I feel like I'm speaking Greek and he's speaking Chinese.

We didn't do EMDR today cos I said I wanted to try and verbalise some aspects that were important to me.

I think it was good for me to be able to say it... to speak it out loud.

Other than that, I'm not sure there was any therapeutic value to it because T kept blandly repeating (bleating) back at me, the crux of what I was saying.

I assume he's attempting some kind of mirroring technique. It's not working tho.

I feel like: I drive to my dentist and tell him one of my teeth is painfully sore. Instead of doing anything about it, my dentist just blandly comiserates that the tooth looks painful. Then the appointment ends and I drive back home.

It seems so utterly pointless and useless. Just wasted time and petrol for the 1 hour drive.

Ugh

We've vaguely agreed to try EMDR for this issue next time. (In 3 weeks)

The only semi-beneficial, unintentional side-effect this ineffective therapy is having is that I'm pushed to figure it out by myself.

It feels like I'm watching Youtube videos on DYI dentistry and figuring out how to painlessly extract a tooth.

I dunno... Yay for self-reliance and DIY Youtube videos?

At least my system has shut down to numb this pain so it's not a sense of crisis, just quiet desparation.

Have you started to look for a new therapist?

One of their intake conditions is having a normal "outpatient" therapist tho, so I've decided I'm going to keep this T for now, formally, so that I meet their intake requirements.

Just caught this. That you’re being strategery with the eedjit. Good on. Dealing with politics ON TOP of stupidity, is extra credit. Always.

I emailed a bunch of therapists in a city 2 hours drive from here a while back, because it's a city that's known for being particularly well-serviced by Dr's and T's.

I had to drive or take the train 5+ hours, each way & often overnight, to meet with one of my fave T’s. It’s worth it. To work with damn good people.

 

[Ecdysis]

Thanks all. You too, @Friday

It was a long day and I'm a bit too emotionally drained to reply to this thread properly.

I do appreciate people's input and I do appreciate being challenged. I have to admit, that I do find challenges easiest to digest, when they feel more like a nudge in the ribs than a smack in the face. Maybe that's just me. I tend to get my heckles up and just instinctually defensive, when a challenge is too full-on for me to take on board constructively.

Anyway, from reactions here and three other threads where I've seen it mentioned, it seems this topic has really touched a raw nerve in a variety of different ways.

I hope it's clear, that that was never my intention. I was just genuinely trying to process the weirdness of the dynamic in therapy between this T and me about this (admittedly challenging) topic.

Anyway, I'm wondering whether it's worthwhile opening up a parallel thread to this one, for people who've been affected and/ or traumatised by suicides of others. Obviously that's a really valid and important topic and there's much to be said about it.

And yes, obviously my (and other people's) suicidal ideation forms a Venn Diagram with a certain degree of overlap with suicides that others have committed. Those things aren't wholly unrelated.

While many here have said that experiencing a suicide in their family or friends has led to them ruling out the option of suicide for themselves, forever, due to the force of that experience (which I find very understandable) - I'm not sure it's "transferrable" to others by way of gory examples. That 2nd hand account, no matter how gory it's portrayed, doesn't have that same sobering effect that witnessing the fallout from a suicide seems to have, first-hand.

I don't think very many people can be guilt-tripped or shamed out of their feelings or thoughts of suicide. At least I know for a fact that I can't.

And I'm not suicidal because I don't care... Probably in my case it's the opposite... Childhood trauma taught me to always put my needs last and to care about others more - and in a long chain of events, that's one of the driving forces that led me to getting so burned out that I no longer care whether I live or die... And that "not caring" is so deep, so primal, that yes, it also applies to not caring how that affects anyone else, at this point. Not because I'm someone who doesn't care, but because I'm someone who's had the caring sucked out of her and finds there's just none left.

I never used to be this kind of suicidal... All my life, it was just something that would crop up in moments of overwhelm and then be dealt with in appropriate crisis-intervention manner and then I'd go back to normal. But after this trauma at 40, I completely lost the will to live and it's been the most shocking experience of my life... And I've been clueless as to how on earth to deal with it... I may start another thread about this issue, because it's one that really puzzles and troubles me... Previously, I knew trauma that causes PTSD. Knew how to deal with that, even tho it was a huge challenge. But then, along came the kind of trauma that breaks you, that leaves you catatonic, where you feel like you've died inside and your body is just a shell that's forgotten to die along with your insides, where you no longer know who you are or why you're still alive or what to do about any of it. I've been in a state of shock about all that and just have been mechanically placing one foot before the other and forcing myself to keep going, scared that I'll come completely undone and collapse, if I stop forcing myself to keep going. A very strange, scary, numb survival mode. And I've been throwing all those PTSD-coping-skills I'd learned at it, and it's been to absolutely and utterly no avail. This is a different beast altogether.

And this T is out of his depth with it. And because there's no rapport between us, he won't let me lead him, so that I can intuitively show him the trauma, and I won't let him lead me, to try and let him intuitively find a way out of it for me. It's just a bad fit and it's become very apparent with this challenging issue of suicidalness.

I'm sorry it's triggered some people or angered others, or whatever. Not my intention.

Also, sorry for those that have been exposed to too much SI talk over the years, whether that's been as a cry for help or a suicide threat, or whatever. Also not my intention. I generally don't talk about this stuff, because I don't want to burden anyone with it. I assume we're all carrying our burdens and no one needs me to add my stuff to their load. So I tend to just carry that kind of load silently, until/ unless I think there's actually some specific value that could be gained from discussing it.

This thread has been valuable for me. If nothing else, it's pushed me to really think about how I feel about this and to formulate it better, instead of it being this painful fog that's hard to grasp.

Thanks for what you wrote in your diary too @Charbella . It would've been totally appropriate for you to write here, sorry I gave you the impression that it somehow wasn't. And I agree with everything you wrote there.

Anyway... I'm still wondering whether it's a good idea to open up a parallel thread about how much damage committed suicides can wreak... It's a profound issue that's adjacent to this one, but I do think it's worth keeping it separate, because throwing it all in one big pot just blurs the issues to the point of it being unhelpful and doing more harm than good.