What Is Our Si Like? Is It Passive Or Active?

[therisa]

Sigh.

This week, my SI started up, after a 32 month vacation, from me. Unlike my previously experienced bout of SI, which took a very active voice, this time, it’s a passive voice, like hoping I won’t wake up, from last night’s sleep. Does anyone else, experience a passive/active voice or both, for their SI? If your SI is active, does everything around you, become a possible tool, to use? For I feel like, I need to place myself, inside a rubber room, when my SI, becomes a very active voice.

 

[Kas_Can_Fly]

SI=Suicidal Ideation?

 

[Only 1 of me]

Hey there, sorry to hear you are not in a good place. I know what you mean about passive and active and I have a couple of strategies that help me. When my self harm / suicidal thoughts are very strong and insistent I try to visualise them as a person. I envisage an American newsreader, with fake tan, shiny suit, and a stupid voice who is running this commentary as I go about my daily life. He sits in a little box, top left of my screen and imagining all my thoughts coming out of his mouth really helps me to get some distance, perspective and even a little humour. How dare this silly little man tell me to drive into the wall, burn my hands etc?

When they are more passive I try to see them as an early warning sign. Something somewhere has changed to bring them back onto the agenda. Rather than getting caught up in the thoughts, I try to identify the change and get on top of it. Have I been overdoing things? Have I been isolating myself? Have I been using my coping strategies?

Hope this helps a little and that things improve.

 

[franciemarnie]

I'm sorry you are going thru this Therisa. I hope it will pass soon.

 

[therisa]

Yes, Kas.

 

[therisa]

Thank you, Only 1 of me, for your concern. Not until, two years ago, I was unaware of SI, even though, I have been enduring it, since I was a teenager, more than 25 years ago. Normally, during the passive SI, I am able to keep it, in the background white noise area of my consciousness. Also, found that music and laughing at old comedies have helped me, too. But, when it becomes active, I just ride the angry wave, until it passes. I know, not a very good coping skills, as I know, generally, what is triggering this. And try to write about it, through my poetry.

Thank you, FrancieMarnie, for your supportive thoughts. :)

 

[DMerish]

The first time I had SI, after weeks of deliberating, I came up with a serious fool proof plan and wrote down a list of things I'd need. Problem was my plan included getting stuff that would be a pain in the a** to get, so I dropped it. Now, in the few times SI has revisited me, I start my list - last time I did this I gave up writing things down (and the SI) before getting half-way through the list. Am I OCD for sticking with the same plan, impatient or just lazy? :hilarious:

 

[therisa]

...Am I OCD for sticking with the same plan, impatient or just lazy? :hilarious:

Neither, DMerish, just trying to something that works for you. We all have different coping skills, to get us, through the hard times that SI can present to us. Keep at it, if it works for you. :D

 

[Kas_Can_Fly]

I've been passively suicidal since I was about 9, that got a whole lot worse at 11. By 14, I was researching it intermittently and by 16 had a number of attempts. Even when I've been quite good that feeling that I will die soon never goes. I find that even when I'm happy, and it suddenly is there it is nagging away at me, the level of shock I feel every time just adds to the problem as surely I should expect it by now.

I definitely get both though. Now (at this precise moment in time) I wouldn't consider myself that suicidal, I know I'm ok, but it still crosses my mind a few times a day, as a passing thought. When it was severe recently, I was under 24 hour watch, not being left to go to the toilet with out someone with me for a week, by the end of which I was hospitalised for a further week. For me it is a seperate entity that attacks regardless of how I feel -if I'm good, I can kind of rationalise it out, but if I feel bad too, then I have no ammunition to fight it off with and I don't care about keeping it at bay, I don't want to be in a rubber room, I want to be dead. I want that now. I don't want an attempt, I want success and like a metal filing to a magnet I'm drawn and nothing will really stop it. Until I'm sedated and medicated enough for it to pass.

For me the quiet voice is the loud voice, but it's just further away. To ignore either is the wrong choice but is usually the easiest. If I ignore it, it gets louder to spite me and starts acting out against me. To keep my self from escalating I have to maintain a perfect balance of isolation and social activity, and between doing absolutely nothing and just enough to be occupied - this for me is usually being in my room most of the day alone, doing practically nothing except maybe some light reading or internet browsing and sleeping a lot but still going downstairs to eat with my sister. It sounds dull, but it's all I can do, anymore and it gets worse, any less and it gets worse. I'm sorry to hear you are struggling with this, good luck for now and keep posting when you can.

 

[therisa]

Thank you, Kas. Please pardon my brief response back, to your post here, but I don't know how to express myself. Beyond, I have been battling SI, least since the early 1980s, when things like this, weren't talked about, yet mentioned, by a teenager, to their parents or doctor, without being hospitalized, on the spot. I know, my next attempt, will result in an automatic stay, in the psych ward, for me. Sigh.

 

[Kas_Can_Fly]

I wasn't born until 1989 so I realise that I'm from a different time. But for me, going to the hospital was a good thing, maybe it's not right for everyone or every circumstance, maybe it's not what you want but what you need, maybe it depends on the hospital, but it was definitely the right thing for me. Good luck and I hope you get what you need whatever that is.

 

[therisa]

What I want, is very simple, to live my life, without PTSD, depression and my other anxiety disorders, while not needing to be medicated, to the gills. My body is very chemically sensitive.