How often do you think about suicide?

[MadamMemoo]

And does anyone else find it a really comforting thought? I obsess about drowning atm and when I think about being submerged in the water it feels like it would be so calm and peaceful.

[expatinscotland]

Thank you, NanaNina, for your excellent post. I can relate. 9to5 and everyone, hope you can come back and we can talk.

I had two serious suicide attempts. It's hard, to bring them up outside real life places where you know it won't be taken the wrong way/upsetting, to talk about how you feel. Or the times when you wish for death somehow. We all know how guilt is attached.

This is an illness. This is an illness, I can't think of anyone who would ask for this.

But hopefully here we've found a thread in mental health to do so, and hoping people still keep talking.

Am here. :)

[expatinscotland]

Exactly, mouse! This is an illness with a 25% fatality rate, perhaps more. Yet there is the taboo. You are selfish, a coward, people with cancer would swap places, etc. To make you feel even worse, to make you feel even less than, why are you here, you are such a low-life you can't even rise above that.

It doesn't help. It doesn't make you magically better. So that's why, for me at least, I'm here.

Because I do understand. Not here to judge. Here to hold your hand and say 'I've seen you around.'

I remember after my first attempt. I had an ex boyfriend who is a surgeon from an Ivy League school and has struggled with Bipolar I and heroin and alcohol addiction. He rang and kept ringing, came over when he was at conference in London. Said, 'I just wish you didn't have to find this place. I wouldn't wish this on anyone.'

[expatinscotland]

Even now, I have a good friend, who I consider a good friend, I know when she's ill. When she needs space, when she can't reach out. But that doesn't mean I stop thinking about her, every day, or that I'm not there for her, if only in prayer.

[MadamMemoo]

I'm still here too and really hope we can keep talking.

It's so difficult to talk about it in rl because as soon as you mention suicidal thoughts everyone panics. I am having the thoughts every minute of the day at the moment but I'm not going to do anything about it. I know these thoughts are just my illness talking to me.

[MadamMemoo]

I was talking to a guy from the crisis team the other day about my thoughts of suicide. I talked about the pain I feel and how it hurts so much it becomes like an almost physical pain. I said to him that I can't stop thinking about how easy it would be to just end it. He said that actually it's not that easy at all. To actually take your own life, to cut yourself or take a load of pills goes against our basic human survival instincts and most people actually find it really hard to do.

[montmartre]

I think part of it is that it just becomes normal for us memoo- okay you may be ill atm, but even when you're better, because you're used to thinking that way you still think about it, not in a 'considering doing it' kind of way, just in a 'oh yeah there's that again' kind of way.

I haven't been ill for years, over 10 years now in fact, but I still think very frequently about suicide, probably daily. I'm never likely to act on it, there are too many other people to consider now, but it's still there, unsuprisingly more present when things are hard, or there are things I have to do that I don't want to do.

I wish you strength, and hope you're illness improves soon.

[montmartre]

you're illness? :S

your, obviously!

[MadamMemoo]

Mont, that makes a lot of sense. We develop a pattern of thinking that includes these negative suicidal thoughts and they continue even after we're better. Though being ill I've developed physical habits like hand wringing and pulling at my hair. I can't stop doing them even when I'm having a period of feeling well so the suicidal thoughts are just another habit.

[TheNamesTheyAreAChangin]

Oh my goodness this thread is amazing, thank you for finding the courage to start it MadamMemoo and NanaNina for the post about carrying it on. Being able to talk and read about it without any "pull yourself together" is just so liberating. Working 9 to 5 please stick around. There doesn't seem to be judging and pitying about, but a chance for people to talk about something that is going on in your and other women's heads. I thought it was just me.

I think about suicide a lot. Thankfully I can't focus on the death too much, I just want to cease my existence. It's always bubbling there in the background and the thoughts intensify just before my period, or around times of particular stress. It's the emotional legacy for my DH and DS that usually stops me thinking it out, and when I'm feeling really crap and like they'd be better off emotionally without me, the financial legacy is the next barrier as I'm the sole earner and I don't think my life assurance would cover suicide. If I find myself checking out the terms of the policy then I suppose I'm in trouble.

I guess that makes it sound quite prosaic and domestic. The accompanying black void inside me when I feel like that though is just so incredibly difficult to deal with.

[maddie04]

so does no one on this thread want to die? U just think about suicide.
I think about suicide for 1 reason only so i probably wouldnt be welcome on this thread.

[madmouse]

maddie you are welcome on here - of course you are

whether you feel it is a good place for you to be right now is another matter. I know you are quite fragile right now xx

[TheNamesTheyAreAChangin]

I've only just joined, but think I could venture that you would be welcome. Do you want to say why you think about suicide?

[expatinscotland]

Yes, it's just something that is there, along with, 'Shall I dress?' I'd think of Keats. 'And many a time/I have been half in love with easeful Death'.

I know even now, that I am not 'past' it, that maybe there's no such thing.

That if I live to a hundred I'll have this with me.

[shodatin]

I've not been able to read all this thread, as my DB did jump in river to die at Christmas, and I feel so lucky that he survived. He does too, and in fact changed his mind and fought to survive once in the water, which must have been hellishly frightening apart from subsequent hypothermia.

This is not a way out that I'd choose, but honestly I don't think there is a good way, and no family deserves this awful loss of a loved one.

[auntyfash]

Shodatin, so sorry to hear about your db but so glad he survived. My own son tried to kill himself by walking out to sea, he had to be rescued (his gf called emergency services) by police, ambulance and coastguard. It was an awful time. My dad also committed suicide, and just two weeks ago I lost my bil to suicide. Knowing the sorrow and turmoil that it causes those left behind is what stops me from doing it myself.

[shodatin]

Thanks for your post, auntyfash, and am pleased that your son survived too. Agree that experiencing a close suicide is a deterrent, however bad it gets, plus not all attempts are successful.

[PaperView]

I'd like the thread to stay. Not really contributed to it but not feeling able to just yet.

[YoureaKITTY]

9to5, excuse my French but bollocks to you not deserving sympathy!

When I was grieving for a close relative recently it was so so so upsetting. But then one day a thought popped into my head: I compared it to when I was depressed - it was easy. Even though when I was depressed nobody had died and from the outside I was living quite a charmed life. It was a thousand times more painful.

It's really notable how often that word painful has come up in this thread. Because it is pain, it is a disease. You should be no more ashamed than someone with diabetes.

My grandmother had both breast cancer and depression, and she said she'd take the cancer over depression again any day.

[YoureaKITTY]

I read that book too Lottie - so many things stuck with me from it.

I think CBT can help. They're almost like OCD type thoughts - whenever something goes wrong you just automatically think about it (at least that was my experience - I would say a string of expletives to myself, telling myself what an utter piece of crap I was and then think... suicide is the answer). It's really hard to break the connection. You can do stuff like visualisation - picturing putting the suicidal thought in a box and shutting it away, or seeing the thoughts as clouds in the sky that gently float away. Or create a compliments list - ask the people around you what they like and value about you and wrack your brain for past compliments and write them down. Then when the thoughts come into your head, read your list of why you're wonderful and tell the suicidal thoughts to bugger off. Eventually the thoughts become something you can just dismiss.

[kizzie]

Hi everyone
I'll probably only post once at the moment on this thread. I find this subject really difficult and I'm trying to avoid things that upset me where possible.

However I absolutely think it should stay here. Its very very important that these subjects are discussed and if anyone doesnt want to read it they have the choice to avoid it - like me.

I just thought some of the things I have read/learnt over the years might help others.

1/ I was v lucky in a way that I didnt have any depression till I was 29/30 (pnd). Before this i was totally confident in my mental health and would have had no qualms in saying - 'I will never ever take my own life.' I do think tho that once your mind has gone to that place once - it becomes easier to go there again. And I will never have that same confidence again - no matter how well I am.

2/ The single most helpful piece of advice I ever read re. suicidal thoughts was from (I think) Virginia Ironside - an agony aunt who has had depression. She said - if you just cant get the thought out of you mind - make a date two years away. And if you continue to feel this bad every day for the next two years then give yourself the permission to think about it again. You wont feel this bad for the next 2 years because things always change - but at least it takes away that fear that you are going to have to live in this pain for decades.
I hope that makes sense in the way Ive written it but I did find that it helped me.

3/ i think its very easy when depressed for these thoughts to become obsessive. Its like your brain cant think of anything else. (No matter where you are or what you're doing they pop into your head.) So its worth trying some of the basic tips to deal with obsessive thoughts:
- crowd them out. The brain can only think of so many things at once.
(sudoku, paint by numbers, rubbish tv, easy magazines. Anything that
gives you a break for a few minutes.)

- Turn the horrible thoughts into a ridiculous cartoon in your head.
So eg a huge hippo in a pink tutu does ballet moves while saying the
thoughts in a high pitched american accent (sorry but you get
the idea).

- In the same way distance the thoughts from you and attribute them to
your depression. So 'this is not me its the depression talking - and
when the depression goes so will these thoughts.' And give your
horrible thoughts a character name. So -
'doomcloud', 'edna', 'miserable old dog' etc etc

4/ Remember the most basic advice. 'This Too Will Pass'. Repeat it over and over again.

Apologies for rambling on - but I hope that helps someone x

[TheOriginalFAB]

When I tried to kill myself I did want to die and a bit of me is still pissed off it didn't work as I know I can't ever try again.

[MadamMemoo]

fab, so sorry x

Kizzie, that is a hugely helpful post. I especially like the idea ofaking a date 2 years away.

[didldidi]

I don't have suicidal thoughts but I do things that aren't the best for my health - i.e drink too much, couldn't care less about my cholesterol and haven't had a smear test for eight years because the thought of a bad result doesn't bother me. That's not right either though is it?

[bbbbob]

Feel as though I'm intruding by posting on this thread as I have never experienced the feelings so many of you have.
I have experienced from the other side though. My mum committed suicide when I was a teenager.
i hope I don't offend any of you when I say that reading your thoughts, about your emotions gives me more insight into why my mum did what she did. For so long I thought she didn't love me enough. but I realise its more complicated than that.
Yes its bloody hard for the people left behind (massive understatement) but I can't imagine what life is like for people who attempt/consider suicide.
This is a subject that, I believe, has to be spoken about, people have to be able to tell their thoughts.
Much love to you all, I think you are all so brave to talk about how you feel.
maybe 25 years ago if their had been forums like this for my mum to go on, well, things might have been different.
xx