Suicidal ideation and self harm urges

Warning – this post could be triggering for some people. Helpline numbers are posted at the bottom of the page if you need to talk to someone.

I’ve really struggled today. Driving home today I had very strong urges to drink (alcohol) and cut myself. When I get like that, that is all I can think about. Those thoughts fill up my brain and I obsess about it. Today I kept telling myself ‘this is not how I deal with problems and feelings now’ and tried to understand why my brain has presented me with these urges.

A few weeks ago I was dealing with almost constant suicidal ideation. It was painful, indescribably so. How can you tell your support people that almost every waking minute of the day you think about killing yourself? That your head is full of images of you electrocuting yourself in the bath, falling and cracking your head open on concrete, gassing yourself in your car, hanging from the garage rafters, slicing your wrists open, driving your car into a concrete barrier/power pole/traffic, drowning in the sea…. That everywhere you look there is more ways to die. And that you fear that, in a moment of weakness when you are worn out from all the resisting, you will give in to an impulse and do something irreversible. When you spend time with loved ones you feel constant guilt about the thoughts you have about dieing.

So, I’d been having these thoughts for quite some time, two or three weeks I think, when I began to feel quite desperate. It was really starting to worry me that I might act on an impulse and do something I would regret. I brought it up with my psychologist, which is a lot harder than you might think. Trying to get those words out that I was feeling this way and having those thoughts, the feelings were overwhelming my ability to speak or be coherent in any way. Which is another reason it is so hard to talk to my support people and family about things. When I am unwell I am often so full of thoughts and emotions that I struggle to put together words in a way that makes sense to others.

One other thing that I want to make clear – having these thoughts does not mean rational me wants to die. Rational/wise me knows that I have lots to live for, there are things I enjoy and people I love, and that I just need to hang on for a bit until things get better again. Because they do get better. Unfortunately I do have periods of time where I struggle with suicidal ideation. It’s been an ongoing issue for me since my teens. Sometimes it’s intense and lasts a day or two, sometimes it’s nagging thoughts that are around for months on end. This time the length and strength of what was going on for me was wearing me out.

My psychologist was a massive help. He described my brain as trying to protect me. I have a problem, which is that I was having a depressive episode. This was making me miserable. My brain sees the problem – misery – and provides the solution – death – for me. But what it doesn’t understand is that by giving me death as a solution it promotes further misery, as another part of me desperately doesn’t want to die. So I have the two sides of me – depression/misery/suicidality, and the love for my family and friends/hope for the future – locked in conflict with each other. The guilt and shame I feel at having these thoughts effectively strengthen them. My negative emotions start to escalate leading to further misery, which causes my brain to further bring forward the ‘solution’ of death/suicide.

By thinking of my brain as this benevolent force trying to using black and white thinking (ie here’s the problem, there’s the solution) to help me, I could feel compassion towards myself and it completely changed my perspective on my suicidal thoughts and urges. Now when I get those thoughts I can understand it is my brain just providing me with what it thinks is a good solution to my depression. My brain is trying to help me end my suffering in the most immediate way. And now I have to teach it that life is worth living, even if sometimes it is messy and uncomfortable and it hurts.

In the same way I have worked with my psychologist on my binge drinking and self harming urges. These urges often pop up when I am feeling other negative emotions because over the years my brain has learnt that negative feelings and emotions are intolerable. So it provides self harming behavioural urges as a coping mechanism so I don’t have to feel horrible things I don’t want to feel. Pretty clever when you think about it. My brain has taught itself that it doesn’t like anything negative and that it should get rid of those feelings, emotions and experiences at all costs. Even if that involves harming myself or killing myself.

So today when I was having a rough time with wanting to binge drink and cut, I could tell myself that I must be feeling something I didn’t want to feel and that there are healthier ways to deal with my feelings. I’m tuned in to my feelings in that I feel everything x100 – joy, sadness, anger, etc. I know what I’m feeling as I’m usually feeling it incredibly intensely. But I often don’t know why, what was it that caused me to feel that way. I find that confusing and alarming in itself, to be confronted by these big feelings and have no idea why.

Today’s feelings were brought to you by….. I don’t know. Probably a combination of things. I’m unsettled at the moment as I have been thinking about starting a business. Or studying art. Or tech writing. Or anything else. Or…. And that’s the problem. One minute I have an idea and am completely taken with it, researching the hell out of it and obsessed, unable to think of anything else. And the next minute I’m off on another tangent thinking of something else. A million thoughts are going through my head, and while I’m mentally walking through what it would be like to study again, several other concurrent lines of thought are going on – what business would I set up, how much would it cost to fund, could I get a student loan for study, should I give art lessons, how about buying a tripod and making you tube videos…..

Another thing that’s bothering me is something that was said to me about Little G. I agreed for us to take part in a research project being done by a service that supports kids who have parents with mental health and addiction issues. Which is fine, I did my interview, she did hers, all went well. But the psychologist who interviewed Little G made some remarks about how she presents and what her view is on Little G’s diagnosis. And I don’t quite know what to do with the information she presented me with. It hasn’t come from a formal assessment so its an opinion, but it’s one that’s thrown me into a tail spin as basically it equates to the ASD diagnosis may not be right and there is actually something else going on with her. And that something else should be looked in to.

I’m not sleeping at the moment which is never a good sign. The last week or so, I haven’t turned out the light before midnight, and most nights not before 2am. I get up at 7am so it could be worse, but I should really be in bed (light out) by 10.30pm as sleep is such an important part of my self care regime. Problem is that I can’t bring myself to follow my self care regime at the moment…..

I’m also bored at work. Which is not good for me either. I need to be mentally occupied and challenged otherwise all the other thinking takes over (effectively what’s happened) and my brain goes a million miles an hour in a whole lot of different directions. I have a lot of trouble concentrating when that happens, and I also tend to over think and obsess on things.

So there’s quite a bit swirling around in my brain and I guess maybe the self harm urges are trying to tell me that I am overwhelmed. That I need to try and get some sleep, eat some proper food (not just cereal) and try and stop thinking. Use my meditation and mindfulness techniques to get out of my brain and into my life (got that line from my psychologist lol). The trouble is finding the motivation to do those things when they are the absolute last thing I want to do. I have to just keep telling myself I want to be better so I can be a good Mum, family member and friend. And lead a life worth living.

Suicide – read this first

Coping with suicidal thoughts

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Lifeline

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Progress is a series of tiny steps

It’s been a while. I was pretty unwell for a while there and really struggling. When I felt ready to write again I had accidentally logged myself out and couldn’t figure out my password, and Blogger couldn’t verify my identity so I was unable to change my password to get back in. Thankfully I eventually figured out I had been using the wrong email address to try and log in…..

Anyway, that aside, it’s nice to be back writing here again. I have written some stuff while I’ve been off Blogger so it’s not like I haven’t been writing at all, it just hasn’t been quite the same.

The last month or so has been really hard. I’ve felt very down and things have been struggling along. I went through a period of not being able to get out of bed in the morning which is unusual for me. When I say not being able to get out of bed I mean consistantly running half an hour or more late for work. I set at least 3 alarms and I was turning off one or two of them in my sleep without even registering that they had gone off. Some mornings I’d only manage to wake up 20 minutes before I needed to be out of the house and I was not showering for several days in a row because I didn’t have time or the energy.

Little G was quite difficult to deal with towards the end of the school term. Her anxiety levels were high and I was having trouble responding to her from a calm, empathetic place. She can read me like a book and her anxiety often feeds off mine so that wasn’t helping, plus she also had some pretty big stuff she was dealing with emotionally. Her Dad was getting remarried and she was scared and unsure about what that was going to mean for her. When her anxiety levels run high she attempts to control all the other things in her life to make her feel safe and secure. I’ve been there, I get that, but as a parent it’s incredibly frustrating to have an 8 year old try to run your life and your household. This leads to a battle of wills over almost everything, including school refusal which she has a long history of doing.

When I’m unwell and I have this child refusing point blank to go to school or do anything she’s told, and throwing fits and stomping off every fifteen seconds, I struggle. My emotions are already hightened and so it doesn’t take much to throw my system into high alert and it takes a long time to calm down again. I have constant thoughts about how I have ruined her, how it’s my fault she struggles with anxiety in the first place, my fault she has the issues she does.I think I should be doing more for her. I worry that she’ll turn out like me and have to deal with mental illness throughout her life. My brain tells me I am a terrible parent and a pathetic person and that she would be better off without me.

With these emotions running around in my head constantly, they play havoc with the rest of my system too. My stomach oftent feels like it’s cramping or has butterflies, my heart palpitates, I get headaches and pain in my face from clenching my teeth and a stiff back and neck from hunching up, almost as if I am physically trying to protect myself. And let’s not even mention the effect of all this stress on my bowels!!

Through all of this, plus work stress (major deadlines to meet for various clients at this time of year) and extended family issues, I’ve had individual events that each have momentarily pushed me off balance. One of those was an appointment I had with my psychiatrist at the end of June. Historically I don’t have a good track record with psychiatrists. I’ve been under the care of Community Mental Health (CMH)/psychiatric outpatients for about 3.5 years and in that time I’ve seen something like 8 different psychiatrists. Unfortunately that’s the way the system works – you see a registrar and so every 6 months the registrar assigned to that consultant moves on and you get a new one. Sometimes you get that registrar back again after 18 months or so when they have had a number of rotations. I’ve been under the care of the consultant for ‘red zone’ the whole time, but I’ve only actually been seeing the consultant himself instead of the registrar for about a year. In that time there’s been two or three different ones because they change jobs or leave.

(*registrar = trainee psychiatrist with degree and 1-4 years experience, consultant = fully qualified and ‘boss’ in charge of registrars for a certain area. The region I live in is divided into zones by CMH and I live in red zone).

So the consultant I saw at the end of June I’ve seen twice before (roughly every 3 months), but neither time went particularly well. I tend to be difficult to deal with as I don’t understand what they are asking for or how to answer their questions, and I take offence to some of the things they have to say. For some reason the whole situation upsets me and the appointment often ends with me having said something I shouldn’t have or refusing to speak to them at all. When this happens I know I am not behaving well but once I have been triggered I find it incredibly difficult to act rationally as my emotions are fully in the driving seat.

In the middle of all this Little G has been sick, we’ve had school holidays, we are supposed to be following a plan from the continence nurse for her to try and sort out her bed wetting (not happening – she refuses to follow it), I’ve had family issues and financial pressure, Little G’s Dad got married, two of my colleague resigned – one I worked with particularly closely, and my back problem has flared up again. Not to mention that Little G was away in the school holidays so I was on my own for a week. And then the appointment with the communication and behaviour team that I’ve been waiting for since Little G was diagnosed with ASD two years ago finally happened, and it wasn’t quite what I’d pictured.

Suddenly I again felt all this guilt and doubt about my child and shame about my own mental health affecting her, and scared of what they might suggest. I’ve hung so many hopes on this appointment and to finally get it and find that I was going to be expected to carry out their plan to change Little G’s behaviour was very daunting. I don’t know what I thought they would do but I hadn’t imagined that I would be such a key part of it. For some reason I had thought it would be more about them working with her directly. And that really threw me. Because what if I wasn’t good enough? It would be my fault again if the plan didn’t work. I doubted my ability to carry anything out and suport her.

I freaked out. I think I subconsiously equated her communication and behaviour problems to my own as a child and I don’t want her to go through what I have. The pressure of having to be the person to help her when I am so fully aware of the possible consquences of getting it wrong tore me apart. Then I started blaming myself for my poor mental health and the damage I’d already done to her. I know attachment is really important and forming a secure bond with your child sets them up for the best possible outcomes in life. I also know that I have been inconsistent and at times very unwell and that Little G’s and my bond is not as secure as I’d like. I’m working on it but I’m always scared I’ll screw up.

I’d already been having suicidal thoughts for weeks. I live with them. Sometimes those thoughts are louder and sometimes quieter but they are almost always there. These are the ones that tell me I want to die, that no one would miss me, that there is no point to life, that people would be better off without me being a burden on them. When I really freak out I start also hallucinating suicide scenarios, which tend to scare me even further. I get in the car in my garage and I can see myself closing the doors, putting the windows down and killing myself with carbon monoxide from the exhaust fumes. I see myself in the bath with blood running down my arms, or head in a noose hanging from a tree. I frequently picture myself walking into the sea with all my clothes on and drowning. When I’m driving I can see myself plowing into power poles or into something solid.

Living with these thoughts and hallucinations is really scary sometimes, particularly when I tend to be impulsive and I’m aware I can’t always trust myself when I feel like this. Telling anyone you have this mess in your head is impossible. I still can’t quite believe I’ve written it down because it almost looks worse on the page than it did in my head. How do you tell someone who cares about you that you want to die so much that you vividly picture multiple suicide scenarios daily, sometimes hourly.

And yet, and yet…. if there is one tiny kernel of hope in all of this, it is that I am still here. I am still taking things moment by moment. I mostly remember and follow my crisis survival and distress tolerance strategies. I mostly take care of myself. Any one of these stressful situations would have triggered a full meltdown with alcohol and a lengthy cutting session only a few months ago. Not to say I haven’t cut because unfortunately I have. But just a bit and it was the first time in four months which is something I feel proud of. I am ashamed that I have self harmed again, but I do acknowledge the progress I am making. Small steps. Progress is a series of steps, and even if they are tiny I am making them.

One song I am listening to a lot is Let It Be (The Beatles). It fits nicely with the mindset I’m trying to cultivate.

Kia Kaha

Chris Cornell, suicide and major depression

The death of Chris Cornell by suicide, and the subsequent discussion of his death in various forms of media, has had me thinking about my own major episodes of depression.

When I heard about Chris Cornell I was so incredibly sad. The man was a genius, and the Temple of the Dog song Hunger Strike (sung in duet with Eddie Vetter of Pearl Jam) is my favourite song of all time. Oddly enough, though I love most of Soundgarden and Audioslave’s music, it’s this song I most identify with. It’s all about staying true to yourself and what you are doing, regardless of sucess or money. And that there is really no way of having more than you need without taking from someone else that can’t really afford to give it to you. Interestingly, Temple of the Dog was a collaboration between artists who would go on to be in Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden, and was a tribute to their friend Andrew Wood who died of a heroin overdose in 1990.

The lyrics of ‘Hunger Strike’ have been running through my head all day while I’ve been thinking about Chris and what frame of mind he must have been in. I know only too well what that pain is like, having suffered so terribly with suicidal depression myself. But I also feel so devastated for his wife, kids, family and friends, because I’ve been on that end of suicide as well. I know a number of men who have taken their lives, and I’ve witnessed what that does to people. You analyse every thought, every moment, every word spoken, to see if you can find the reason. You relentlessly ask yourself if you should have seen it, if you could have done more. Whether you would have been able to stop it.

The radio conversation I listened to this afternoon talked about how selfish Chris was to take his own life. Neither of the djs had experienced depression and had no idea how someone could feel that way and not be able to think of what it might do to the people around them. One of the djs made the comment that Chris had everything, money, talent, sucess, a family etc and how could he still be unhappy with all that going for him. That he should have used his kids as an anchor and remembered what it would do to them if he was to die that way.

Now, I know that not all people who die by suicide have depression. And maybe Chris wasn’t depressed, sometimes overdoses and accidents happen. But he has said enough in the past about the struggles of depression to imagine that it could have been that, and even if someone doesn’t look like they are struggling from the outside it doesn’t mean that they aren’t.

I have suffered from depression since the age of 10 or 11. I have had a number of major episodes, but the worst one by far started in 2013 and almost destroyed my life. By November of 2013 I was in such a mess that I couldn’t follow a TV program or read a book, I certainly couldn’t work. I sat and stared at the wall and wished I was dead. It was the most pain I’ve ever been in and I couldn’t get away from it. It was inside my head and all I could picture was that permanent solution to it, death.

The first time I remember wishing I could die I was 11. I’d been bullied on and off for several years, and something expensive of mine got broken and needed replacing. I felt ashamed and guilty and like I was a waste of space on earth who just caused hassle and cost money. I wanted to die to escape from those feelings. On and off all through my teens I had dark periods, but as I got older they got longer in length and I fell that much further.

This is one of the poems I wrote in 2000, when I was about 17:

Darkness decends

And I am sitting alone

Outside

In the cold, crisp air

The rain stings

My sodden skin

As I watch the brightly lit house

Secure people bustling

Like ants in it’s inards.

Warmth emits from it

But does not seem to

Penetrate its walls.

It stands solid, fortress like

And unreachable.

I can see in

But they do not see out.

I shout until I am hoarse

My throat raw and bleeding

And still no one throws a glance

My way.

Then there is this one from 2001:

Can’t stop the voices in my head

The demons rising up

From the firy hell in the

Dark depths of my mind,

And trying to pull me down.

I kick them off and

Avert my thoughts from the

Sweet killing pain of the knife.

Surely I can find something worth

Living for

Something the shadows can’t touch

Which gives me some purpose.

The demons claw at my legs

Whisper thoughts of pain in my ears

And promise to free me from the

Burdens of living life.

I can’t make them stop.

Don’t even know if I want to.

Maybe I should just give up

And refuse to live.

I don’t think anyone would even notice.

And that’s the thing about depression. It makes you feel like you are in this black cloud. You can’t see anything but the bleakness. Life feels pointless and futile and I find myself questioning why humans crawled out of the sea and evolved from chimps and what we were we supposed to gain from that? And why I am I here, in this house, marking time?

I try so hard to think positively and be kind to myself but sometimes depression is not something you can tackle just by doing those things or getting more sleep/exercise/eating better etc. I am on meds and have been since my breakdown in 2013. I resisted them for so long, feeling like if I took them it would be like I’d failed or I was admitting I needed help. But they do help, even if sometimes all that means is that the edge is taken off things a bit so I can ask for help.

Asking for help can seem like scaling a very high mountain. You know you need to climb it to be able to move forward. But saying the words “I’m scared and I need you” can be incredibly difficult. How do you tell someone you care about that you are thinking of taking your own life? It’s like saying them and their feelings don’t matter to you – that you are prepared to hurt them in the most final way possible to end your own pain. But I’ve also been in the position where I’ve told a professional and been lectured about “how can you even consider doing that?”, and “think of your child and your family”. It took several years not to feel violently ill every time I thought of that conversation. When I opened up to someone and was honest about how dark my thoughts were they were more freaked out by them than I was. Once that’s happened once or twice you learn not to be totally honest about what’s in your head for fear of upsetting them or causing them to reject you completely.

There’s been a number of times the pain in my head has been overwhelming and I’ve wanted to end my life. Sometimes I don’t sleep properly for weeks, I can’t go to sleep or I wake in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep. Or I have terrible nightmares which make me fear closing my eyes at night. I’ve had hallucinations where I’ve been out walking and seen bodies hanging from the branches of trees. Some days everything looks grey and all the colour and happiness and goodness has been sucked out of life. I can go for weeks being tormented by thoughts of being a terrible person, a bad parent, a fat lazy ugly bitch, remembering everthing people have said to me about looking or acting strange and the times in my life when I’ve been bullied. Sometimes the demands of working and the house and being a parent get on top of me and the smallest thing can send me spiralling into despair. At times like these the thoughts can be so loud in my brain that I can’t follow the plot of a TV program or movie, or read anything, because I can’t concentrate. Occasionally the only thing that’s stopped me from taking a handful of pills is imagining the horror of Little G finding me. I couldn’t do that to her. Not that I didn’t want to, but that I couldn’t ruin her life like that.

Its really hard to explain what goes through my head in that position – its kind of like ‘whats the point. I don’t want to live my life but I can’t leave, I can’t do that to my girl and to my family. I really don’t want to be here. All I can see is the struggle – the depression in my past and the struggle to dig myself out of the current episode. My life is never going to change, no body will ever love me. Can I face being alone forever. What the hell am I doing with my life’. And on and on and on it goes.

You can see how I got to the point of self harming. When you mix underdeveloped coping skills with significant emotional disturbance like this, self harm by cutting relieved my pain without the final ‘solution’ of death that I craved. I was less conflicted by it. It released endorphins which helped ease emotional pain, allowing me to keep living. Not a healthy coping strategy at all but one which becomes slightly more understandable when you have some idea of the pain which causes the action.

And I guess this is the same type of behaviour that causes some people to drink and do drugs and engage in all sorts of other self harming behaviours. The trouble is that the more you use these ‘strategies’ to cope, the more you become addicted to them, and the stronger those pathways become in your brain.

Whatever killed Chris, whether it was depression or drugs or something else, the world is a slightly darker place without his musical genius in it. RIP Chris. May you find your peace.

Just as an added note, if you are in crisis please please please tell someone

Lifeline – 0800 543 354

Suicide Crisis Helpline – 0508 828 865

Healthline – 0800 611 116

Samaritans – 0800 726 666

Go here and read it right to the end.