Today is the first day of the American Association of Suicidology’s annual conference. I have been getting tweet updates all day from my fellow Twitter buddies. One of them won the writing contest that I had also entered in. I posted the blog earlier today.
I have been astounded that researchers are finally getting a clue that psychache and hopelessness goes hand in hand when dealing with suicidal thoughts. Shneidman would be proud. And they are finding this across the age groups, including youth suicide. I know from experience that was what lead me to self harm and also to think of death constantly. It wasn’t until 2007 while working on a term paper did I realize that only Shneidman had made the connection so brilliantly. Course he never did an empirical study of it. He was out there in the trenches doing the actual work to help decrease suicide. If I hadn’t come across his work and then the work of Jobes, I doubt that I would still be here.
Reading these tweets always makes me feel like I am missing out. Though I know that if I was there, I wouldn’t know how to tweet during a lecture. I would be more interested in what the person was saying than trying to remember it and then post it on Twitter. I suppose I could take notes of what they were saying and then tweet. They had Marsha Linehan today and she told her story of how she was mentally ill with borderline personality disorder, was hospitalized for a good number of years and that the treatment was awful. She made a promise to God that if she got out of her hell, she would try and get others out of theirs. I hate when I am feeling like scum of the universe, feeling hopeless as anything, and then this conference happens to lighten the load so to speak. I truly was in awe that Dr. Linehan came out and was inspirational. She said that to decrease suicide, you have to decrease the pain. And also to use skills to cope. Of course she would say that. She is the founder of DBT! But I think she has softened in her rigidity of DBT as a cure all over the years. She is the one that pushed Jobes into research for CAMS and why would she do that if she thought that DBT was the answer to everything. I minimally respected her before today. But as I am getting to know her more, the more I am respecting her.
Jobes was also at the conference. No surprise there. He was on a panel of speakers but between the tweets, I couldn’t really figure out where he was coming from. The message was that even though he has trained thousands of clinicians in his modality, it didn’t change their behavior toward suicide. And that is sad. He wants the younger clinicians to step and do the research as to why that is.
Last night I was in a pretty bad state of mind. I still don’t want to live. But if Marsha Linehan can come back from mental illness, then maybe I can, too. I know the suicidal thoughts are always going to be there. It is my default coping mechanism. Over the years, I have learned what it took to distract me from going through with these thoughts. I have only come close to killing myself twice in the last two years, no matter how dark and dreary my depressions got me. But figuring this out wasn’t easy. It mostly comes through in hindsight and after the episode has passed. And then I am left feeling like, “did that really happen”? My therapist assures me that I go through these bouts frequently. Which is why she is adamant about me keeping my appointments, no matter how hopeless I get.
midnightdemons7 