Category: suicide

no sleep again!

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging, chronic physical pain, depression, mood disorders, suicide

No sleep again

I didn’t fall asleep until 0630 this morning. I was up all night. Every time I wanted to lie down, my foot or ankle or both, acted up in severe pain. I slept for about 7 hours before my damn mother called me wanting to know where I was. I didn’t pick up the phone. I took my pain meds. Then went downstairs to use the bathroom.

A friend had messaged me saying she was at work and I could swing by with my books whenever. I told her I would be by in about a half hour. I really didn’t want to go but I wanted to see my friend. I trudged up the hill to the office she was at and I was hurting. My ankle and toes acted up. I gave her the books and then left. I had an errand to do for my mother so I went to Walgreens. I wanted a drink or a snack so I got a Mountain Dew energy drink. It didn’t give me energy. My ankle is really acting up. I am in a lot of pain. I finished my zucchini bread and the rest of the energy drink. I told my mother I would be ordering Chinese food for dinner. She said ok. I think ordering Chinese is the only thing that she likes me to order. She never gives me a hard time about it but if I order a burger or any other type of food, she does. I don’t get it. It’s not like I am using her money. Whatever.

I’m pretty wiped out. I don’t feel like doing much of anything. I really wanted to change my sheets today but I knew that I would feel shitty when I got up. Guess it will have to wait till tomorrow. I am hurting pretty bad. My ankle just kicked up a few notches so I had to take the strong pain pill. It was hurting so bad my thoughts immediately went to suicide. I’m starting to keep a record of the consecutive days that I think about suicide due to pain only. If I think about suicide because of my depression or psychache, it doesn’t count.

OSU plays their first football game of the season tomorrow. I can’t wait. I have been looking forward to their games all summer. I think the Huskers play on Saturday. I tried downloading the schedule but couldn’t get it. I’ll just have to look online. I used to have the college football app but couldn’t find it in Google Play. I loved that app.

Think I need to take another strong pain pill. Pain is not going down and now my ankle bone is hurting really bad. This makes day 4 of it hurting. Tomorrow I don’t have to do a damn thing, other than change my sheets if I am up to it. I am not going out or anything. It will be a rest day. I’ll shut my phone off so if my damn mother decided to call, it will go directly to voicemail. Maybe I will block her when I sleep. There is an idea. I wish she would leave a reason for her call but she never does. She just says “give me a call when you get a chance” and hangs up. Annoying!

in my brain, dial it up, everything I want to say

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging, chronic physical pain, depression, mood disorders, suicide

In my brain, dial it up, everything I want to say

I am totally addicted to “One Number Away”. It has been on repeat since yesterday afternoon. It touches me every time I hear it.

I am going through withdrawal symptoms from my pain meds because it has been 11 hours since my last dose. I have been sleeping all day so didn’t bother to take them when I woke up two hours ago. Sucks being dependent on a drug. And NO, being depended and addicted are two separate things. Being addicted means you need higher amounts of something to feel good. I don’t need a higher dose of my pain meds when I go through withdrawal. I just need to take the dose I take to get relief from the dizziness and lightheadedness that I feel. I almost fell backwards twice today. I thought it was because I am in Neurontin fog but now I think it’s because of the withdrawal. I have just taken my meds so I should be feeling better in about a half hour.

My mother is making dinner right now. Sausages and potatoes. I have a funny relationship with sausages. I like them but sometimes the taste makes me not like them. It’s weird. I’ll probably eat more potatoes than sausages anyway.

I made coffee but couldn’t drink it. It was making me more sleepy so I decided not to drink it all. I had wanted to change my sheets today but I’m not feeling up to it. I bought these clips to hold them in place. I just hope they work and don’t rip the sheets or slip off. I got them cheap on Amazon, just $8. A catalog that my mother gets had them for $14, but it was just 2 clips. I got 3 clips. I hope it keeps my sheet from coming undone after a few days. I hate having to fix it.

I got my suicide prevention shirt from the American Association of Suicidology. I hate not being a member anymore but the fees are too much for my budget, even as a fixed budget fee. I have Twitter to keep me updated on things as people are now posting on social media the slides and stuff at conferences. It makes you feel like you are there.

I’m starting to feel better now that I took my pain meds and ate a little bit. The sweet potatoes weren’t cooked but the zucchini she made was. It was a good dinner. I love zucchini with bread crumbs. She baked it in the oven so it was crispy. Very yummy! I hope I am able to stay awake for a little bit now that the withdrawal symptoms have passed. I try not to let it happen but I have no control over my sleeping pattern. I had woken up in the early morning and didn’t go back to sleep until 0700 then woke up at 1400. It was a good sleep. I hope that I will be able to sleep tonight. I think I will because I am still tired. I’ll change my sheets tomorrow. I really don’t feel like doing that task today. I need to clear my bed off and then take the sheets off. That is the easy part. Finding a place to put my “office” is always difficult. It’s not so bad as mostly it’s just clothes more than books and notebooks like last time. I’ll do it but I need energy and I just don’t have it today.

in the pit of despair

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging, chronic physical pain, depression, mood disorders, suicide, suicide attempt

In the pit of despair

I have been in severe pain since 1500, so basically the last 12 hours because it is now 0315. My foot and ankle have been playing the divide and conquer game, giving me different pain in different parts of my ankle and foot, all at once. I don’t like this game at all. I can’t keep up with the pain and I don’t know what medicine to use to alleviate it. It is very frustrating.

My jaw/face was swollen so I put ice on it. It brought down some of the swelling. It is still giving me a hard time though when I eat as it feels like food is stuck there but it’s not. It’s just inflamed gums. It is so annoying. Tomorrow I go back to using the yucky rinse that causes my tongue to tingle. Fun stuff. The dentist wanted me to use the toothpaste that he gave me but I told him that it hurts to brush just once, let alone twice. He said not to use it on the hurt area. I was like, that area is where you WANT me to use it, which is why you prescribed it to me, ya Schmuck. I am not using the special toothpaste until my mouth is healed. My mouth, my choice.

I am trying not to get depressed but that is easier said than done. I feel my heart imploding and there is nothing I can do about it. It hurts and no amount of pain meds can take it away, as if it were that easy. Matters of the heart are never solved by medication. What it is solved by remains a mystery. The internal hurt that never goes away.

I was thinking of my father today. I have been flooded with memories of how he treated me, not all good. For some reason, while trying to organize the pics on my phone, his pics from when I got them loaded on my phone, including the one of him in his casket, are first in the order rather than the most recent ones that I have taken. I never thought I would forgive my father for his wrongdoings because he would never admit that he did something wrong. We were the ones that “made him” do the things to hurt us. As time is going by, and he is no longer here, I am finding a sense of peace from him knowing he can’t hurt me anymore. No more calls, no more threats, no more vengeance to the people he hated. Most people would say that my father is in heaven but I know better. He is either in Hell or purgatory. He never apologized for his sins before he died and he never would because “he did no wrong”. Asshole. But the bastard is on my mind these past few days. I got to put the pics of him in some kind of folder so I don’t come across them so frequently or it is going to drive me mad, well, madder than I already am.

I joined a suicide attempt survivor group on Facebook and a depression support group. Both are very busy and take up a lot of my feed. I’m not sure if I am going to stay in the depression group. People there are really rock bottom depressed and it doesn’t make me feel hopeful that things will be better. The other group, I am not sure about either. There is a lot of talk about suicide and suicide attempts though the rules state you can’t be talking about it. I have posted my story and someone there thinks I have season affective disorder because for three months I am depressed and suicidal. Being suicidal is not part of the SAD criteria. I have no other symptoms of being depressed other than being in despair and wanting to end my life, and of course, psychache. Those three symptoms are no where near the SAD criteria so I do not have SAD. It is part of the bipolar cycle. Most people with bipolar disorder will have this downfall about now through the fall. Studies have confirmed it. I think it is in the book Night falls fast or maybe touched with fire both by Kay Redfield Jamison. I am always good at remembering shit like this but not the source. It is my downfall.

Even though I feel despair, I really just feel nothing. I am numb. My heart is so heavy I can’t feel anything. I just want to be done with this. Being in pain sucks every day. One of the groups thought being in physical pain would be better than psychache. I said I thought the same until I had chronic pain and now it just makes me want to end my life all the more. I wonder what keeps me here, from not acting on my feelings and thoughts of suicide. They are frequent but more tolerable. Sometimes it is a passing thought, but tonight it is on my mind a lot. I haven’t picked a date or anything. I haven’t done that in months. In some ways, I think not seeing my ex-therapist has helped me be calmer about my suicidality rather than keep it heightened.

My psychiatrist has been trying to get me into a pain support group for months now and every time we get in touch with the coordinator, we are met with red tape. I really don’t care for this group. It can go to hell. But my psych really wants me to go to it. She thinks it can help me. I rather just not exist anymore. I mean, what is the point? I stay in my room most days and only go out when I have an appointment or feel like getting an espresso. Some days when I don’t leave the house, I don’t even make coffee. It has been having the opposite effect on me lately, making me tired rather than awake. I sleep. I have no friends outside of social media to talk to or hang out with. I am alone. I kind of like it but being in severe pain lately has really spun me around. I have been thinking of the plan that I came up with while in the hospital. I am just too cowardly to do it, I think. I just want to be gone. Away, permanently. Why is that so hard to understand??

Therapist’s choice or fear?

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging, depression, mood disorders, suicide, suicide attempt

Therapist’s choice or fear?

My therapist of sixteen years had decided sometime while on our three week break that she couldn’t work with me anymore for what reasons are still not quite clear. We had been arguing over various things the last several months, including my suicidality and it was becoming apparent that she refused to seek the given evidence based practices I was telling her about to deal with my suicidality. I was becoming more and more frustrated and wrote a blog about it that “opened her eyes”. Our engagement ended in February of this year. I was gutted. I had no choice but to end things with her if she had no idea how to work with me any more. So the hunt for a new therapist began, once I could manage it.

It is very difficult to find someone willing to work with a high risk suicidal patient, such as myself. When my therapist moved to her office thirty miles away and I had no means of getting there, I called ten therapists in a five mile radius of my house. I kept getting the run around. I couldn’t be seen by them because I was high risk and so they referred me to someone else. That someone else then referred me to someone else. I became distraught and just stayed with my therapist event though it meant more phone sessions and text messages.

Now I had the same problem, except I had no back up. There was no one. I had asked some therapist friends on Twitter in my area if they knew anyone seeking new clients. One responded and gave me a name. That therapist never returned my calls. After three weeks (one call a week), I gave up and moved to therapist number two. Same deal. It took me until April to find someone that a) took my insurance and b) wasn’t afraid of suicide. I’ve been seeing this guy for about three months now and it is getting obvious to me that we just aren’t clicking. You need a certain chemistry to work with someone is this guy is lacking. I thought I could work with him but he is my back up right now. I am looking for someone else.

The day that I had my first meeting with him back in April, two therapists returned my phone calls. One had taken three weeks to call me back so I was not in a rush to call her back even though her qualifications seemed like it would match what I was looking for. The other organization I didn’t know too much about but knew they offered CBT, a therapy modality known to work with some people but didn’t for me. I kindly told them I was not looking at this time but if that changed (I hadn’t met the guy yet so it could be possible not to work out), I’d be in touch.

So when I was hospitalized a few weeks ago and my current therapist told the social worker that I was there because of “family conflict” instead of a psychotic episode that happened that weekend, I got pissed off and realized I wasn’t going to waste 16 years with this guy to know it was wrong. I called the other therapist and she never called me back. Then I got in touch with the organization. I had a phone interview with them last week. He first went over my insurance as he didn’t take one of them. OK, but he took the other so I was okay with that. Then we talked about clinical stuff. He asked when was the last time I was hospitalized and I truthfully told him a few weeks ago. He ended the conversation saying his group would be unable to help me as I needed “intensive outpatient” treatment after a hospitalization. He basically said I was “too sick” to work with one of his therapists.

I was floored this happens in 2017. I have been studying suicidology since 2007, reading countless articles about how clinicians, particularly psychiatrists, are more prone to have a suicide during their career than any other profession. Psychologists are second to that. Yet despite the advancements in evidence based practices (EBP), there is still the fear of losing someone to suicide. I can’t make that go away and if I ever become a therapist, I too will have that fear. But there are measures you can take to decrease that risk in the high risk client, if there is a willingness to work with one. That opportunity is lost if you slam the door like countless therapists have done to me. Suicide is inherent in any psychotherapy, regardless of risk factors. It can “appear out of the blue” or not noticed until an attempt is made or a death occurs. The suicide rate keeps climbing. And one of these days, I will become part of that yearly statistic.

I look for help and get denied because of my risk factors, which are history of previous attempts, history of abuse, history of hospitalizations, and history of self harm. These factors I deem “high risk” can also be viewed as severe mental illness or “being too sick”. It was the director of the organization’s choice not to take me on as a client. Pissed me off but his choice regardless. But was it also his fear that I would take on a certain liability because I was chronically suicidal and mentally ill? I will never know but my gut says fear altered his choice. I understand that therapist want to have the kind of practice where things go smoothly and stuff like suicide is dusted under the rug. Suicide is a dirty word. I get that. I have lived it since I was eight, when I first thought of ending my life. No one wants to touch it with a ten foot pole. But excluding these people from these practices, what the hell did you enter the field for?? I have to wonder.

The therapist I work with now doesn’t follow a lick of EBP. I still don’t know what kind of therapist he is. Frankly, he just lets me ramble for 45 mins then it’s see you next week. He has explained what he does but he has yet to actually do it, which is why I want to see someone else, if I can find that person. I live in the hub of academia where there are thousands of therapists. The biggest problem I come across, other than their fear of suicide, is not taking new clients. OK. I get it but can you refer me to someone who IS taking them? No answer or try Susie Q who isn’t within my area of accessibility.

Anyways, these are my thoughts on the matter. Getting screwed by those that are supposed to help mental health patients but don’t want to deal with mental health patients that fit a certain criteria. I think that sums it up nicely.