Tag: DBT

Is it possible to be happy while being horribly suicidal?

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

Is it possible to be happy while being horribly suicidal?

Today while waiting for the bus, I was listening to my music. It wasn’t the normal playlist I usually listen to but I was playing all my songs in my music file. A few songs came on that I really love and I caught myself singing along and just feeling happy. It got me wondering what the hell was going on because the past few weeks I have been so suicidal. Hell, last Friday was my death date that I didn’t go through with and yet I still feel the urge to end my life. Yet here I was, singing along to the music like I didn’t have a care in the world.

I know people feel relieved once they make the decision to end their life. It’s like a burden is no longer on their shoulders. That the tasks that were impossible are now possible because things are going to end soon for them. I know this because I have felt it. I have gone through it. Yet somehow, some way, I have managed to survive the death dates and the horrible suicidal thoughts that have plagued me since I was young. My therapist calls me the exception to the rule. I some times call myself a coward for not going through with my plans. After all, I always keep my promises to other people but I never have been able to keep a promise to myself, and that include ending my life at some future date.

I wonder if I have finally lost my mind because I was happy this afternoon. How is it possible to feel joy and happiness after a suicidal episode? It didn’t last too long. Just for a few songs and then I started thinking about writing this blog because I think it’s important to talk about. Suicide claims over 40,000 lives each year in the US alone. Today happens to be “World Mental Health Day”. So I find it even more fitting to talk about suicide.

I’m not going to talk about statistics and data that I could bore you with about suicide. I have just my experience and knowledge that I have learned since studying about this epidemic the past 8 years. When I am not suicidal, I try to learn as much as I can about the treatments for it because it might help me through another episode. There is a lot of research out there. The top ones are CAMS, CBT, and DBT. I have given DBT a try and didn’t like it. That was more than 17 years ago and it has evolved just like CAMS has evolved over the last 25 years.

CAMS (Collaborating and Assessment of Managing Suicide) was developed by Dr. David Jobes and is by far, in my opinion, the best way to manage suicidal episodes. It is comprehensive, easy to administer and score, has a treatment plan, and doesn’t involve more paperwork than regular clinical administrative stuff. That is what I love about this tool. In it you use the forms called the Suicide Status Form to assess suicidal plans and also develop treatment strategies with the client instead of for the client. It’s a collaborative approach because everyone’s suicidal episode is not the same. What causes me to feel suicidal is not going to be the same for the next person.

Brief Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) has been shown to help those with suicidal thoughts and attempts. It can be used in conjunction with CAMS after assessment has been made. It’s important because this therapy helps with the cognition of suicide better than any other treatment. See the work of Craig Bryan for more information about this.

Despite my happiness lasting for a few moments in time today, I still feel a little content, which is better than I have felt the last few months. I don’t know why this has changed and I hope it’s not the bipolar in me shifting to mania. I always get worried when I am not depressed because it is what I am so used to. But I will take it. Tomorrow maybe totally different than today. Hell, tonight might be totally different than what I feel right now. But I don’t feel like taking my life today, and I think that is a good thing.

Cinco de Mayo 2015

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, cauda equina syndrome, chronic physical pain, depression, mood disorders, suicidality, suicide

Cinco de Mayo 2015

I got my S’mores frappucino with a shot of espresso. I had to have a real caffeine kick. I didn’t think I was going to go out because all the stuff I took for my bowels suddenly worked, all morning, for me. But things settled down after lunch and I was able to go out.

Had therapy and my therapist doesn’t remember reading the blog I sent her last week. The part she did remember was the nest part, which to me is similar to a hope box. She didn’t call it that and said she wanted to have things remind me of how important I am to people and such. It’s hard to do that when I am still in an environment that doesn’t fully support me in my illness. Today, I told her that my mother made me feel bad because I don’t do things “useful” around the house. My mother wanted me to put her breakfast plate in the sink to be “useful” and it made me upset. I don’t get why my mother has to be mean to me. I feel that giving her half of my paycheck every month to cover the bills of the house should let me live here, too. I just don’t get it.

I got really angry today so I posted on Twitter my feelings. A fellow CES sufferer saw a doctor today for her disability claims. He discounted her having CES, Cauda Equina Syndrome, saying she HAD CES, but once you have surgery, you no longer have it. That infuriated me. Infuriate is my word today as I have used it several times. I don’t get how a doctor can say something like that. If she had a stroke, the result would be the same. I just don’t get it. I really don’t and the more this happens, the more I distrust the medical profession. To me, despite their high degree, are all bozos, unless proven otherwise. I have yet to find a doctor that helped me with my ankle. No one wants to believe that I still have nerve damage in it. That the weakness is just from tendonitis. Just pisses me off, big time. So I have to take pain medication to quiet the pain. Normally, tendonitis heals with rest and therapy. I have been resting for three years now and I still have flare ups of pain. And no one can tell me why I am in pain or why my ankle swells up and all the veins in my foot pops out when I am in severe pain. Course, a doctor has yet to see this happen because it only happens in the after hours, late at night with the pain so bad I want to kill myself. It doesn’t flare up during appointment hours or even during an appointment. I am hardly in pain during the day, usually. But after seven in the evening, almost every night, the pain will rise and if I don’t start taking pain meds it becomes out of control. I have been fortunate that lately I have stayed on top of it. I am kind of lucky that I no longer work because if Friday was any indication, I would not be able to walk and stand eight hours a day. I would be in too much pain. Friday I walked more than I should have and paid heavily for it. Only reason I walked too much was because the eyeglass place made my glasses wrong. If the idiot explained to me what he meant by distance, we wouldn’t have had this problem. I still haven’t gotten my glasses back yet. I will call tomorrow and find out when they will be ready. I need them to read Dostoevsky. The glasses I am currently wearing can only go so far and then I start straining my eyes to see with them. It sucks having bad eyesight. I have been wearing glasses since I was in first grade.

My therapist and I talked about the chat that had me upset Sunday night. It’s like, am I smarter than all these clinicians and therapists in this chat when it comes to suicide prevention? I understand they want research and evident based treatment, but the research is there. If I know about it, why don’t they? I don’t get it. I don’t even hold a bachelor’s yet I know what needs to be done for a suicidal patient. Understanding, compassion, empathy, and the client telling his story. Treatment can be DBT based or CBT. I understand not everyone is trained in these modalities. There is a “short” kind of CBT, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, that seems to help veterans in as little as five sessions. This is from what I have gathered on the internet vines and through the research of Jobes. So why do they not trust these kind of therapies is beyond my understanding. If they are looking to predict a suicide, they will have to wait a really, really long time for that to happen. You can’t predict a suicide anymore than you can predict cancer in a patient. And if this prediction is what they mean by prevention, they don’t understand anything about suicide at all.