Tag: father of suicidology

2019May09 Fearing the Worst

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

2019May09 fearing the worst

I have been having pain (yes, once again) and it has brought out the suicidal feelings once again. I had this insane idea to take a pic of the means I want to use and send it to my psychiatrist. Lately, (or maybe fortunately) I have been holding off on sending her an email unless I think it through. I thought of the consequences and it would be a huge deal and almost certainly, cause me to be in the hospital. I held off after talking with a friend on Twitter. We instead talked about other things while my heart was feeling like it was being stabbed a thousand times. She told me about her boyfriend wasn’t going to get back with her and I felt immensely sad for her. She and I had been hoping they would get back together again but I guess it isn’t meant to be.

I fell asleep for an hour and woke up with my elbow hurting. I somehow had fallen asleep in the nook of my arm and my elbow didn’t like it. My friend had sent me a message again and we talked. I felt so messed up still. Her meds kicked and she wished me good night. I was left with my thoughts. I again thought about sending her the pic of the means. Instead, I wrote to her about the struggle I am having and also sent her a pic of the cubic model of suicide. I told her where I was on the scale. I told her the father of suicidology, Dr. Edwin Shneidman, had never really written on chronic suicidality and what to do about it. He just wanted to decrease the psychache and you decrease the suicide. I told her this and also that there is no anodyne to help with the psychache. I have no idea if she will understand all this. I told her I probably need to go in the hospital but my sisters are going away for a few days and if I go in, my mother will be left alone, which would not be a good thing. My nephew will be here but he wouldn’t know what to do if her sugar went low. He has never seen her when her sugar is low and I am sort of protecting him from that. As much as I hate this woman right now, a low sugar and the other potential that could happen would make me so fricken guilty I wouldn’t be able to stand it. Yet here I am wanting to fucking die…jesus I am messed up.

In sort of closing I told her I wanted to push her away so she doesn’t see me like this. I hate having her see me like this. I don’t recall a time when I have been like this for so damn long, well sort of. I was like this 25 years ago, a few months after I graduated high school. Unfortunately then, she was on maternity leave and when she was back, I was in the hospital for a long stay. I fear that once she reads the email, I will be asked to go to the hospital anyways, even though I explained the situation with my sisters not being available. I told her I don’t know if I can hang on till then. I also fear that she won’t give a shit and just hospitalize me involuntarily if I don’t go in voluntarily. Either way I will be sectioned. If I do go in, I hope that it is on the unit I am familiar with. If I do end up there, I hope I don’t have the “team” I had a couple years ago. They are the worst team ever and don’t help you at all. They dance around like they are but once they ignore the can you help me with this and be told we will deal with it tomorrow but it never does; then they ask when would I like to be discharged and I say okay tomorrow. Fuck you too. Nothing gets done there but it will possibly give me some space away from home enough to gather myself up so I can bear living in this hell hole.

I checked my blocked text messages tonight and found that my ex texted me Apr 30 asking for me to send her my books. She was in the hospital after a suicide attempt for 3 weeks and someone stole them. Yeah, okay. Like she can’t go to Amazon and get them or a bookstore? I mean really! I know she just wants to get back in my life in some way shape or form but it isn’t happening this time. I am done with her. She broke my heart long ago and she can’t mend it. Part of me wants to respond but I know if I do, it would be a huge mistake.

I had emailed the social worker the beginning of the week to find out about therapy. I still haven’t heard from her. It would be nice to talk to someone as I feel like such a burden to my psych right now with my craziness. I hope to hear from her sometime today. It is 415 right now so I think I am going to try and go back to sleep.

thoughts behind quotes of the day

by Midnight Demon, posted in suicidality, suicide

I have been using Shneidman’s quotes for the Quote a Day thingy. I wanted to let the world know how much he means to me so each day, if I remember, I will quote something from his books. I don’t have his exhaustive library but I have some.

Shneidman was a great man. He called me out of the blue one day while I was at work. I didn’t recognize the number so I didn’t answer it. He left a voicemail saying to call him soon. But the trouble was I had an appointment with my therapist around the time he called. I called him later that evening and we had a chat. I talked with the father of suicidology. The man that created psychache. It was such an honor to me that he called me. He wanted to know more about the paper that I sent him. He also wanted to see the pain scale I was talking about. This guy didn’t have a computer so he couldn’t Google it. I still have no idea how he got my number. I know I didn’t give it to him when I sent him my paper. I will never know as he died a few months later. But I never will forget him calling me. I just wish I had contacted him sooner rather than later. Maybe we could have had a relationship. I will never know. He died a few days after his last birthday. Funny, I don’t remember when he called me and when I returned the phone call. I should have made note of it. I know I saved his voicemail. It’s on a little cassette tape along with my therapists messages that were important to me.

a phone call

by Midnight Demon, posted in psychache, psychosis, suicide, suicide attempt

One crazy day at work I received a phone call from a number I didn’t recognize. I let it go to voicemail as I figured it was some bill collector. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Not only did this person leave me a message for me to call him back but he said that it was urgent to do so. This man was Dr. Edwin Shneidman, the father of suicidology. He was a man I deeply respected because of his work in trying to understand psychache and suicide. He was the first pioneer to create a suicide prevention center in the United States. He has spent his life trying to develop a scale for psychache and psychological pain assessment. Psychache is the unbearable psychological pain (despair, grief, guilt, hopelessness, frustration, perturbation, and pain all rolled into one). It is this pain that he and I believe causes people to think about taking their life. I sent him my paper “Is suicide caused by psychological pain?” and he wanted to talk to me about the pain scales I had mentioned. He was fascinated that there was a scale to measure physical pain but (as I argued) not for psychache. He was always thinking about how to have a psychometric assessment to gauge a person’s psychache.

Dr. Shneidman began his career by interpreting suicide notes. He began collecting them after he was sent to the morgue for confirmation of suicide autopsy. He and his colleague Farberow lead the early work of this important tool in forensic suicidology. In addition to this, he also co-founded the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Center, the first in the United States to have one.

His message to me was for me to return his call and quickly (he wasn’t in the best of health). I didn’t know what to say to him or what he wanted of me. I was extremely nervous. Looking back I don’t remember too much of what we talked about. I know that we were on the phone what seemed like a half hour or so. I was too stunned to really remember anything but I know that he talked about his ill health and that he wanted to know what the physical pain scale was so I printed some off for him and sent them post haste to his house in LA. He died about a month afterwards.
After our conversation, my therapist was convinced I was going to be the next Shneidman. I would continue to follow in his work and in a way I have in my own way. I have book or downloaded/printed every article he ever wrote on the subject. I have scores of files on him. I also have the same on David Jobes but that is another matter.