really, really bad day

Been playing on Facebook for the last few hours, trying to get the nerve up to go play my game. I just can’t bring myself to do it. I have too much on my mind.

I spoke with my therapist today about wanting less sessions and she didn’t buy it because my suicidality is still kicking its head and she feels as long as it is, we are going to have session. Bly me. I am not happy. In fact, I am pissed. I hate this. So I did what anyone in my position would do. I took a couple of this and a couple of that and hope it knocks me out because I still cannot tolerate these fucking feelings anymore.

I just had Chinese food. It was good and the crab rangoons were really good today. I usually don’t like eating them but I was hungry. The chicken fingers weren’t as what I was expecting but the scallion pancakes were. I love scallion pancakes. I rather have that than a meal but it is only an appetizer. So I have lunch and dinner all done. I will probably finish off the Chinese for dinner like I usually do. I can’t eat it all in one sitting like some people can.

I am still feeling exasperated. Soon as I say I want to cut down on sessions she is like ok what is the logical reason for this. There is no longer a logical reason for this. I just want to get the hell out of your clutches so that I can possibly end my life. There I said it. No secret I am suicidal. I just want to be unconscious, permanently. It is really cold today so I just want to go under my blankets while I listen to the radio and try and zone out. No one has caused this to happen to me, I just woke up on the wrong side of the bed.

On a positive note, people have liked the blog that I posted yesterday. It is a reblog of the AAS blog that was posted last night. I am glad people like my writing, even though I don’t think too highly of it, but then I think every writer thinks that.

distress intolerance

Tolerating distress

I have been in a bad mood for the past hour. I have been in wicked bad pain and it has me thinking of ending my life once again. It is after midnight my time and there is no one that I can really call that will really understand what it is I am going through. I tried reaching out to a few people but as it is a late hour, I got no where.

Then I thought about all the DBT bullshit that I have been through and thought I am doing this wrong. What if I am supposed to be feeling the distress as much as it is intolerateable? I don’t know if that is a word but it is the closest thing that I can think of to describe what I am feeling. The thinking is that if you tolerate the feelings you are better off. I am not sure how. Feeling this way sucks and all I want to do is get rid of it. I mean I am feeling this way only because my foot is killing me and there is nothing I can do except wait for the pain medication to kick in and give me some relief. Listening to my favorite playlist is helping me. I listened to Laura Branigan and her voice always soothes me. I thought about writing in my journal but I am not up to putting pen to paper just yet.

My AAS blog was just published and it started off with today I am in distress because I wanted to kill myself. Why am I still alive when I want so badly to be dead. I just can’t go through with it and it is killing me, being alive, and suffering so much. I know that if I were a dog or cat, I would have been let down already. Funny how we are more humane to animals than we are to humans. The reasons are many and I won’t get into it because I am just not sure it will help me calm down. Anytime I talk about hurting myself I get riled up. And when you throw in that humans suffer because it is, well, expected, it just pisses me off. Would you expect a person dying of cancer to suffer?? Or Parkinson’s disease or any other terminal illness? That is what irks me so much, I have a non-terminal illness and am expected to suffer and go about my life like it is not weighing me down. I hate being like this. I cannot tolerate it. So the hell with the distress intolerance bullshit. It is not helping me just making me wish that I was dead all the more.

chronic urge to kill myself

It has been less than 24 hours since my last post. I really don’t care. I am in a lot of pain right now and soon I will be down for the count. I hate being in pain all the time. It started when I got to the kitchen to make myself a bagel. My foot cramped on the cold tile floor. I know I should have been wearing slippers but I wasn’t thinking. I had to go to the bathroom fast or I would have lost control of my bladder. Soon after my foot settles down, my calf muscle in the same leg decides to spasm up a little bit so now it is tight and I can’t stretch it out. I was going to watch the Red Sox parade on TV but I just took my pain meds so I will be knocked out soon.

People think that I am normal and that is what kills me. Most of the time I feel like I am normal until the pain starts and tells me otherwise. I cannot win. I wish I were dead. I wish I had taken my life back in August when I was supposed to. Now I am living and in pain and I hate myself for it. Those blue buildings are crushing me and I can’t keep myself away from me any longer. Time for a new plan and one that I can go through with. I am just so tired of being in pain every single day.

In other painful news, The book Team of Rivals that took me literally most of the year to read, I finally finished it last night. I didn’t cry like I thought I would. The author wrote almost ten pages to get to his death. Talk about being wordy. There were some good parts of the book. I wrote a review of it and sent it off to my writing partner for comment. I was harsh but then I really did not like this book. I read it because ten pages of it were based on the movie Lincoln. 10 bloody pages of the 800 page book!! Yes, just shoot me and even those pages were like, huh? That didn’t happen in the movie!! The book rushed the 13th amendment, Robert going into the Army, and the delegate meeting for peace. Ten pages! Really makes you wondering what the 790 pages were about…but This blog is not for book reviews that do not deal with suicidality. I just wrote about it because it was a very painful read, and that I read this book for something other than it was worth. Soon as I post the review on Amazon, I will tell you, for those that are interested.

I am off to dreamland again. I had an interesting breakfast of Oreo Golden cookies and a bagel. I will watch clips of the rally on twitter or TV. I am sure people will be posting pics on Facebook as well. There are more than 10,000 people already in Boston. I would have gone if I was healthy but I am not. I just have the chronic urge to kill myself and chronic pain to fuel it. This is the type of life I lead.

A Special Blog Post

This is my 500th blog post. I wanted it to be memorable. And it will be, I hope, to me anyways.

I thought I would talk about David Jobes. He is my idol in the field of suicidology. I talk a lot about his work on my blog because I want to spread the word that there are treatment plans and assessment scales available for those who are suicidal. It took twenty-five years for this to happen. It might not catch on like DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy) did for borderline personality disorder but I am hoping that through my blog, someone has at least an inkling about it.

His work is CAMS: the Collaborating Assessment and Managing of Suicide. It is a framework that allows the suicidal patient/client to work with the therapist in his or her treatment plan. By working together, therapist and client, it is hoped that suicidal thinking will decrease enough so a completed suicide is avoided. This does not mean that the suicidal thinking will go away completely. Nor does it totally prevent a suicide. During one of his talks, he spoke of a clinician in Texas that followed the CAMS and the assessment tool, SSF (suicide Status Form) to the letter with one of his suicidal clients. The client ended up killing himself. The clinician did everything that he could. But sometimes, there is still the risk.

The SSF is a seven page form that uses an initial, tracking, and outcome form to monitor and assess suicidality. It is based on the work of several clinicians. I won’t go into great detail about this because you can find out more in Dr. Jobes’s book, Managing Suicidal Risk. The link it to the Amazon website where you can purchase it. I would love to post the SSF one day but I would be violating copyrights, though in the book you can make copies of the form. I just can’t do it electronically, yet.

The wonderful thing about this form is that it is a self report about the client’s thinking about suicide and also has clinical information in the end so that both client and clinician fill it out to assess and document the suicide risk. It doesn’t take more than 10-15 minutes to fill it out (might take longer if the person has trouble understanding reading and writing English or has a disability that prevents that from happening, such as dyslexia). It is individualized for the client and that is a huge thing Jobes tries to do. It is not a fit all in one box, so to speak. It should broaden the thinking of the client and clinician to help bring together and work together to prevent the client from committing suicide. In the SSF, it talks about reasons for living and dying, assess psychological pain, hopelessness, the need to escape, and also asks the question, what would make you not kill yourself? I have used this form in my therapy sessions and that is the first question my therapist asks me when I am in the throws of a suicidal crisis, which happens more times than not for various reasons.
Mostly it has been my word that has kept me alive and I do hate myself for it at times. I have told my therapist that I would keep myself safe and I have, though sometimes, I overmedicate to do so.

Background information of Jobes is that he is a professor at the Catholic University of America and also has a private practice in the Washington, D.C. He has written in at least a half dozen books (some of which I own, if I could afford it I would own all) and countless research articles relating to his work and also to the field of suicidology. He not only write about his work but also about the legality and ethical matters of dealing with a suicidal client.