Tag: suicide attempt

early morning post

by Midnight Demon, posted in suicide attempt

It’s almost five o’clock in the morning. I woke up to go to the bathroom and when I returned to my room, my foot didn’t like it. I am in so much pain right now it’s not funny. I don’t know why this happens. I was in pain before bed but nothing like this. It really kills me.

I took the day off yesterday. All I did was sleep. I was watching the baseball game but couldn’t stay awake for it so took a nap. I guess my activities on Saturday really wore me out. I am finding that if I do a lot for one day, the next day I need to recover from. It is typical of those suffering from CES, Cauda Equina Syndrome.

I got tweeted a post about a study on coffee and suicide. Turns out that if you drink more than 2 cups a day, you are at a 50% reduction rate for suicide. Now if only I can bring myself to have two cups of coffee a day, maybe the suicidal thoughts will decrease. The article can be found here.

I just realized that with my therapist on vacation, I have the ENTIRE week to myself. I have NO appointments. I don’t know if that means I will have a long week or not. But it frees me up to go for coffee earlier in the afternoon. Maybe I can work on my lyric book. This book is about songs that have meaning to me. I write down the lyrics and then write a few pages about what the song means to me. So far, all I have done is write down the lyrics. I haven’t done any interpretation of the song. I figure I will do that later. As far as my book is coming along, well it’s not. I haven’t written anything in it in weeks, with the exception of adding a blog story to it. I figure if I write a blog that has some meaning or tells my story, I would tack it on.

I had a weird experience last night. My niece was cuddling with me while we were watching a movie. I know she wasn’t going to molest me, but she kept on using my breast as a pillow and I got uncomfortable. I then almost panicked that she was going to start touching me. But she is eight years old so that is very unlikely. I have a history of sexual abuse from a cousin and it would start out that way. I just go very uncomfortable but tried to work it out. I guess I don’t like cuddling very much because of that incident. It was really difficult and I had to keep reminding myself that she was only eight and was not going to hurt me. I hate when I get sensory flashbacks. They are not fun!

nobody knows

by Midnight Demon, posted in Chronic pain, mood disorders, suicide, writing

Nobody knows…

Nobody knows how bad I hurt

Nobody knows how late I stay up

Nobody knows the pain that I feel

Nobody knows the hours I sleep and don’t sleep. They think that because it is night time, I sleep but I don’t. I usually have the best sleep between 6 am and 10 am. That is all I need. A four hour nap. Because it is the only thing that makes me feel good for a few hours. It is the only thing that takes my pain away when I am in the deepness of the unconsciousness.

Nobody knows the struggle in my chest.

Nobody knows the pain that I feel

nobody knows how bad I want the struggle to end

nobody knows how bad I just want to end my life

another depressing day, sort of

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging, Chronic pain, depression

Not having a great day. I had a crappy session with my therapist. We talked about the violations issue and she apologized. She had no idea that her nosiness was hurting me. We talked about having to set boundaries now where I only show her what I want her to read. I just hope that she can stick to them. I am so used to people trampling on me that you would think I am used to it by now. But when it is someone you trust, like a therapist, it kind of throws you out of whack. I still feel down about it and I hope that I get over it. But it’s so hard because I feel so hurt. I cried today for whatever reason, like sobbing hard. I can believe that my therapist would do this, it is just her nature to be nosey. But I told her we have to put a damper on what she reads. I know what I write can be seen by anyone on the internet and she should have the same rights as anyone else. But sometimes I just don’t want her to read what I write. If it something that she needs to read, I always send it to her via text message. Seeing as I no longer see her in person, I think this method has worked pretty well until now. I really think that just her excitement over finding my blog really is what caused her to go over the boundaries without her thinking through about what she was doing. Hell, one time she called me a fucker without thinking about it. We joked about it and she apologized about it. I could tell she felt bad about it. But this time I am not getting that same sense. Maybe I am just too hurt this time to feel her apology. And she knows what my life was like with intrusions left and right. As she put it, it was like she just charged her way into my room without knocking first, which essentially is what she did.

I think I am just down because I have not been able to leave my house since the Bon Jovi concert on Saturday. I did way too much standing and dancing but I had to because there were these two goons in front of me standing for most of the concert so when I sat down, all I saw were their backs. Then I had a marshal standing next to me who stood the whole time with his hand on his hip. It was so annoying. So when I did sit down, I had an elbow in my face. I had a good time. The music was awesome as usual but the sound sucked. I couldn’t make out the words to some songs, especially his new music, which I don’t have yet. I plan on getting it soon.

I have been in bed mostly all weekend and today and still my ankle/foot is acting up. I made it to my sister’s apartment on the first floor to make myself a cup of coffee. My first cup since Saturday. I hope I am able to go out tomorrow. I need to borrow my sister’s car to do some shopping before she goes away for camping. I was invited but I can’t do anything but sit and if I try to do a hike or something I am going to be laid up anyways. It just wouldn’t work for me.

I know I try to write every day so I am sorry for the few days I have not been able to write. I have been hit with the flare up and between sleeping off the pain meds and just being wonky from the meds, I had no inclination to write. Then I got hit with depression and it just killed my writing muse. But hopefully I am back now and won’t miss anymore days. I might make up some with posting twice a day with another paper or two. I have been thinking about it for a while now. I just published the one on therapists who panic when they hear suicide. My muse friend wants me to write one on relationships and suicide but I don’t think it would work. I have always told myself that I wouldn’t kill myself over someone. It just seems silly to me but people feel that they can’t go on unless someone is in their life and I get that. What they don’t know is that they can go on without them. Sure it hurts as hell in the beginning but as the song by Sara Evans says “you get a little but stronger” every day without them.

Today I got an email from a person that runs a Master’s degree in counseling program and she wanted to use my site as a resource for the program’s students. I feel so honored to have her choose my website. I hope that it helps future clinicians.

Today is my second day on my 4th week with the patch and guess what, I got my fucking menses. Though I don’t know how bad it is. I just had some bleeding. I needed this like a hole in the head. Now I know why I have been so down and listless the past few days. I also been getting wicked suicidal urges on and off the past day or so, which the damn menses causes. I don’t know why the bleeding always messes with me but I swear if I ever do attempt to kill myself it will be while bleeding. Just when I thought I could wear my boxers with confidence, this shit happens. I am beyond devastated but I told my doc I would stick it out for three months and at the end of the three months I will try something else. I can’t be having my menses while trying to transition. It just sets me back and makes me wish I was dead.

Mentioning of suicide, therapist panics

by Midnight Demon, posted in depression

Mentioning of suicide, therapist panics

I had been seeing an interim therapist while waiting to go to college after I graduated high school. I was seeing someone in the local mental health center and I was supposed to see her for the summer as my current therapist got laid off due to budget cuts.

Some where in the middle of that summer, I reach the lowest point in my life, about three weeks away from when I was going to leave for college up in Maine. Like anyone else would do, I told my therapist that I was having suicidal feelings. She then did something totally unexpected. She took a deep breath, held it, let it go, and then sat there stunned like I shot her with a taser or something. She didn’t know what to do. She asked if I needed to be seen by someone in the emergency room and I forget if I did or not. I think I did because I got to the local hospital and was admitted for two weeks. I was glad my summer job had come to a close so I didn’t have to worry about work.

What I didn’t realize was that suicide is a big deal in the mental health field. The therapist didn’t want to take me back after my admission so I was stuck seeing a resident who basically said it was her or the hospital. I didn’t have a choice of people to talk about my feelings of being suicidal. Sure they were fine in the confined settings of a hospital stay but were taboo on an outpatient setting. I always knew I was high risk and it wasn’t until I entered into the field of suicidology did I really understand what it meant to be suicidal not just as a patient but as a clinician as well. I am not a clinician but I do have a clinical way of thinking about things. I might not be trained (yet) but I have more experience in therapy than a new graduate or even someone who has spent their lifetime doing this. I like to think of myself as an expert but then all people who have attempted suicide feel that they are.

What strikes me is the legality of the dreaded no-suicide contracts, the risk for malpractice, the ethical responsibility of the patient in the course of therapy, and the risk of losing the patient. Those are some pretty big reasons NOT to take on a client but what if you were in the situation that I was in. I already had an “established” therapist and she got cold feet when I told her I was thinking about killing myself. And in the age of the internet, I find that I am not the only one who has had this experience. I also have had trouble finding another therapist. My current therapist, though she still gets anxious when I talk about suicide, is thirty miles from me and I don’t have a car. We communicate solely by phone unless I can take my sister’s car every so often to drive out the forty-five minute to hour drive both ways. I have tried to find a therapist within a five mile radius of my house and have failed, not once, not twice, not three time, but ten fucking times!!! That is right, I called ten different therapists and they all turned me down because I had a history of being suicidal. It hurts and sucks. They just asked the question, I answered honestly, and got either referred to another therapist or was turned down outright. So I was stuck with the far away therapist. I then got hospitalized during the course of trying to find a therapist I could see face to face and when I did, he was scared of me. I mean beads of sweat were coming down his face and he had a high pitched, nervous laugh. I could tell he did not want to treat me. He didn’t want to lose me because I was such a high risk person. What makes you high risk? Having a significant history of suicide attempts, history of being abused either physically, emotionally or sexually or all three, constant suicide thoughts, and feeling hopeless. There are other criteria but those jump out at me as the most significant. I once went to a suicidology conference where I listed the prominent symptoms of my condition and had it reviewed by one of the suicidologists at the conference. He didn’t want to touch this person with a ten foot pole. I never felt so hopeless before in my life. I knew at that point that there was no hope for me, that I was destined to always be suicidal, or at least have suicidal thoughts. But it shocked me that this expert had no advice for me other than good luck.

To be a suicidal patient and have no where to go is a tough situation. You depend on the therapist to be there for you and to talk openly about any topic you want to talk about, including suicide. But what do you do when the therapist has no clue? You would think that the therapist would know how to handle the situation. You are after all trusting this person to give you advice about your life. It seems kind of too late to start the training now while you are in crisis on what to do. It’s not like you can put your life on hold while the therapist gets a clue. All I can say is to be patient. Don’t buy into a no suicide contract, they don’t work. Go to the American Association of Suicidology’s website to help both you and your therapist. There are not too many therapists that know how to handle suicidal crises every where and each state has their own rules regarding suicidal safety. The best advice I can offer is to both be honest with one another and to listen to each to whether out the storm of the suicidal feelings. Have a safety plan in place. Use a crisis response plan. Pick up a book on Managing Suicidal Risk by David Jobes and give it to your therapist. If the therapist says she or he cannot work with you anymore, find someone who can. That might take some doing and some time but you can find someone that is not afraid of suicide.