Tag: suicide

Hypos are Back

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging

Hypos are back

Thought the hypos were away but they are back. I have taken 2 mg of Ativan and a trilafon and I am not sleepy in the least. In fact, I am hyped up. I am reading hilarious stuff and not so funny stuff on the web and Twitter. It is stimulating my brain. I should be reading the civil war book. I am down to only the last 87 pages!!! But I don’t feel like reading. I am too restless to actually read a book. I rather be on the net.

I put in a new page to my blog called “What I blog about” for those that are interested. It was a blog but I turned it into a page so it is more visible. I am tired of people becoming concerned with what I write because it has to do with suicide. I bet dimes to donuts that if I was talking about cancer, I would not be getting the same reaction.

My thoughts of suicide have been diminished for the day. I am too “high” to really be suicidal. I am just in a great mood and I don’t need sleep right now. I have nothing to do tomorrow. I am not in pain so I don’t have to take my downer pain medication. I think the Excedrin that I took for my headache might have caused this. It has caffeine in it and sometimes I can become overstimulated with it.

I love feeling this way and wish it would last forever. But I know once I do get to sleep, these feelings will be gone. I feel so hyped up that I want to start a rant on Twitter but I don’t know what to write about. I already complained about my medication screw up. My mail order company is charging me $10 more than retail for a 30 day supply of medication. I sent them an email saying I am not paying for it and I will get it filled at the local pharmacy. I don’t see my doc until next month and I will be out of my meds by then. I specifically requested a 90 day supply so I don’t know why it wasn’t honored. I don’t know what is going to happen with this medication. I don’t know if I can ship it back to them or not. I am not going to open the package. I will just ship it back as return to sender, not wanted or something. It really pisses me off that I have to go through this hassle since they changed the way prescriptions are “refilled” with their fancy website. You used to be able to say “no, this isn’t what I want”. Now you just leave a comment, which obviously got ignored. I don’t know if it is the medical assistant’s fault or the doctor’s fault. But I am not going to be paying double for a 30 day supply.

I have finally figured out how to have the Bluetooth setting on my laptop. I have to go into PC devices or some shit like that. And the only way to get to it is by doing a search. It doesn’t pop up on settings or any other fucking thing. Pisses me off. I think I have mastered the settings. But we’ll see. I really do like my new Bluetooth headset. It is very comfortable and soundproof. I barely heard my mother struggle up the stairs tonight and usually it sounds like she is taking the stairs apart!

Tomorrow I am going to edit my psychosis short story. I have yet to work on it since I edited it. That will just leave the brick story to do, once I get to Starbucks. It probably won’t be until Monday when I have to take my father to the docs. Maybe after the appointment, I should go to my docs office and raise holy hell about not getting a 90 day supply of my medication. But the front office people won’t be able to do anything about it, but leave messages to the nurses, who then have to talk to the doctors, and then get back to me. Talk about a fucking run around.

I was going to watch Dune tonight but then I remembered the sand worms. Those buggers creep me out every time I see them. Even reading about it in a book creeped me out. So the case is collecting dust on top of a box that should be recycled. One of these days, I will recycle it. I really should make an effort to try and clean my room but I find it too overwhelming.

I printed off a thing about Leenaars and Shneidman. It’s a reflection of Shneidman’s work in the field of suicidology. I recently read it and it was free online. I was shock because most articles you have to pay for. But anyways, I got it free and it’s an interesting read. It is similar to the interview that someone did in the journal Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior. I miss Shneidman. I wish he was here so I could talk to him about my suicidality and if going through this pain is worth it. It would mean so much to me if he told me my life had purpose and worth. But he is dead and I never had a chance to ask him these questions.

Yesterday my mother pissed me off because she said “I didn’t know there was a boy in the house”. I really wanted to comment on this but I didn’t. I just walked away, fuming. She said that because my haircut is a men’s cut and very, very close cut, almost military like. I love it, she hates it. But I don’t fucking care. It’s my head and I will do what I want to it. But her comments are uncalled for. She doesn’t know I am transgender and that is part of the problem. Course, right now, I don’t even know what “transgender” means to me. I know I am a male but I don’t want a penis. I want a mastectomy and facial hair. That is all I want in this life and if I can’t get it, sign my death certificate. But my death certificate might be coming sometime this year anyway as I don’t want to turn 40. I plan on ending my life sometime this year. That is all I am going to say on the matter.

Twenty-Three Years

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, depression, mental illness, suicidality

Twenty-three years

Today marks twenty-three years that I have sought help for my depression and self-destructiveness. I actually didn’t seek help straight out. My English teacher noticed I was upset and pulled me aside and saw the marks on my wrist that I had made the night before. She then told me to stay after class, something no teacher has ever told me to do before. She took me to the nurse’s office. We chatted. I told her about what happened at my house the last two nights and how much I just wanted to die. She called my mother, who then took me to the local counseling center. By then, I told them “nothing was wrong” and that I was “okay”. I declined treatment and went on with my day. Daily visits to the nurse’s office became more frequent. I just stopped in to check in and told her what was going on. She wanted me to see someone so the following week I agreed to see the school counselor. Thus started my official journey into psychotherapy.

It hasn’t been an easy road. For the first ten years, I had a different therapist nearly every year. I think the only time I had two years was with the psych resident that wanted to see me or I would still be in the hospital. I went through a lot with this psychiatrist in training. While in her care, I attempt suicide and ended up being in the hospital for two and half months. When she ended her residency, I went to another psych in training. He wasn’t as good as she was. In fact, he was terrible. I felt like he was more my brother than a therapist but when I told him I was procuring more medication to end my life, he asked me if I was suicidal. That is when I knew he was an idiot. I pretty much ended our relationship within a few weeks and saw someone else. She was good, had years experience. But after I had an argument with my sister and she wanted to know more about my sister’s social life than my anger, I ended things with her. I went about a month without seeing someone. I then decided to go back to my town’s local mental health center. I saw someone there for a year and again, she decided to move on after that year mark. We were finally connected and I felt so betrayed. I didn’t think I was going to see another person again. I don’t know what changed my mind. I knew I didn’t want to see someone else at the local mental health center. I wanted to see someone private. I figured they were less likely to leave their practice. And I luckily found my current therapist and we have been together for fourteen years. It is the longest relationship I have had, outside of my psychiatrist. I am lucky that I have had just one psychiatrist for my medication all these years. She does more than just prescribe my medication. She also does some therapy and is my sounding board for the various medical issues that I have. And I can’t wait to see her again in a week after not seeing her for four long months. It is going to be weird seeing her again.

I don’t know why I have stuck it out in therapy all these years, especially when things were at their worst. I have been beyond hopeless and yet my psych team (therapist and psychiatrist) always made me see another day, sometimes against my wishes.

writing and dying

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, chronic physical pain, depression, psychache

I typed up a few pages of the short story I am working on. It’s basically an autobiographical story of my struggle with psychosis. I still have two pages to type but can’t find the motivation to do it. I keep staring at the notepad but nothing is coming. I am just staring at the words, wondering if they are the right ones and am doubting myself.

My therapist had some suggestions on trying to get me back to better sleep health. Unfortunately, I didn’t do it today. I wasn’t tired come three o’clock but got really zonked around five. I still am fighting the urge to just go under the covers and take a rest. Only problem with that is that I will be seriously disrupting my sleep cycle, again.

I told her I am having trouble taking my meds. I don’t want to take them because I don’t think they are effective anymore. I am just so depressed, I just can’t see the point. I also told her I really want to be writing my suicide notes and letters. She almost started flipping out. I never heard her so restrained before. We were actually “talking” about this stuff rather than dusting it under the rug, like it didn’t exist. I really liked talking about this stuff. It gave me some perspective about the pros and cons of actually doing it. We didn’t discuss that, but I was thinking about it as I talked about the need to write. I told her I had written a goodbye letter to Jobes. It was basically saying yes your work helped me but it didn’t save me. I never sent the email/letter. I told her that I can’t be saved. It is my destiny to kill myself, I am very convinced of this. I don’t know why, maybe it’s because I think about it so much that I don’t think I have any kind of future or anything. The weird part, is that I don’t feel hopeless. She did the cubic model of suicide on me. I was kind of shocked that she remembered. I am no where near suicidal range at this time. I am not actively planning my death, nor have I picked a date. I just want to self-combust so I won’t have to. But I don’t think that is likely.

I just feel really depressed. My therapist also read my blog that I wrote last night. She said that it was very coherent and eloquent. It is funny because it took me several times to get back to writing it. I would start writing and then find the need to check Twitter or Facebook. It took me almost an hour to write. And I was mostly writing how fucking sucky I was feeling, which was hard because I really couldn’t put to words what I was feeling. It was a very difficult blog to write.

Foot/ankle are behaving for now. Last night I was in misery. It literally felt like a battle between the two as to which part was going to hurt more and then my big toe settled it by buzzing up a storm. I hate when my toe buzzes. It is so unsettling. I don’t remember if I took pain meds or not. I really wanted to OD on Neurontin. It was that bad. But I didn’t take any because after an hour, my toe settled down. Foot and ankle were still at it but not in the same intensity. I have been using my pain meds sparingly. I don’t know why this is. I guess I want to feel something and my ankle/foot is giving me something to feel other than depression. Maybe it is a form of self-punishment, I don’t know. I do know that the pain is tolerable to my warped mind. It gives me something to focus on rather than my stupid, stinking depression. I spoke too soon. Just moved my ankle and it has exploded. Just like that it can become a 10, easy. Now I am really going to get sleepy with my pain meds on board. I don’t think I am going to make it to eight. I guess I will be taking my night meds early and calling it a night.

My father called saying that his meds are almost out. I told him I will come over sometime tomorrow. I don’t mind because it gets me out of the house. I rather do it tomorrow than Saturday. I like to have the weekend to do nothing. I am trying to go out during the week, like I did today, so that I can rest on the weekend. I don’t know how likely that is going to happen, but we’ll see.

Response paper for Building a therapeutic alliance with suicidal patients

by Midnight Demon, posted in mood disorders, suicidality, suicide, suicide attempt

Response paper for Building a therapeutic alliance with suicidal patients.

This book is a work of genius among the top suicidologists in the U.S. and Europe. These people actually want to help suicidal people get better and try to make their life worth living. Like most of Drs. David Jobes and Konrad Michal work, they have done an excellent review of the literature and made the book easy to read without a lot of psychological jargon. This book should be used as a handbook for anyone dealing with suicidal individuals. As someone who has been through many suicidal episodes with many different therapists, this book is groundbreaking. It lists his classic work of CAMS (collaborating and managing suicidality) which is a tried and true way of dealing with lethal suicidality in an outpatient setting. The other evidence based therapists will enhance therapy around this work.
The Chapters are broken down easy enough and progress from good to bad in my opinion, of the treatments that work. The conclusion was brilliant by Dr. Jobes. He has stated with clarity the hardships that are faced with suicidality such as the IRB approvals for research, clinicians wanting to work with this population, and the need to try and keep these people in therapy.