suicide

are you still on board with the meds and counseling?

Meds yes, I've no problem with this. Counselling I stopped a while ago (before it all went to shit) because I figured everything in my life was going well, and I couldn't really afford* to keep going. Part of me thinks it might be worth going back, but it's like this death-feeling seems separate from the depression that's just there.

* I think it makes me feel better putting the money I was spending on this towards clearing outstanding debts

i don't at all doubt that clearing debts is more helpful than counsel(l)ing . . . most of the time.

at certain times like now, however, it may be otherwise.

i'm sure most cousel(l)ors will be all like you need to see me once a week forever, but you needn't accept that judgment. do what you need to do to get by.

give it a shot

when I decided to quit counsel(l)ing, we had an awkward moment where I was like, 'yep, everything's great', and she interpreted it as 'useless chamber loves counsel(l)ing and wants to carry on indefinitely', while I was actually thinking 'I just want to feel this moment of greatness forever, and not spend a night a week blaming my family or whatever for stuff I'd be better off not thinking about'. Perhaps the fact I was already in this level of doublethink is a reason why I always felt disengaged from therapy. idk.

anyway, staying up and talking stuff knowing I've written work off tomorrow helps a lot. Thanks guys.

not spend a night a week blaming my family or whatever for stuff I'd be better off not thinking about

Peace, man, and sympathy for this hard time. This sentence, though, is like...let me put it this way: I know someone irl who stopped going to counseling and his then-wife asked him why he wouldn't make an appt, and he said, "Because she's going to want me to talk about my mother, and I don't WANT to talk about my mother!" NB: his problems are all about his mother.

If therapist was not listening to where you wanted to go with therapy, maybe try a different one? But sometimes the problem is just your mother, so to speak.

Yes. I also feel a bit like I'd led my therapist into a lane where everything was my family's fault, and even if it was a dead-end, on the way out we still had to look through the same windows. And I can see why a lot of the thought processes I go through are a consequence of my upbringing, but the problem I have now is that this situation I'm in is that I can separate it all from this - like I've spent the best part of 30yrs trying to figure out how to be happy with my life, and it's resulted in 6months of awesomeness followed by desolation. It's not like I'm the first person to be in this position, but I'm not the only person to think this is the best solution.

This is a mindset I've been in so long, the background changes all the time. It's only relatively recently I've been remotely comfortable discussing it.

haha my therapy results (including couples therapy, to my ex's chagrin) have always been like 'yeah that makes sense, i can see that' which, while somewhat gratifying, have not been particularly helpful

Anyway, it's been good getting this out. I managed to break a mobile phone for the 1st time in 13 years earlier, and most of my ILXing is done on that these days, so I'm going to go to bed, hopefully get some good sleep and try and sort myself out a bit tomorrow.

<3 you guys.

good night

Reading about something else, saw this passage and thought it might fit here:

Whitaker introduces us to the notion of change. ... I’m talking about the idea that therapy is not about insights. It’s about change. This makes sense. After all, when people come together to form a relationship, whether they realise it or not, they’re trying to change each other. All too often, though, they fall into a situation called homeostasis in which change is impossible. They are stuck in seemingly unchangeable patterns. So what you do?

That’s where the next book comes in. It’s called Uncommon Therapy, and it’s by one of the family therapy pioneers, Jay Haley, but it’s about another therapist named Milton Erickson. Erickson understood that if therapy is about change, not insight, then in some important way you’re not tethered to reality. The therapist is free to create new realities.

This tremendously empowers the therapist, but it also changes our whole sense of what is to be a person. The notion that who I am is this stable entity gets exploded. In fact, and the evidence for this is overwhelming, who I am and who you are is pretty much a plaything of context and assumptions. Change the context, change the assumptions, and you change the self. ... As with Whitaker, this book will give you the sense, wow, I never imagined that therapists could do this. It’s enormously exciting, but for those people who have a traditional view of the self, it’s also deeply challenging.

I've always thought that its bonkers a d dangerous to think of "self" as being static (whether it's yourself or someone else's self). People are processes. We move and change. Makes sense that therapy should make you more comfortable with the idea of change.

Yeah, I'm interested in the idea that you don't go to therapy to "know thyself" better although maybe you can see around some blind spots or w/e but that the goal isn't just to amass knowledge. Because it sometimes seems like it is? And for a person who's reasonably self-aware and contemplative already it's kind of "no duh" to be told things you already know.

But where does it get you if knowing them isn't the POINT? Seems likely to get you somewhere different.

Yeah, that's true. I really like the idea of it. Think it would do my other half good.

the thing about being dead is, i've never heard anyone complain.

it should be as easy to find suicide cults in real life as it is in movies and TV

http://www.xojane.com/family/10-years-later-what-my-fathers-suicide-has-taught-me

the thing about being dead is, i've never heard anyone complain.

― alpha farticles, Sunday, September 23, 2012 10:19 PM (5 minutes ago)

is there ever more annoying a martyr than the non-complainer?

It souinds like you're going through some dark shit right now ––– I am sorry if I am being glib ––––––––––– I don't even know who you are ––––––––––––––––– no suicides, please.

i wonder if anyone who has truly contemplated suicide would call it "the coward's way out"

Honestly I doubt it. This might be TMI but whenever I get down that far what keeps me from doing the deed is thinking about how terrible and sad it would be for my friends and family, the last thing that crosses my mind is "wow this seems cowardly..."

In other words, its more realizing killing myself would result in more misery and suffering, and that flips me out of it. Cowardice is some macho bullshit I don't even care about.

yeah, i think about that too. i'm glad i don't have a wife or kids for this reason, but you can't live for others forever.

is there ever more annoying a martyr than the non-complainer?

― The Most Typical and Popular Girl Rider (Crabbits), Sunday, September 23, 2012 11:25 PM (Yesterday)

yeah the "my pain hurts more than your pain" martyr-asshole

yeah suffering is no competition

sorry though

no need. last i checked you never did anything to me to be sorry about.

jesus is the ultimate superstar of the "my pain hurts more than your pain" schtick though.

closely tied in first place with: God.

and maybe louis armstrong.

i don't know, still not sure how to get past this problem

ultimately, i know deep down that more than anything else, i just want to kill myself. far more than i want to try to live a productive life, anyway, but i suppose medication helps me at least be able to get out of bed to maintain... something

trying to claw my way forward, figure out a place to move, another job, or a school to go to or something, but when sit down to do these things, i feel like vomiting forever, and nothing gets done besides another wasted regretful night. doesn't seem like there's enough anesthesia in the world to overcome this

truth is though i'm just waiting for my family to die off or move on with their own lives

nhex, hugs.

trying to claw my way forward, figure out a place to move, another job, or a school to go to or something, but when sit down to do these things, i feel like vomiting forever, and nothing gets done besides another wasted regretful night. doesn't seem like there's enough anesthesia in the world to overcome this

when i feel like this, i try to just remember that i actually do want to do the kind of essential things that i know i must do - even if i also feel like just curling up in a ball and slowly dying. that probably doesn't help you, but, please take care of yourself. ::hugs:: (even if we don't know each other)

I am in exactly the same place, Nhex. I really don't know what we are supposed to do with ourselves. It is awful. I would really like to be of some help, but I can't be.

i only have hugs and bottomless sympathy. it's not rly anything but, just...hi

having spent most of my life there, i can't add much to the hugs and sympathy veg already offered. but being middle-aged, the one thing i will say is that life turns out to be a lot of different things over time. nothing stays the same forever, no matter how impossible anything else might seem.

and that probably sounds like horseshit. sorry, words fail.

I lived under the burden of the inevitability of eventual suicide for so many years. Somehow I was able to let go of the obligation.

It doesn't mean I'm happy. It just means at some point along the way one big horrible thing was removed from my to-do list.

i appreciate the warm feelings, dudes - your words did help me feel a little better for a little bit

<3

we all casually calculate serotonin toxicity levels occaisonal yeah>?

idk bout casually

nhex, I know that this sounds pretty contrived and disingenuous coming from some rando on the internet, but I think youre a cool dude and I offer whatever I can of my sympathies and echo what's been said above

y'know when you get worryingly close to there only being one answer to your problems?

No, thank god/the fates/your own personal attributable source.

Fb?

in a bit. i'm sorry i'm such a fucking drama king. i dunno what i'm saying. just right out at the end of meself i guess.

Thread for it tbh, i think nobody's likely to call you out.

i was gonna list all the reasons but i didn't want it to become an invitation for anybody to play Cap'n Save-a-FatNarcissistDrunk so suffice it to say that i'm just coherent enough to remember that disappearing is an unacceptably dick move for a parent but i feel like the only way i can maintain credibility with anybody is by opening veins

it can sometimes seem like an answer but it isn't much of one tbh, especially given it tends to involve kicking your problems on to exactly the people you don't want to kick your problems on to.

no. there are always as many answers as you might need. seriously, the absence you're talking about is an artifact of distorted perception, not reality. everything that's happening to you eventually becomes just some shit that once happened to you. all it takes is time. i wish there was something meaningful i could say, some real support i could offer, but this is the internet, and i don't know you personally. all i can say is that you seem like an amazing person, i love your presence here, and you can't let the blackness of a moment overwhelm you. talk to someone like now, regardless of how little you imagine they want to hear it.

I think a lot of people know what it feels like. The trick is to remember that sometimes you don't feel like that, and focus on not doing anything until you've got any other feeling other than this one.

xpost oops, I am playing Cap'nSaveANoodle. Tough shit.

i'm really sorry guys i can't stop blubbing i hate myself it's just that youse answer back more than the fucking samaritans

and, you know, i was having the exact same thought about credibility just a few days ago! but right now i am in the space of "jesus but credibility is a shallow thing to think about, i am seriously worried about being sufficiently convincing at a time like this, who would i even be trying to prove it to", which is a comeback that works for me personally.