suicide

best wishes to you and your friend, FH.

Whiney otm. Call them and see what official protocol is.

https://www.rethink.org/carers-family-friends/what-you-need-to-know/suicidal-thoughts-how-to-support-someone

This is a good and relevant organisation

thanks all.

FH my advice to you would be:

1. Keep checking in on your friend until she's back
2. Tell her that you're glad she told you, and you don't want her to die, and that you want to help her get through this, and that you believe in her and that she is stronger than these feelings.
3. Provide your friend with help-line information but do not do so in a way that suggests that you're trying to pass the buck, suicidality is immensely exacerbated by feelings of loneliness and isolation.
4. If you have a friend who works in mental health-- a therapist or a social worker or really anyone with experience in this-- ask your friend-who-is-suicidal if it'd be OK that you speak to that friend, and perhaps try and arrange a meeting with the three of you when you get back.

In my experience, suicidality is hugely caused by outside forces-- financial troubles, professional troubles, relationship troubles, drug or alcohol troubles. Having a friend and a third party (somebody with mental health care experience) sit down with you and try and help would be (and has been) my best-case help-situation for people going through this. Oftentimes the person-who-is-suicidal, in my experience, doesn't really need therapy so much as they need to stop drinking/doing drugs, or to get out of a toxic relationship, or they just need some distraction from a recent traumatic event.

*when she gets back, that is

1. Keep checking in on your friend until she's back

This can't be said enough. A sense of islotaion is overwhelming w acute suicidal ideation. Even if she doesn't want to talk and doesn't take your call—just seeing that you tried can be reassuring.

Best wishes, FH.

All the best, FH

Spoke to my friend today and she seemed a lot better, said she felt a lot lighter after speaking to people yesterday. I mailed Samaritans for advice on protocol, gotta say their response was a bit generic. If it happened when I was in the UK I would just phone I guess.

Still, it seems like things are better today, thanks again, all.

glad to hear FH, you’re a good friend.

nearer my god to thee

Sup buck

sorry. stupid. i'll live

You better, friend.

A low but sufficient bar for today hoss

^^

<3

I won't, I can't, I promise

but my head is screaming with it

so weird and stupid to be trained to deal with this shit in others and then to sit staring the logic of it in the face

horrible aggressive assault on the people that care about you but how hard your brain tries to convince you that it isn't

sorry I just had to stare at the words, delete thread

<3

you're one of my favorite posters, NV. ... of course we can't actually have a beer and hug and hang and make jokes about albums by bands and gazprom ... but I'd like to think that some day, maybe?

aw man. i’m so sorry you’re going through this. my laser cannon of posi vibes is aimed at u, nv 🌈

i fucking love having you around & as such i demand that you continue to hang around to fulfill my selfish needs <3

I'm sorry you're struggling, NV. You're a good dude. I'm still living with constant ideation myself, so I know how much it drags you down, and if there's anything I can do to help then please let me know.

Thanks all ❤️

big love to you nv, sincerely wishing you the strength to survive all the bullshit

NV, echoing others words. I love yr insights in the football threads and yr dry wit. I'm glad you will be with us, but I hope you can find some peace with the shit that is eating you :(

My love to you NV, I always hate to see ILXors suffering.

tons of love to u NV

sorry it's rough ground just now. there is still music.

And films, and pages to turn.

Much love to you NV.

Theres a new lord of the rings tv adaptation planned nv chin up and think about how ill fucking react to that in real time

They doing Lord of the Rings as well as the second age Tolkien show?

Less death, not more. Sending my love

xp i dont fuckin know do i, i cant imagine im going to be quietly happy either way tho can you

I'm so facile and shallow that my suicidal mood a couple of months back was completely halted by combining a 5/1, 9/2, 6/1, 15/2 4-fold on a 20p Lucky 15 and winning £750! But when you are counting on the cushion of small stake winning greyhound bets to uplift you from despair then the job is certainly almost fucked!

haven't really dealt with ideation since I was 19, but it's an everyday thing now. nothing I'm planning to act on. for now it's a coping mechanism. how do I quit thinking about it at all?

coping mechanism or no, i know it can turn into more than just that.

this is probably not what you want to hear, but ime you can’t “not think” about suicide, just like if i tell someone “don’t think about x” they surely will think about “x”

you just have to find other stuff to think about. find an activity, join a club or service organization, start a spiritual practice, cultivate an art, develop a skill, begin a garden, get a pet, start a project etc. just got to find better things to think about

and if negative thoughts make it impossible to attempt or pursue any of those options, probably need therapy, and there’s no shame in that

forgot to mention exercise and other healthy lifestyle changes as a project. whatever thing you decide to do, best to start w small, achievable goals and take it one day at a time.

if you can manage to not do suicide or suicide thoughts today, and figure out how to consistently not do it tomorrow (don’t worry about day after that), you can have a reasonably emotionally okay rest of a life by principle of mathematical induction

Probably everyone in the US/UK and definitely everyone on ilx should have a therapist, I'm insanely grateful for mine.

it's become an affordability thing even with insurance at the moment, but I definitely want to go back to therapy. however I think I am going to have to find a way to make it work. I'm eliminating some monthly excess expenses which might free up the cash.

my old therapist moved to Satellite Beach and she was the one who worked with me best, but she keeps not taking my insurance. ortherwise I could do video sessions with her. i'm going to email her again since I changed carriers.

Hey Neanderthal I've absolutely been there, please DM me if ever you want to talk or vent or anything.

My own struggle with suicidal ideation is largely "won" at this point, it's been over two years since my last serious episode. The ways I dealt with it were complex. Not "complex" as in "it's complicated!" but complex like it took a multi-faceted, flexible approach with a lot of trial and error. Medication, therapy and "adjusting one's bad habits" were the big three, but I found that not any single approach was the sole fixer.

More than anything though, when I was in states of distress, I needed people to listen to me. So yeah, please DM if you desire

This thread chimes in a bit with what the late great posted in terms of other stuff to think about.

Yes, there is no intrinsic meaning or purpose in your life. This is difficult; it’s also the reason there’s possibility for you. The task of living is to invent meaning and purpose, and then invent it again. It’s work. Much of the time it’s painful. Sometimes, it’s also joy. 3/

— Eric Reinhart (@_Eric_Reinhart) August 7, 2022

I've been in a similar place, N, when our daughter was about 7 and lived at home. I was the stay-at-home dad after her first birthday. All 7 years of her life had been a non-stop series of medical crises and a search for resources to meet all her needs, but most of it devolved onto my wife and I to provide 24-hour care.

During those same years my wife was totally stressed out at work under an abusive, demanding boss. Plus, she was recovering memories of early childhood sexual abuse. Plus, she was rear-ended twice by other drivers, leading to various physical problems.

I love both of them tremendously and I felt strongly bound by that love and by a deep sense of duty to help and protect both of them to the utmost of my ability. The demands I made on myself were for total commitment, and I kept up that pace for seven years. But I began more and more to pose it to myself that this treadmill of stress, exhaustion could only halt if my daughter died or I did.

In our case the eventual path required us to think what we always considered unthinkable, that our daughter needed to live apart from us under the direct care of others. That path proved horribly painful, long and difficult, but at least it was not impossible.

Your position sounds sadly similar. Problems and stresses piling up far faster than you can identify and acquire resources to deal with them, and your love for your parents and your deep sense of duty to them requires you to put forth superhuman efforts. I wish I could point at some in-obvious opening that will lead you to resolutions. I can't. All I can say is, your love for your parents doesn't require you to kill yourself. That is not what they want or need.

thanks folks.

today at work isn't helping. I just shut down, again, staring at the screen and not doing anything.

I'm not worried about discipline or getting canned or anything, I'm an 18 year lifer, p much I've gotten away with being blunt for years.

it's just not making me feel much better about myself atm.

i'm using a lot of music as therapy. I don't want to die, but I don't want to be alive either.

thanks all. with me it's all ebbs and flows, so I'm hoping I can break myself out of this and find some hope for the future.

Sending positive vibes your way, neaderthal.. everyone deserves to be happy, and hopeful

almost as if they heard my screaming into the void, my boss's boss immediately took SIX of my classes off of my plate, and gave to someone who isn't really busy, halving my work to a load that's still pretty big, but not impossible.

that's obv not going to solve *this* problem by itself, but it will perhaps reduce the number of panic attacks I have during the week.