How to Avoid Suicidal Thinking - TRIGGER

While this post is about suicidal thoughts, it contains no details, no threats and no suicidal acts.

For the past twenty-two years I've used my legal background to maintain a full-time mediation practice in a moderately countrified area of central Florida. For the first twenty years I made a modest living, enough to keep myself and my wife in reasonable comfort, but not much more. Along came the recession and my business started to sink. Until in 2009 there wasn't anything left. It's been twenty-two years since I've practiced law, so my skills there are entirely out of date if I wanted to hang out my shingle. No law firms are hiring attorneys these days, particularly if they're 64, like me. Nor can my wife and I leave for greener pastures, since we're under water on our house and wouldn't even have enough money to rent somewhere. We have no wealthy relatives from whom to borrow. We've used up all our savings, retirement money, assets, etc. I have the germ of an idea for a new kind of mediation business, but it requires startup money for advertising that I don't have.

For a couple of years now I've been fighting off intrusive suicidal pictures and ideas that insinuate themselves into my thinking on all kinds of other subjects. Sometimes I can't think of anything else. I've never thought about suicide before in my life. I've never tried it. I've never assembled the tools to do it. But here the thoughts are now, and I don't know how to get rid of them. I suppose hopelessness and despair are the basis for such thinking. But I don't know how to get rid of the hopelessness and despair.

I see two things as being the problem. (1) Simply money. I'm sure I'd feel fine if I had a constant, secure, adequate income. The suicidal thoughts would just go away. But I can't conjure up money from nothing, and it does no good to fantasize about the lottery. Then there's (2) my relations with other people. That deserves a paragraph of its own.

In my work, I deal with lawyers and their clients. When people are suing each other, my job is to get them to settle their cases. But I'm really a quiet, shy introvert. Which makes it substantially tougher for me to get the settlements that guarantee future work. (The lawyers want very much to get their cases settled; that's why the repeat work.) I even have significant trouble going around to gladhand the lawyers to ensure I get continued work. So when others started entering the profession in droves as the recession deepened, I got flooded out.

Well, this is already much too long. So while I thank anyone brave enough to have read the whole thing, I'll split the rest into several posts.

Hello, Ygrec23. What is the plan to overcome the two problems you refer to? Is it realistic to believe more work will come your way? Are you good at what you do? Do you project confidence and have command of the process and law? Would a more outgoing personality benefit the attraction of more work and the perception you are a competent and proficient mediator?

[quote=TheByzantine;1338067]Hello, Ygrec23. What is the plan to overcome the two problems you refer to? Is it realistic to believe more work will come your way? Are you good at what you do? Do you project confidence and have command of the process and law? Would a more outgoing personality benefit the attraction of more work and the perception you are a competent and proficient mediator?[/quote]

Well, the plan is simply to market my mediation services directly to clients, without having lawyers involved. There are two other guys who are doing this, in Orlando and Jacksonville, and they are doing quite well. I go to their seminar every year and they share their experiences. As for my views of my own competence, I think I'm a decent mediator, not a star, but a competent workman. I don't know whether I project confidence. I certainly have a command of the process. And yes, I think a more outgoing personality would be a benefit. Any other questions?

Solving those two problems would no doubt help but I wouldn’t assume that there is some magic way to get rid of those sorts of thoughts. Financial security is great to have, and a very reasonable goal, but you are always going to have relationship problems, or problems because you don’t have any relationships.

I think you need to deal with why you are linking these issues, are you in therapy?

That deserves to be framed or featured on a poster!

In a sense. My finances only allow me to see a therapist for 20 minutes every other month. I have no insurance. I agree with you as to the relationships issue. If that isn't solved, I'm just not going to get anywhere. I have been able to avoid it all my life, but I can't anymore. My situation is forcing me to deal with issues that are long-buried and (to me) still terrifying. Personally, I'm convinced these are devpsych issues that go all the way back. (Actually, reading this over, I think that's a red herring.) I STILL waste lots of time doing things other than trying to get closer to the basis of these issues. I wonder if there is more than one way to do this, other than trying to figure out what went wrong 64 years ago. Cognitive doesn't work for me. I tried it. Obviously, I'm not a trained professional, so any of my own attempts or ideas are going to be pretty ad hoc. I do have the feeling that if I concentrate on today's relationships I might get somewhere. The resistance to doing so is immense, and that's one of the reasons I think that's the way to go. Any ideas?

Thanks for your help!

Well, financial security permits me to avoid dealing with the underlying truths about my relationship problems. That's one reason for linking them. It has done so all my life. I've always put up with a substantial reduction in achievements and living standard in order to avoid the foundations of the relationships problem. But I've never before been in a situation where my back was against the wall in the way it is now.

My personal view is that at no time in life after the age of 3 or 4 does the intensity of one's emotions even barely reach the operatic highs attained in very early childhood. Nor, of course, is one ever again as dependent. Something way back then was so awful, so painful and terrifying, that it got buried very, very deeply. One of my questions now is whether or not I have to dig the whole thing out or can somehow relieve the pressure without doing major historical research.

Thanks for your help.

Going with your gut can't be a bad place to start.

You might consider identifying each one of "today's relationships," analyzing each relationship, analyzing your position in them, and your emotional response to them. Using formal and informal labels to get some personal distance from the relationships could help neutralize their emotional effects.

In the past, Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships by Eric Berne, based on the principles of Transactional Analysis, provided a popular parsing guide to the interactions you may be facing. Of course, something newer and flashier may have supplanted it.

However you go about it, Ygrec23, I hope you'll be able to master your relationships rather than be mastered by them.

[I do have the feeling that if I concentrate on today's relationships I might get somewhere. The resistance to doing so is immense, and that's one of the reasons I think that's the way to go. Any ideas?]

Call a friend you haven't talked to for awhile, just to see how they are. Give an honest compliment to those around you - e.g. your wife; the people next to you in the grocery store check out line; etc. Go to a social event, such as a Senior Citizen's [you said you were 64] dance with your wife. Make calls that might have future benefit [e.g. calling the closest Vo Tech Rehab program, to see if they might finance some additional training to bring you up to date in your field. If they do not, be sure to ask if they know of an agency or program that might be helpful in this manner]. Look for a way to contact the mediation professionals you refer to, to see if they might be willing to refer cases to you when they get too busy. Remember that, while we might want out of our situation, that doesn't mean we want to die. How can you want something you know nothing about? See whether there is a local Mental Health Center, where you might seek treatment on a sliding scale. Doing something, even if it is a small thing, toward the eventual resolution of your problems, is helpful in lifting your mood and in distracting you from negative thoughts. You have a friend who understands problems with relationships, or lack thereof. billieJ