Follow on from "Do the thoughts ever go?"

I am perfectly safe and this is not a "suicidal post", but it is a question about suicidal thoughts.

I have written elsewhere that I have had thoughts of death, suicide for a couple of years now.

I found the thoughts very frightening at first and they had a certain element of compulsion / goading, I think I thought they meant that I would end up acting on them.

I can't say the contents of the thoughts have changed over that time, although some days they are more frequent than others, but I am wondering whether just having them means I am at risk of acting on them at some point, or am I just worrying unnecessarily.

Now that I am able to separate myself from them, does it make them harmless?

It was explained to me in the hospital that having the thoughts but not the urge to act on them is passive suicidal ideation. Having the urges to act/having a concrete plan is active suicidal ideation and requires immediate attention. From what I'm understanding your having passive thoughts. This could go either way. Personally I would seek the help of my therapist in this matter, or even my pdoc because it may be a medication reaction if youre on any meds. And if your still having the thoughts severely and often I would contact the crisis team in your area, they'd be better equipped to help you right away. Best wishes!
Kelly

Thanks Waterbottle - that is a helpful distinction between passive and active thoughts. So maybe as long as the compulsion / goading bit isn't there, then they are fairly safe "harmless" thoughts, but when the goading is there, maybe that is the time for me to get some extra help.

Thanks - Soup

(((((((( SoupDragon ))))))))

It is helpful to be aware and mindful of those thoughts but know that is what they are - thoughts. I would be concerned if you were prone to psychosis as that is when it could be acted on though not intentionally. I would suggest talking with your T about whether you would be likelyto act on those thoughts. Please be safe.

Thanks Pegasus - I have never really talked about them with my T - only once, when T got a little cross with me (think T's crossness was justified). I am just trying to understand them better. I have never been told that I am prone to psychosis, it just sometimes feels like I am very distant from my head and it sort of takes over me - although that hasn't happened for a while now.

But yes thanks - I know that I would not act on them, my kids need me to be around.

Soup

I agree about the active passive part. And to make sure you are safe, if you ever feel overtaken by these thoughts. I had thoughts like this for years, passive. The problem tho, even tho I was in no immediate danger, was that these thoughts stood between me and feeling content, they stood between me and my self worth I was trying to build, and between me and the depression I was trying to battle. So they are not exactly safe thoughts, they do their own damage.

If you could talk to your t it might help. It is possible to rid these thoughts eventually. if that is something you would like to do. Even if it seems like they are here to stay, they dont have to.

I have had passive suicidal ideation. I had active when I was in high school and it did require immediate attention. I'm not worried about killing myself, because I won't, but feeling the way I feel, it sucks.

Yes they are not the cheeriest of thoughts to wake up to and for me, I go through a cycle of a particular thing, that triggers certain feelings, which then leads automatically to those thoughts. It is pretty tiresome some days and Anika you are right in highlighting that it can be a block to other more positive things in life.

But I do wonder whether once someone has had significant thoughts like these, that there is that pathway set up in the brain that is always just waiting to get triggered again.

Well, I am a bit of an opptimist ( now, was not always the case ) However I have been dealing with bipoal 1 and psychsosis since I was 11. Much like you these thoughts would be triggered by something, sometimes a small thing and just seem to run on autopilot. I would also awake to voices contantly telling me " you don't want to be here", which would continue until I slept.

I do believe that even if there is a pathway set up over time, that new pathways can be built, and old ones destroyed. Our moods are quite pliable, and so our our brains. If we even look at the universe and how life and consciousness even came about, well might seem quite impossible. Nothing is really impossible. Triggers can be diffused, and new responses can be learned.

One thing I started focusing on was how much time I spent fantasizing about dying. And what might happen if I started fantasizing about living. No one talks about that much. But it helped me a great deal. Also staying in the now, and not like today, or the next few hours. Just this exact moment that we are in. That itself difuses a lot of these seemingly auto-thoughts.

I hope that makes some sense. I beleive we can overcome a lot, and have a lot of power over these things, but the depression, the thoughts, the past experience, trys to show us evidence that we don't. I think it's a bit of an illusion. I have a hard time with concepts that don't allow room for change or growth, they seem unnatural to our world, and they leave one feeling powerless, and with out enough wiggle room. I realize that not everyone shares this idea, so just my opinion.

That's a really interesting point - it just seems more difficult to get those living fantasies going, but maybe that is something to get obsessed about rather than the opposite.

I do try and do staying in the moment / mindfulness stuff - just when my head is in a spin, it takes over and I can't always find that space in there to do the mindfulness.

Thanks for this - Soup

The answer is in what you have written here. You go through a cycle of a particular thing that triggers certain feelings. So it is about learning about that trigger and halting the process where (or before) it leads to the suicidal thoughts. That is something you can deal with in therapy.

Thanks Pegasus - yes I maybe need to pay more attention to the triggers, than the outcome. I will try to talk to T about it. Soup

I used to get really stumped on midfulness, it literally took me a few years to fiqure it out. Which seems odd for a simple concept, and frustrating. I used to think I need to set time aside to practice it, or that like you said needed space for it. It doesn't need time set aside tho, and it doesn't take space, or much energy. At first yes, because it's new and very different then what we do.

Being depressed takes heaps of energy, negative thinking, self hatred, triggers, past...future, worry... So much energy. It's just that we know how to easily spend that enegy on those things. I started being mindful when I was cleaning, and doing household chores since that is what I spend a lot of time doing, and it's also a time when your mind really wanders off. Then I just started checking in on my mind through out the day to see where it was and what it was up to, so I could guide it back to now. After a while this takes little energy, and since you are spending less energy on those other things a real shift starts to unfold.

Jon kabot zinn has a lot of helpful mindfulness videos on youtube, if you have checked him out. I think they way he teaches this is quite helpful.

And therapy yes, just like Pegasus said. I didnt have a lot of therapy, so I read a lot, and did some workbooks and used other ways. But your therapist should really be a big plus.

This is a great post. I'm glad I came to this site. I have had passive suicidal ideations for a long time now. I do not have any plans to act on them. Since I've gotten older, I have thought a lot about dying. Not only me but my spouse and how I would do alone and how she would.
Do they ever go? I guess that depends on our individual makeup.