Silly Suicide- A Cautionary Tale...

I prefer not to post my own threads for the most part. But occasionally something comes to mind, from my past or present life, that I think might be useful to share. This is one of those posts.

A few members, here on PC, may be aware that I have made 2 serious suicide attempts in the past. One was probably 10 or 12 years ago. The second was about 2 years ago. However, these were not my first suicidal gestures.

Probably 20 or so years ago, there was another one which is the subject of this post. I won't go into the details of why this occurred. I'm not sure if I even remember for certain. But something happened that upset me. My wife & I lived in the country at the time. We had a small home with a detached garage. And, whatever it was that set me off, I suddenly, & without thought, went into the garage, closed the doors & started the car.

The garage was a handyman special that a previous owner of the property had built. To say it was not airtight would be to say the least! My wife was also outside at the time. And almost as soon as I had started the car, she came into the garage. She did not realize what was going on & I, of course, did not tell her. I don't recall what was said. But I presume I just made up some quick story & we went on with our day. This event was "silly" because realistically there was no way this action was going to result in my demise. It was just a sudden, impulsive act.

What didn't occur to me until fairly recently, was that this was a harbinger of things to come. Both of my later serious suicide attempts were spur-of-the-moment acts... no forethought... no planning... The incident in the garage all those years earlier was a demonstration of what I am capable of... or perhaps what I might be prone to... spontaneous attempts to end my life. Had I understood them in that way, I perhaps might have spared myself & my wife the anguish & the expense of my subsequent attempts.

So I offer this story as a way of illustrating that what may seem like idle suicidal ideation, or seemingly meaningless gestures, may in fact be prophets of things to come... maybe not right away... but perhaps years down the road. Please take pay attention...

Thank you for sharing this. I'm sorry you've been struggling for so long.
It's interesting though, back when I used to think about suicide, this method was the one I was drawn to. Probably because it's painless. I never got the point of trying it though. Sometimes I would make plans, not really planning to do them, like you say, idly. I would think of all the ways I could be found before it worked. All it would take was to be home alone with a car, but thankfully that never really happened, since I didn't have a car of my own.
Maybe my OCPD works in my favor on this front... I plan everything. And when you plan suicide, I think you usually eventually realize why it's not a good idea, and back out. For me, I can't stop thinking about my mom. My father died when I was 14 (they had been divorced for a decade but still loved each other), and when I think about how devastating that was, and it was just an accident... I just don't think I could do that to my mom, my sister. No matter how bad it's been, I guess I've never been delusional enough to think that my own mom wouldn't be broken by that. I could convince myself that everyone else wouldn't care...but it always came back to her.

Thanks for sharing

You raise something, a point in a mindfulness sense. Why I don't answer my pdoc off the cuff on that question.

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Thank you for sharing. definitely worth thinking about, and the more impulsive of us can take steps in our saner moments to make it harder to carry out the impulse.

I too have family who help keep me safe in the worst of times. I adore my nephew and niece. They are wallpaper on my phone, I try to look them in the eyes and tell them that I'm willing to cause them the kind of pain I experience and mess up their heads too. I usually can't.

I used to fantasize about suicide all the time, but I never thought I could do it.

When I was very depressed in 2000, I was upset to learn about plans to build a fence to prevent people from jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. It wasn't clear if they had built this fence yet or not, so I drove an hour to San Francisco to see for myself. When I arrived, I was relieved to see that there was no fence, and I felt so peaceful and happy. I stood there looking down at the water thinking about how I always had wanted to kill myself from early childhood and I always had been terrified of heights and jumping off this bridge was obviously what I had been meant to do my entire life.

I stayed there in a state of peace and calm until I was startled to see a security person in a golf cart parked a few feet behind me. I suddenly felt ashamed and went back to the parking area. A tourist from Europe had put money in my meter to prevent me from getting a ticket LOL.

That wasn't a suicide attempt, but the state of mind scared me afterwards.

Thanks for sharing! I see strong similarities to my brother and his several suicide attempts, and then the last one that ended his life, actually. He didn't understand this train of thought, but it makes so much sense. Important!

Wow. Sharing that was really eye opening and powerful, so thank you.

I have been dealing with suicidal ideation for quite some time now. I'm 23 years old and I think daily about ending my life. I've been in and out of recovery from my eating disorder (EDNOS) and OCD, and am now being 'tested' for BPD. I have lost all interest in pretty much anything. My passions have turned into chores. I'm tired almost all the time and I feel very indifferent about life altogether. In fact, I can't imagine a future for myself. I don't want to live more years feeling this way. It's such a pointless existence.

However, I've convinced myself and my therapist that I can't follow through with suicide because I am catholic and to do so is a major sin. My OCD makes things pretty black and white sometimes, and I have huge fear of being condemned to another hell in exchange for this one. But I have sat with a razor blade to my wrist and stared at the little blue vein and wondered how deep I'd have to go to cut into it. I've picked up bottles of pills and read the labels to see how many MG was in each tablet, and researched online the amount I would have to take to overdose causing death.

I have sat and thought about the time of day I would do it, the place I would do it, how I would go about it. Everything. I have put way too much thought into this.

I have gone to the emergency room because on a walk I spontaneously felt the need to just walk into traffic. I have been to the emergency room for suicidal ideation twice now, and all they do is give me medication that makes me very sleepy and knocks me out for about a day. I am at such a loss. Is that really the only way to make these feelings go away?

I have considered admitting myself into a psych ward in a last ditch attempt to save myself.

I'm sorry I'm dumping this all on you. I'm just so... I can relate and what you said hit me so hard. I don't even know where I'm going with this, except that I have been trying hard to ignore these feelings today and they aren't going anywhere. Anyway, thank you.

Maybe the intent wasn't there, but that doesn't make your feelings and thoughts less valid. <3 Thank you for sharing this.

Maybe the intent wasn't there, but that doesn't make your feelings and thoughts less valid. <3 Thank you for sharing this.

Hopefully you have a psychiatrist helping you?

Right now, I am trying to learn cognitive behavioral therapy. I'll summarize what I learned so far, in case it might be interesting to you.

The left brain thinks in words, and the right brain thinks in emotions, sensations, etc. When the left brain thinks of a word, the right brain visualizes that word. The right brain cannot visualize "not". If I think to myself "I am not a bird", the right brain will visualize a bird.

Whatever the right brain visualizes creates feelings. If the right brain visualizes something scary, then the body begins to feel anxiety.

So, if a person can control the words that he/she thinks, then that person can control how he/she feels. What we see and hear and smell creates words in our left brain, and those WORDS define how we feel - not our circumstances. We can CHOOSE the words we think so that they create more pleasant and positive feelings.

I'm not sure if any of that is helpful or not. I hope you find a way to feel better.

@JessLynn , another possibility is hypnotherapy. It might help the eating disorder.

Also, I think people often use the planning and visualizing of suicide as a way of escaping temporarily. I used to think "I can always commit suicide and then I won't need to solve these impossible problems." Another thing I would think is "I have failed and I deserve to die as punishment."

Instead of thinking about my "impossible problems" I can think about "problems I solved in the past and how those might apply to current problems" or something. Instead of thinking that "I have failed", I can think that "I did not do as well as I had hoped in this or that particular case but I did do well in another case". This would reduce the bad feelings that we use suicide fantasies to relieve. Choosing the words to think isn't telling lies to yourself - it is avoiding negative generalizations in favor of accuracy, objectiveness, etc.