How does a client's suicide affect their T?

www.crisichat.org

Because you directly mentioned them.

And I was glad to read your last post.

Sorry about that. Just because I can't see a good long term reason to live doesn't mean I'm going to make any choices that are that final tonight or tomorrow or even next week. I guess I've proven that I can't be trusted when I say that though. But I don't feel as desperate as I did then. This isn't something I feel like I need to immediately fix.

Growli, it's difficult to argue with your thoughts. A quick survey of the world shows just how much pain and despair there is. I'm no Pollyanna. But I do know my own experience.

I'm pretty sure I suffered from Depressive Disorder--it's different from isolated depression, and used to be called Stable Depression. It's basically when so much of your life experiences have been negative that your only psychological option for survival is to adapt to the misery by being miserable. It keeps you alive, but, well, miserable.

Eventually, the negative part of the self overwhelms any positive thought or feeling that may happen because the self becomes threatened by the pain of loss from any experience that upsets the stable misery. Sounds a bit crazy-making, but is actually pretty clever because it keeps the overall self stable.

A major indicator of this disorder is that the experience of any good feelings--experiencing joy in response to music, for instance--becomes a trigger for an onslaught of pain and hopelessness. It's why the usual treatments for depression that work for most people (variations on "cheering up" ) don't work for Depressive Disorder.

Of course, I don't know if this is your challenge. But it's worth talking to your T about. What does work is the neutralization of the past negative experiences. The feelings have to be processed empathically, and slowly, the ego strength of the T is first depended upon, then shared, then internalized. This, along with cognitive therapy to help solidify behaviors that strengthen the more positive self.

My own defense was dissociation for much of my early life. One of your defenses is SI. At one point, antidepressants helped with the overlaying depression. When I started therapy, I wanted the pain to stop. I didn't even think about ever being happy--that was laughable to me, just not fate for me.

But I was very wrong. No one is more surprised than me that my "normal" now is happiness. Not running through fields of sunflowers happy! But a comfortable, peaceful, basic happiness that is independent of daily life circumstances. Of course, I have transient moods, just like everyone does. And when sad things have happened, the death of friends for instance, I've grieved. But it passes. I regain my peace.

You are simply not in a place psychologically to believe in a positive future. But that has little to do with the reality of your future. Your current psychology isn't a roadmap determining your future. I know this both because you have insight and are pursuing therapy, and because I know it's possible from my own experience.

You don't need to ruminate now about the future. All you need to do right now is to take the best care of yourself possible, so that you can get home where help will be waiting for you.

To be totally honest, I don’t think I want to be happy. Happiness is such a shallow and meaningless emotion to me. There is nothing of substance to think about, write about, or talk about. Maybe I haven’t ever experienced true happiness and I’m just scared of what I don’t know. But I do know that the times I felt happy was always skin deep and a prelude to more misery. What do you do with yourself when you don’t have rooms full of emotional baggage to contend with? Just sit around and think about how great it is to be alive? That sounds so meaningless.
I don’t even know what my goal of therapy is because I don’t know if I even want to be happy. I just feel compelled to go. I feel like it’s something I have to do because I can recognize that my idea of what happiness is probably isn’t completely accurate. Even though I’m actually kind of scared of what this abstract thing is, I try to make it a habit to never let fear make my decisions. Sometimes, I don’t manage to do that as well as I would like.

I still don’t understand how being insightful means I’ll get through this. If anything, it means that I’m more likely to understand that life is just a giant disappointment. Good things happen sometimes, but it doesn’t mean anything when it can’t overpower the effects of the bad.

I’m not trying to just push away every single suggestion people make. I know you’re probably completely spot on with saying I might have depressive disorder. My T will probably offer very little input if I use those words though. She’s pretty against using labels with me. She says I use labels to validate how I feel. I don’t really know what’s wrong with that. Maybe she wants me to find validation through other ways.

But I can recognize that my frame of thought is probably jaded by something along the lines of depressive disorder and what I perceive to be true isn’t. That’s why I’m not planning on making the decision to end my life until I’ve had a lot more time in a less stressful environment to think about it. Hopefully I don’t slip up again and allow my fear to make that decision for me. It really doesn't matter if I do mess up and leave prematurely though. The universe ultimately doesn't need me and the people who would be hurt by it would eventually get over it.

it may or may not help, but I used to be convinced I wouldn't live past age 25. You practically quoted my younger self.

Sticking with the therapy can be a huge huge relief, maybe not right away but you will know it when it happens. You may find yourself surprised at feeling overwhelmingly loved, therapy and in real life.

Being with your toxic family is tainting how you feel about yourself. All you can do in the short term is try to mentally wall off their bs.

Are you happy you did live past 25? How long did it take for you to be happy with that?

I know. I just need to keep treading water.

I think it only took me a year or two in college for things to really turn around. I hated living right up until age 19 or so--so many bad things happened and I didn't feel comfortable in my own skin. Being alive every minute hurt horribly, like a burn victim.

I am happy that I found a way to live that actually feels good, so yes I'm glad that my near fatal sui attempt at 16 was thwarted.

I still have struggles but things are soooooo much better. Therapy has lead me to feeling deeply cared about both in and out of treatment. i can't tell you how good that will feel because you will get there too. It seems trite to call it "happiness", it feels more like care and love. I never ever thought I'd feel anything but horrible pain.

If I could talk to my younger self the sad thing is I don't think she would believe me. I haven't forgotten what that hopeless kind of pain is like.

Stay in therapy if you can, whether it is your school T or someone else eventually. Staying away from toxic people is vital too (your family sounds familiar--are you sure we aren't related?? :P)

There is a lot of treading water that happens to get through it. But it really does lead to better things.

I don't even trust people when they tell me that they love me. I always just assume that they don't really mean it. I guess my mom really made that word lose weight to me because she'd tell me that she loves me and then scream that she hates me and that I ruined her life. I don't trust words. I love body language and laughter and yet here I am completely dependent on the internet to feel loved. I don't know if I will escape this ever. But I won't give up today at least.

For me it wasn't so much the words, just a feeling that kind of burns in the background. It gets in your brain and it becomes something that you can re-play when things are bad.
I spent years not having anything good to draw upon to self soothe so my resiliency was for *****.

You are trying to get self care, who cares what the source is. Hang in there!!

There's nothing enlightening about adopting the false nobility of pain as a philosophy. The Romantics already did that and found it to be ultimately unsatisfying.

Your depression is controlling your thinking, pushing you to jump to faulty conclusions. It doesn't matter what you label a positive emotion. There is nothing meaningless, empty, or lesser about living life positively.

Don't succomb to the myth of the suffering artist as a somehow more glorious way to live. Pain isn't the source of creativity, rather it's a substitute for it.

Hey growlithing,

May I ask if you take any meds?

If not, you could ask your T/psychiatrist whether it would be good for you to take antidepressants to manage your mood.
I've found that they do help me. Not much, but well... a little is better than nothing.

Please take care.

P.s. I'm really glad you're still alive.

Yup. Adderall for my ADHD. I tried some antidepressants in the past. The only one that helped when the slightest with my mood was Wellbutrin. But actually adderall is more effective in lifting my mood as well as relieving a lot of ADHD symptoms anyway. The problem is when it wears off.

I'm also on a very small dose of ativan for insomnia and anxiety in hopes of preventing me from SI. But I'm almost all out. I have to save the rest of it for a true emergancy or making me fall asleep in a hotel room with my parents the night before move in.

Why are they even there the night before move in? Don't you just fly in yourself?

No. They insist on driving me there. It's a 16 hour drive. It's absolutely awful. But it does allow me to bring more stuff.

Thank you for continuing to argue with my nonsensical notions. I'm sorry I can't seem to just accept it and I'm sorry if I am being very frustrating. I can only imagine how frustrated my T feels with me.

I'm sorry that I'm still talking. I'm having a really rough day.

Is it bad that I'm really not trying to fight my SI urges anymore? I'm just focused on trying to survive at this point. I know that self harm is wrong. You guys convinced me of that. I know I need to stop. But is it okay that I'm putting off trying to correct these behaviors for a day where I'm not fighting to just stay alive?

Thank you guys for listening and supporting me even when I continue to make no progress. This would be so much harder to do if I literally had no one to talk to.

I'm sorry that today has been rough. It is okay to talk here. You are talking an appropriate amount.

Certainly staying alive is the most important thing. Also very very important is staying in condition to return to school. I gather that SI gives you (short-term) relief to the overwhelming pain you have been experiencing, and which seems particularly acute today. So you see it as helping you stay alive and return to school.

I would rather have you SI than attempt sui or be dead. Still, I wonder if you might try some other ideas. There are many web sites offering many alternatives to SI. For example:

Sirius Project - Alternatives to Self-Harm

Alternatives to Self-Injury

all I loved, I loved alone

Would you be willing to explore some alternatives?

You know, feelings are not always correct. You feel as though you are not making progress--yet it used to be 47 days and now it is 17 days (16?). In that sense, there is progress.

But perhaps you mean that you don't feel better. Each day, hour, minute is still a struggle, shouldn't you be feeling better? My view is that you have a very difficult situation right now and keeping above water each day is itself an important success. Besides, people here want to support you because you are you. We would love to see the kind of progress you want to see, but we support you regardless.

Thank you. I get worried that I am annoying.

Yeah, SI somehow makes the emotional pain easier to deal with. It makes the sui thoughts go away for a little while and I feel slightly less dead inside.

Thanks for the links. I am willing to entertain alternatives. I actually didn't SI today and I don't think I will. I managed to find one of my friends and she is coming over to play some games. So as long as I don't get really upset after she leaves, I should be okay today.

Yeah it's 17 days. 3 hours until 16 days. Time passes and I'm still alive. I guess that's something. I meant that I haven't been progressing emotionally

Good job today!

Have fun with your friend.

Sometimes I just don't SI and I always want to remember what I did to avoid it but I honestly don't really remember where all the time went today

Good job thinking about what you did to avoid it!

I think I'm going to be okay when I finally make it home. I perk right up around my friends. The problem is I don't know if that is just excitement for being free and will wear off or not.

You don't need to be progressing emotionally right now. That's for later, when you have a T and friends surrounding you. Try not to put too much pressure on yourself, you just need to be getting through each hour.

Although, to dispute your point a little, you are doing a lot more than just getting through each hour - you organising things with friends to improve your mood, making progress towards your goals by taking driving lessons, and the huge achievement of opening up about your emotions here on PC. That's a lot of achievement in a situation where just staying afloat is an achievement.

That's true. I guess my T will be happy that I was able to open up here. I feel kinda bad that I found it so much easier to open up to strangers on the internet than to her. But maybe it will translate.