Posted by Noa on December 18, 1999, at 10:01:14
In reply to Fighting suicidal urges, posted by Kev on December 18, 1999, at 9:34:15
Kev,
The thought of the impact of my suicide on my family and close friends has always been what has kept me from carrying anything out. When I have been suicidal, a lot of my thought energy has gone toward trying to figure out the "lowest impact" plan, but I always come back to realizing there isn't any. But I knew I had reached an all-time low and was in serious trouble this summer when I started to focus my energy on figuring out how to somehow convince the folks I care about that my suicide was the right decision. I actually believed it could be done, if I just worked at figuring it out. I also wanted the plan to include a way to plan ahead for making arrangements of various kinds, so that family would not have to do that. The other scary thing about that episode was that I had decided to not talk about my plans to my therapist because I knew that would sabotage the plans. That had never happened before. I ended up telling him, but at the end of a therapy session, because I had been struggling throughout the session with the dilemma. The conflict was my suicidal goal vs. my extreme discomfort with being dishonest with my therapist. I think I scared him, too. He basically set up some firm limits for me that I needed at the time, including a verbal contract that I would work toward life, not death, that I never hold something like that until the end of a session again. He said he needed some safeguards if we were going to work together on a 2x/week outpatient basis, he couldn't provide what I might need, that maybe a hospital or day treatment program could. This structure really helped me. That was when I revisited the medication cocktail, had my therapist and pdoc talk, and decided to suspend my suicidal planning, not because I had any more hope for the future, but because I put myself in the "hands" of my contract with my therapist. It is interesting to me how added structure from outside oneself can get me to put aside something as powerful as extreme suicidal urges.
poster:Noa
thread:16921
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/19991212/msgs/17096.html