I've really struggled today. Driving home today I had very strong urges to drink (alcohol) and cut myself. When I get like that, that is all I can think about. Those thoughts fill up my brain and I obsess about it. Today I kept telling myself 'this is not how I deal with problems and feelings now' and tried to understand why my brain has presented me with these urges.
A few weeks ago I was dealing with almost constant suicidal ideation. It was painful, indescribably so. How can you tell your support people that almost every waking minute of the day you think about killing yourself? That your head is full of images of you electrocuting yourself in the bath, falling and cracking your head open on concrete, gassing yourself in your car, hanging from the garage rafters, slicing your wrists open, driving your car into a concrete barrier/power pole/traffic, drowning in the sea.... That everywhere you look there is more ways to die. And that you fear that, in a moment of weakness when you are worn out from all the resisting, you will give in to an impulse and do something irreversible. When you spend time with loved ones you feel constant guilt about the thoughts you have about dieing.
So, I'd been having these thoughts for quite some time, two or three weeks I think, when I began to feel quite desperate. It was really starting to worry me that I might act on an impulse and do something I would regret. I brought it up with my psychologist, which is a lot harder than you might think. Trying to get those words out that I was feeling this way and having those thoughts, the feelings were overwhelming my ability to speak or be coherent in any way. Which is another reason it is so hard to talk to my support people and family about things. When I am unwell I am often so full of thoughts and emotions that I struggle to put together words in a way that makes sense to others.
One other thing that I want to make clear - having these thoughts does not mean rational me wants to die. Rational/wise me knows that I have lots to live for, there are things I enjoy and people I love, and that I just need to hang on for a bit until things get better again. Because they do get better. Unfortunately I do have periods of time where I struggle with suicidal ideation. It's been an ongoing issue for me since my teens. Sometimes it's intense and lasts a day or two, sometimes it's nagging thoughts that are around for months on end. This time the length and strength of what was going on for me was wearing me out.
My psychologist was a massive help. He described my brain as trying to protect me. I have a problem, which is that I was having a depressive episode. This was making me miserable. My brain sees the problem - misery - and provides the solution - death - for me. But what it doesn't understand is that by giving me death as a solution it promotes further misery, as another part of me desperately doesn't want to die. So I have the two sides of me - depression/misery/suicidality, and the love for my family and friends/hope for the future - locked in conflict with each other. The guilt and shame I feel at having these thoughts effectively strengthen them. My negative emotions start to escalate leading to further misery, which causes my brain to further bring forward the 'solution' of death/suicide.
By thinking of my brain as this benevolent force trying to using black and white thinking (ie here's the problem, there's the solution) to help me, I could feel compassion towards myself and it completely changed my perspective on my suicidal thoughts and urges. Now when I get those thoughts I can understand it is my brain just providing me with what it thinks is a good solution to my depression. My brain is trying to help me end my suffering in the most immediate way. And now I have to teach it that life is worth living, even if sometimes it is messy and uncomfortable and it hurts.
In the same way I have worked with my psychologist on my binge drinking and self harming urges. These urges often pop up when I am feeling other negative emotions because over the years my brain has learnt that negative feelings and emotions are intolerable. So it provides self harming behavioural urges as a coping mechanism so I don't have to feel horrible things I don't want to feel. Pretty clever when you think about it. My brain has taught itself that it doesn't like anything negative and that it should get rid of those feelings, emotions and experiences at all costs. Even if that involves harming myself or killing myself.
So today when I was having a rough time with wanting to binge drink and cut, I could tell myself that I must be feeling something I didn't want to feel and that there are healthier ways to deal with my feelings. I'm tuned in to my feelings in that I feel everything x100 - joy, sadness, anger, etc. I know what I'm feeling as I'm usually feeling it incredibly intensely. But I often don't know why, what was it that caused me to feel that way. I find that confusing and alarming in itself, to be confronted by these big feelings and have no idea why.
Today's feelings were brought to you by..... I don't know. Probably a combination of things. I'm unsettled at the moment as I have been thinking about starting a business. Or studying art. Or tech writing. Or anything else. Or.... And that's the problem. One minute I have an idea and am completely taken with it, researching the hell out of it and obsessed, unable to think of anything else. And the next minute I'm off on another tangent thinking of something else. A million thoughts are going through my head, and while I'm mentally walking through what it would be like to study again, several other concurrent lines of thought are going on - what business would I set up, how much would it cost to fund, could I get a student loan for study, should I give art lessons, how about buying a tripod and making you tube videos.....
Another thing that's bothering me is something that was said to me about Little G. I agreed for us to take part in a research project being done by a service that supports kids who have parents with mental health and addiction issues. Which is fine, I did my interview, she did hers, all went well. But the psychologist who interviewed Little G made some remarks about how she presents and what her view is on Little G's diagnosis. And I don't quite know what to do with the information she presented me with. It hasn't come from a formal assessment so its an opinion, but it's one that's thrown me into a tail spin as basically it equates to the ASD diagnosis may not be right and there is actually something else going on with her. And that something else should be looked in to.
I'm not sleeping at the moment which is never a good sign. The last week or so, I haven't turned out the light before midnight, and most nights not before 2am. I get up at 7am so it could be worse, but I should really be in bed (light out) by 10.30pm as sleep is such an important part of my self care regime. Problem is that I can't bring myself to follow my self care regime at the moment.....
I'm also bored at work. Which is not good for me either. I need to be mentally occupied and challenged otherwise all the other thinking takes over (effectively what's happened) and my brain goes a million miles an hour in a whole lot of different directions. I have a lot of trouble concentrating when that happens, and I also tend to over think and obsess on things.
So there's quite a bit swirling around in my brain and I guess maybe the self harm urges are trying to tell me that I am overwhelmed. That I need to try and get some sleep, eat some proper food (not just cereal) and try and stop thinking. Use my meditation and mindfulness techniques to get out of my brain and into my life (got that line from my psychologist lol). The trouble is finding the motivation to do those things when they are the absolute last thing I want to do. I have to just keep telling myself I want to be better so I can be a good Mum, family member and friend. And lead a life worth living.
Suicide - read this first
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