Save Yourself From Suicide

It is possible that the term “Go Big or Go Home” was originally said by someone who is BiPolar.?If I am going to lose, I am going to lose HUGE.

Throw it all away. Burn it all to the ground.

But, what happens when you find yourself standing in the very structure you are burning down?

The concept of willingly setting ourselves on fire is a bit extreme.?Then again, so is shooting yourself in the head, or jumping off of a building hitting the concrete pavement below-your body shattering like glass.?Also a bit extreme, is the thought of leaping off of an overpass bridge onto a freeway hoping that one of the vehicles hits you at 90 miles an hour.?All of my suicide attempts happened via overdose of medication, except for the one time I attempted to slit my wrists in April of 2014.?Thankfully, I just happened to choose a knife that was dull.

Suicide goes against our basic core instinct of survival. Yet, for some of us, the thought of ending our own life is, or has been, a morbid daily reality. Then again, this could be your first day and first time being suicidal… Regardless, welcome to the party, all of you.

Stopping ourselves from attempting suicide involves becoming aware, and learning the importance of our own inner dialogue that happens between our thoughts and feelings.

Our thoughts and feelings have a very interesting relationship with one another. The language they use, the words they choose to speak, is completely unique. They converse with one another in every moment of every day. Therefore, the decision to end our own life is the direct result and ending of these conversations.

Learning how to interrupt our own self-destructive thoughts and feelings, and saving ourselves from a suicide attempt means we need to be brutally honest with ourselves and others, with the genuine intention of making ourselves better.

Over the last 15 years, I have been diagnosed with A.D.D., Depression, Borderline Personality Disorder, Anxiety, and BiPolar Disorder type 2 which later was changed to type 1.?I am writing a book called “Awareness Is a State of Mind”. I have been stuck in the 7th chapter for the last 4 years.?I have spent months in jail and twice threatened with a trip to prison.?I have been in and out of A.A. since the age of 20, and have worked all 12 steps several times.?For the last 10 years, I have participated in individual and group therapy, as well as earning some college credits toward a degree in Psychology.

Logically, I know I am blessed to be alive.?I have always known this, which makes me even more of a walking talking enigma.

I have attempted suicide 10 times.?My last physical attempt at killing myself was in April of 2018, however, my last hospitalization to prevent an attempt happened in November, 2019.

Many years of consequences, stigma, treatment, and therapy, have taught me and given me the ability to make the conscious decision to save myself instead of killing myself.

This is why I am here, to share these lessons and insights with you, in hopes that you will gain the knowledge and power to stop your own suicide attempt if and when you ever have the overwhelming desire to die.

My hope is that you will learn to see yourself as the miracle you actually are, and that you are worthy of Life.

You deserve to Live.

With that being said...

Extreme variables within us and our worlds can cause extreme thoughts and feelings that can cause extreme decisions and actions.

1. Before an Attempt…The Contributing Variables

...The variables that contribute to suicide can be seen 3 ways: Medicinal, Circumstantial, and Situational.?I will use my first suicide attempt to give examples of each.

~Medicinal ~~Self Medicating legally or illegally

I was diagnosed BiPolar type 2 at the end of October, 2009.?I considered it a death sentence, and almost immediately became suicidal which led me to checking myself into an inpatient psychiatric facility the following week.?I was discharged several days later, but became instantly depressed all over again.

During that first hospitalization, a psychiatrist prescribed me Depakote, a mood stabilizer-500 mg once a day.?At that time, I was also drinking alcohol and smoking pot, amongst other things, on occasion.?A couple months later, I started planning my own death.

January 28th, 2010, was my first suicide attempt.?That morning, I swallowed fifty 500mg tablets of Depakote.

If you are feeling like you don’t want to live anymore, you need to ask yourself these medicinal questions...

In what ways are you self-medicating?

It doesn’t matter what it is, if it is prescribed or not.?It is normal to want to feel good. You have every right to want to feel better if you are feeling bad.?Don’t judge yourself in a negative light, but rather, judge yourself from a fair and honest perspective, with the intention of helping yourself.

~Circumstantial ~~The Finer Details

I had been arrested for my 2nd DUI a month and a half before that attempt.?My first marriage, which I had not sufficiently grieved, had just ended a year before that in December, 2008.?My personal relationships with my family were strained due to my ruinous behaviors.

I was cheating on boyfriends, abusing alcohol, asking strangers in dark places for drugs, putting myself in sketchy places with people I did not know, and lying to my parents and loved ones about how I was really feeling about myself. I was dishonest with everyone that truly cared about me.

Every time we hurt someone else, we hurt our minds and souls in the process.

Our heart breaks every time we break someone else’s heart, whether they know about it or not.

What kind of decisions are you making for yourself on a daily basis, and how are these decisions making you feel? Are you the person you would really like to be?

Do not keep these answers to yourself.?Tell someone who genuinely loves you.

~Situational ~~The Bigger Picture

Thinking about killing ourselves is not always a direct result of just one specific negative event or relationship, but rather, it is the combination of all of the little things and big things that are happening all at the same time-the same day, week, month, etc...?Whether these things are defined as “Good” or “Bad” is not consistently relevant.

Looking at the bigger picture of my life, as if it is a painting on a wall, I saw myself being the emotional and physical train-wreck that I was in those days, and I assumed that nothing would ever change.?I thought I would never amount to being anything more than a selfish self-destructive whore that was only capable of destroying herself and everything and everyone that she loves.

I know I am not the only person who has called themselves bad names.

I don’t feel that way about myself anymore, because I no longer do those awful things that were making me feel awful, but back then, I did.

What would someone hear if there were a microphone in your head, amplifying the conversation between your thoughts and feelings?

How many times have you insulted yourself or hurt your own feelings, and then physically responded in agreement?

Stop thinking that way about yourself and your life. Swallow your pride. Call Someone.?Reach out to some kind of network of emotional/mental support.

If you keep your toxic inner relationship with yourself a secret, then you will be choosing to keep yourself mentally unstable.?If you allow yourself to stay mentally unstable, you will be more likely to make the decision to end your own life.

What happens when we make that decision?

2. Planning The Attempt

Having resolved within ourselves that we no longer want to exist in any way, shape, or form, we begin planning. We decide our method, and pick the location where our loved ones will find our physical body that is actually an empty shell displaying a human structure, completely void of Soul/Spirit that only slightly resembles the person they know and love.

How much thought will you put into it? Sometimes, the physical attempt of suicide happens immediately after the first thought and feeling of not wanting to live, and sometimes, we plan it for another day.

That feeling of relief at the thought of dying is one of the many symptoms of Mental Illness.?At this point, you have lost proper perspective of yourself.?You are lying to yourself when you think about wanting to die.?You don’t really want to die.?The truth is that you really just don’t want to be you, anymore, ever again.

What I am about to say right now is extremely important… Change. Your.?Mind.

Change it, somehow, without murdering yourself in the process. Force yourself to change your environment for a little while. Go outside and study the trees, and the air.?Allow your skin to think about everything it is feeling. Cut a strawberry open… Smell it, and allow the sweet and delicious aroma to flip your brain's receptors to a more neutral position… and then call someone. All else fails, if you want to hurt or kill yourself, go to a 24 hour crises center, or go to the Emergency Room.?I have saved myself, in those specific ways, just as many times as I have followed through with the idea of killing myself.

In addition to those suggestions I just gave you, you may also want to think about getting some kind of ongoing emotional and mental help for yourself, because you were, literally, just planning your own death, and that is a sign that you are not well and need help.

What if we absolutely cannot change our own minds?

What happens when our deadly decision turns into deadly action?

3. Options, Consequences, and Stigma

Our options, after we have carried out our “plan”, are Survival or Death.?I have never physically died with no chance of ever coming back.?Therefore, I cannot give a very thorough explanation about that.?However, I know enough about Dying to offer a few words to describe what I remember of it.

Option 1. DYING: It can be described as Void/Nothingness/Darkness/Non-Existence

...the absence of Life, Laughter, Love, and Hugs…

Option 2. SURVIVING: It means Hospitalization, Psychiatric Lock-Down Units, Doctors, Medication, Therapy...

Surviving a suicide attempt naturally leads us into Consequence and Stigma, and these two things will either make us or break us.

It is not uncommon for an individual to have a relapse of symptoms in the first two weeks of being discharged from the hospital, nor is it uncommon for an individual to attempt suicide AGAIN, in those first weeks or months of being home. I have gone through it, a few times.

Consequence and Stigma

One of my coping skills I use to help me change my trains of thoughts and feelings is to look up definitions of words and their synonyms.?So, let’s dissect the words “Consequence” and “Stigma”.

The primary definition of Consequence is the one that people tend to be the most familiar with.

Consequence Def. #1... A Result of an Action or Condition

Results may vary, and are dependent upon the variables in your own life.?However, you will more than likely experience the following...

Having to be Found by Someone Who Loves You

Strained and or Broken Personal Relationships

Worsened Mental Health Psychosis

Extreme Remorse/Anger/Embarrassment/Shame/Confusion

Facing the Reality we just attempted to run from

Having to look in a mirror and be honest with yourself and others

Forcefully humbled into a permanent state of recovery and healing

Consequence Def. #2… Important or Relevant

You will never be the same.

Forcing ourselves to experience a physical, mental, and emotional trauma changes everything about us. Therefore, the consequences that follow a failed suicide attempt Should be seen as extremely important and relevant.

Every day that you are in the psych. unit is important, because this is when you learn how important you are.?Every day that you are home and making the conscious decision to stay alive, becomes important, because this is when we learn that other people love us and want us to stay alive with them.?We learn to value the relevance of treating ourselves and others better, because we discover that however we are treating ourselves will be directly reflected onto all of our relationships, and then reflected back onto ourselves.?If we are not good to ourselves and others, our mental health will suffer.

One of the examples dictionaries give for this definition of consequence is used to describe a kind of social distinction… as in, “She was a woman of consequence”.

Now, that example of social distinction has a somewhat positive tone to it.?This “woman of consequence” is set apart and valued differently than everyone else, and so are we, but the tone of our consequence is a little different than hers.

We ARE set apart, and as the result of what we just went through, we come to know the word “STIGMA”. We begin to feel judged by others in our community and government based on our history of mental illness and suicide attempts and hospitalizations.?However, at times, we should probably admit to ourselves that we got ourselves to this point because we have been our very own judge, jury, and executioner… locking ourselves up in our minds and throwing away our own key… putting ourselves and others through unnecessary pain and anguish.

Stigma

Most of us know the word “Stigma” by its popular definitions of being marked with disgrace due to our circumstances or the characteristics of our mental illness’.?The word, stigma, is thrown around so easily nowadays with shades of sadness, despair, and eternal shame/damnation, and these descriptions of us are, unfortunately, somewhat accurate.?It is important that we recognize and admit to ourselves that we have a lifelong illness that we are responsible for, now.?There is no cure for BiPolar/Depression/Borderline/Schizophrenia etc., however, thankfully, I have found that this is only ONE of our truths.

There are a couple of other interesting definitions for stigma that we could actually use to propel our thoughts forward into a more beneficial attitude and direction. This will come in handy when we are feeling physically, mentally, and emotionally chained to our own wreckage; tied up and bound by our own hands or the hands of others.?The quality of our lives is so very dependent upon how we define ourselves mentally, emotionally, and physically.

Within our consequences, and in discovering our own “stigma”, we need to know the alternate meaning of the word, as far as being impressed by divine favor.?This definition comes from the crucifixion marks left on the body of St. Francis of Assisi.?We ARE impressed by divine favor, because we are alive even though we tried like hell to die.

Lastly, our Stigma of Mental Illness can be viewed as the part of a pistil in a flower.?The stigma within the pistil of a flower is the part that receives the pollen during pollination. The flower cannot bloom without it.?The same principle applies to us.?We cannot grow without consequence.

Seasons… You will go through seasons of being well, and not being well.?Your old leaves will fall and crunch beneath your feet and you will learn to appreciate the process of shedding unbeneficial behaviors and people from yourself, which will make room for improvements, new growth, and opportunities to be something better for yourself and for others.

We will learn to mend ourselves, and we will become very good at it.?Trying to fix our relationships with those we have harmed will be a life-long journey.?Don’t expect to be forgiven, because we will never know what they went through almost losing us.?They need time to heal, just like we do.

Learn to redefine yourself.?Get to know yourself on a deeper level.?Learn to be honest with yourself and others about what you are thinking and feeling, because that is the biggest and best way to save yourself from ending your own life.

Your Heart and Soul will ALWAYS end up reflecting itself onto everything and everyone in your World.

Where do you stand with yourself? How do you really feel about yourself? What do You think about You?

How would you like to be defined?

When you remind yourself of a few positive, simple, and loving truths, you end up instilling goodness within you.

These are Important Truths to Remember...

*You are a source of Immense Love.

*You are the only person that is truly responsible for your own safety and well-being.

*You are a one of a kind, hand-crafted work of art (masterfully/perfectly created in human form)

*You have been designed to be uniquely beneficial, because no other human being has the brain that you have.

*You are created to do well, and to be YOU (exactly the way you are right now, in this very moment).

*Your life is a gift to the world, your relationships are your treasures, and YOU are the silver lining of existence.