Discussion How do you bring up being suicidal to your therapist?

[hershberger]

In the interest of full disclosure: I had two crappy therapists before this one. DO NOT SETTLE. I can't promise you there is a perfect therapist out there for you. What I can promise you is this...if your therapist isn't doing what you need, find another one. I got lucky and found someone. Maybe you will too.

 

[k75]

In the interest of full disclosure: I had two crappy therapists before this one. DO NOT SETTLE. I can't promise you there is a perfect therapist out there for you. What I can promise you is this...if your therapist isn't doing what you need, find another one. I got lucky and found someone. Maybe you will too.

You definitely do have to "shop" around. I've had 13 over the years. One was truly amazing, a few were ok, three should not be trusted with a client ever again. But it's ridiculous to tell everyone the entire field is bad like some people tend to do.

 

[Despondent]

I've been thinking the same thing. I'm eighteen and feel like it's time to open up about my ctb ideation to my social worker. I was going to when I was sixteen, but even the ideation felt risky to open up about. Thank god I didn't though because that would've been rough times. Has anyone told a therapist about their ideation when they were a teen and still in high school? I always think about what could've happened if I opened up at that age because I was SO close to opening up.

 

[faraway_beach]

I've never seen a therapist, my first session is ten days from now. I was planning on showing her a copy of my self-introduction post from here, (without saying where I posted it, of course!) as a way of bringing her up to speed quickly, because that post explains my problems. Now I have to reconsider.

 

[Nem]

My current therapist is about as helpful as a bag of hammers...maybe even less than that. I told her last visit that I'm interested in dr assisted suicide and she just said talk to your dr. On that part she is okay but I would rather not waste my time seeing her. Other therapists were okay but this one not so much
Peace/hugs

 

[greencoat111]

I totally agree about looking around for a good therapist, it definitely takes a lot of time. I had a therapist who tried to hit on me and kept wanting to hug me, ugh

 

[Fullmoonishere]

I have brought up being suicidal with my therapist. She was visibly uncomfortable every time this topic came up - I can't blame her, she had little to no experience in psychotherapy but that's another story - but we still talked about it. The usual questions from her were 'do you have a plan?' (My answer was always 'I know my options'), 'do you know when you are going to do it?' (A honest answer of 'no'), 'what's keeping you here?' (My family will be sad), and then she always suggested contacting the crisis team and going to the hospital (once). I refused crisis team every time. When I eventually find another therapist, I will make sure to be as non-specific as possible regarding my choice of methods/plans etc. This was NHS therapy in the UK.