Intrusive Suicidal Thoughts without Intent

[prettymenherachan]

I have been suicidal for a huge chunk of my life. Ages 13ish to 23ish. Ten years, and I am 24. If you asked me a few years ago if I was going to CTB, I would tell you the only thing stopping me was fear of death. I constantly had plans and methods bouncing around my noggin. I finally settled on a method when I decided to try getting on the pills I was so afraid of, reasoning I now had nothing left to lose. Shocker- the pills actually helped me and now I have no intent of ending my life.

However, I still often find myself weighing options. It's odd because I have no intent, but when I discover a new method I still feel compelled to research it and imagine myself going through. It gets to a point where the thoughts distress me. My therapist explains it's like walking a path in the forest so long you've created a trail- now it's hard to branch off and go off the trail. But it feels so strange to me.

This is more of a vent, but I also would like to hear from others who also struggle with these compulsive planning fantasies. I suppose the oddest part is I do not even want to cure them. I like the idea of having an exit strategy in case everything goes to shit again. For example, if I got a nasty terminal illness and decided to die on my own terms. Perhaps it is even a strange form of nostalgia. I suppose even living in hell can feel nostalgic with time.

 

[timf]

Almost every science fiction movie about a space ship shows them having escape pods. Like lifeboats, it is natural to find comfort in an escape plan. Since we are all going to die someday, an escape plan that helps you avoid problems here and now might be more useful.

1. Do not be so rich or famous that crazy people are attracted to you.
2. Have enough in savings for a replacement car if needed.
3. Make friends with someone in the country if things get to crazy in the city.
4. Learn a transportable skill like welding in case you have to relocate.

These are the types of contingency plans that might be more practical. Having suicide as a contingency plan is less like a lifeboat and more like a deathboat. Suicide planing may have evolved for you as a source of comfort and control, but you may wish to switch over to deriving comfort from that which is more practical.

 

[prettymenherachan]

Almost every science fiction movie about a space ship shows them having escape pods. Like lifeboats, it is natural to find comfort in an escape plan. Since we are all going to die someday, an escape plan that helps you avoid problems here and now might be more useful.

1. Do not be so rich or famous that crazy people are attracted to you.
2. Have enough in savings for a replacement car if needed.
3. Make friends with someone in the country if things get to crazy in the city.
4. Learn a transportable skill like welding in case you have to relocate.

These are the types of contingency plans that might be more practical. Having suicide as a contingency plan is less like a lifeboat and more like a deathboat. Suicide planing may have evolved for you as a source of comfort and control, but you may wish to switch over to deriving comfort from that which is more practical.

This is really sound advice, thank you!

Would you consider teaching a transportable skill? On one hand every place and country needs teachers, but on the other if I am educated in American history I would not be able to instantly become a teacher in England, right?

 

[music]

i used to be like that before i found this place. coming up with a bunch of plans to varying degrees of completeness and, in hindsight, effectiveness. that's stopped in the 2 years i've known about this site and the info scattered around it. i know how to escape now. that's comfort enough to keep going until i consistently don't want to anymore and can financially and logistically support anyone who'll suffer the fallout.

@timf you're right with your post, i appreciate it too. a lot of those things—well, most things—were too scary without anything to fall back on at all, but i'm working, very slowly, on constructing a new life instead of just bringing a close to my old one

 

[timf]

Teaching is a transportable skill.. If you teach American history, you might find a position in England just as there are those that teach English history in the US.

Just like in the US, I imagine that the further you get away from a big city, the more flexible school districts get to find any teacher at all. There are people in England that think that anything north of York is imaginary. This is similar to those that think anything between Vegas and the Mississippi is desert.

 

[nobeertonight]

I have been suicidal for a huge chunk of my life. Ages 13ish to 23ish. Ten years, and I am 24. If you asked me a few years ago if I was going to CTB, I would tell you the only thing stopping me was fear of death. I constantly had plans and methods bouncing around my noggin. I finally settled on a method when I decided to try getting on the pills I was so afraid of, reasoning I now had nothing left to lose. Shocker- the pills actually helped me and now I have no intent of ending my life.

However, I still often find myself weighing options. It's odd because I have no intent, but when I discover a new method I still feel compelled to research it and imagine myself going through. It gets to a point where the thoughts distress me. My therapist explains it's like walking a path in the forest so long you've created a trail- now it's hard to branch off and go off the trail. But it feels so strange to me.

This is more of a vent, but I also would like to hear from others who also struggle with these compulsive planning fantasies. I suppose the oddest part is I do not even want to cure them. I like the idea of having an exit strategy in case everything goes to shit again. For example, if I got a nasty terminal illness and decided to die on my own terms. Perhaps it is even a strange form of nostalgia. I suppose even living in hell can feel nostalgic with time.

I might come off as a bit unsensitive but my psychiatrist once told me that pills can increase the risk of suicide because they increase you likeliness of taking action about things (not in these terms but that was the point). I think the feelings of being suicidal and being invested in something you want to take action about are kinda connected. I think one of the logical courses could be investing that projectuality in something

 

[OliverTreeLver]

Too often do I find myself in this predicament. I will be driving across a bluff, or when I am high up rock climbing, the thought blinks across my mind. It happens quick, like it shoots into my head like a bullet, exiting just as quick out the back where it splatters against my mind. I've been to a couple therapists throughout the past two decades, some of which I expressed these thoughts to. Not the overwhelming depressive thoughts I usually had, but the compulsions I found towards ending it.

I guess somewhere in that whole mess, I came out how I am now. Things haven't changed, life isn't any better. One could argue, it is worse. Somehow, in someway, I now find myself just looking different at things. That thought stopped being this haunting feeling that was equivalent to torture. It became something like a soft breeze, maybe I am just numb to it now but it feels comforting, in it's own strange way.