National Institutes of Health

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When Suicide Almost Made Sense

Hello world. Please comment.

nancy says:
November 17, 2010 at 8:01 am (Edit)
I could write a book….but suffice it to say, to the day she died, my mother never even told her best friend that I had had a breakdown and was on medication, my sister said I couldn’t possibly be a Christian and be mentally ill, people at church have told me that they actually walked across pews to avoid talking with me when I was sick, and, even though I’m off all medications but Klonopin and seeing a therapist only every three or four months “just to keep in touch”, I can’t go anywhere or meet anyone new without feeling as if I’m wearing a sign saying “Mentally Ill” around my neck. My attitude about people with emotional problems? God bless them…and I pray that they have a really good connection with HIm. It (and the love of my family) is the only thing that kept me alive.

Question: aside from the obvious nausea and anger that stigma and prejudice bring on, what do you have to say? Please tell me your story.

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Lure Yourself Like a Lover

 

Art Gallery Bangkok

Art Joy by Marie Schem

 

Self-Care Tip #88 – Win yourself over.  Be a friend to yourself.

Dr. White works with mostly women in primary care medicine.  She tells me that her women so often come in tired, overextended, and they say they don’t feel good.  She wonders why they think they can run 2 full-time jobs (parenting and employment) without suffering for it.  Her counsel is to down scale.

My patients do so much better when they are working part-time.

Christie, a mom of 3 who works full-time, tells me tonight,

It’s hard.

That’s not new news but nor is it small news.  How many of us nod when on the subject of self-care.  We sagely stroke our chin yet are nowhere to be found on the list of topics of interest.  Do we even get pleasure out of taking care of ourselves?

I think there’s a misperception here.  The hard part is not doing the 2 jobs that Dr. White’s patients work.  It is working our own person.  Maybe if we found more pleasure in caring for ourselves we would.  Maybe if we connected that caring for ourselves is the minus-1 to the starting point of caring for others.  We can get hooked.  We can.  But it won’t be the same for all of us.   Any way you turn it though, we have to make it sticky, linked to pleasure, and making sense.

Question: Is there anything specific you can think of that contributes to self-care being a positive thing in your life?  Please tell me your story.

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Claim Your Brain

My mind, like rusted gears, was not moving well.  It hadn’t been really since my 1st pregnancy 8 years ago.  There are few things that dumb us down as much as pregnancy and children!   Hormone changes, lack of sleep, fluctuating from 145-200-145 pounds three times, and then the subsequent growing beloveds around me to contribute to mental dissociation.  Simple sensory overload from talking, yelling, crying, petitioning, inquiring kids factors in.  You may read more about sensory issues here.

Daily writing, like a staunch governess, found my brain under cobwebs, bug carcasses, and musty stench.  (Hello old friend!  There you are!)  This helps to explain the joy gripping my hand, like girlfriends on the playground, when I sit down to write!  The world is active to me, including rather than excluding me. My in-between moments used to hang like an old woman’s breasts.   Now much more time full of nourishing thoughts bless me.  I am in awe.

My patient came in sighing deeply.  He wasn’t better.  No, he said.  He lacked motivation and interest and connection from the world.  He felt selected out to suffer.  A dumping ground for misfortune and misunderstood.  Efforts through medication, after medication changes were like looking for love in all the wrong places.

We talked about cognitive distortions, tapping into things that used to make him happy, road-blocks in poorly designed neurological grooves – volunteering at the library or animal shelter, journaling, sharing his life story with others, exploring his spirituality.  No.  No good.  Nor could he consider psychotherapy as he’d been through too much of it already to consider it again.  And he just couldn’t get interested in groups such as through NAMI.

His brain, assaulted by stressors, disease, and disuse was growing silent.

Being a friend means yelling, fighting to reclaim your journey, finding something to connect you to your process of life.  My patient was letting squatters take his property simply by being absent.

Self Care Tip #60 – Claim your right to health.  Be a friend to yourself.

Question:  What has helped you connect with your own journey in life?  What do you think?  Please tell me your story.