IMNAT(herapist), but sj2, I would think you are a candidate for Group Therapy. You might want to investigate that option with your counselor. Furthermore, if you don’t like the first one you met with, find another.
Thanks Derleth
Ditto on what Homebrew said -
Not all therapists are equal, not all therapy is equal. It’s your money. If you’re not getting anything out of it with one therapist, then look for another.
Hell, you might even try telling the therapist that you don’t feel you’re getting anything out of it, and see what they say.
Dumb question, but what am I supposed to get out of therapy? I know why I think the way I do, the factors will not go away…I cannot help but to look at people and see their vulnerability or their cruelty.
I suppose if you’re happy with your life, then there’s no reason to seek therapy. If you’re not, then therapy might help find a way to be happy.
The difference is this: I feel like I understand a great deal about what you’re talking about - I identify to some degree or another with about 80% of your post - except that I don’t view my only choices as leat-shit-sleep-work, and I’m not resigned to looking for the flowers growing in the muck of existence. At least not all the time.
If the above is good enough for you, then no problem. If there’s any part of you that entertains the thought, however small, that there might be a less crushing existence, then it might be worth talking to someone to help figure out how to achieve that.
As I put it to myself once: I’ve found the questions and the actions that silence the poisonous voices in my head.
And I’ll say it a third time: maybe you don’t need any therapy at all!
Well sj2 I am in a situation where I cannot open up and be vulnerable to anyone I normally associate with. I am far from my family for support. My therapist helps me by being someone I can be weak in front of, and by simply telling me that is OK. Also she is helpful in persuading me out of the shells I create for myself.
A good therapist will find out as much as she can about you and your weaknesses, and will help you against them.
So sj2 you say “I cannot help but to look at people and see their vulnerability or their cruelty”, well a therapist might help you to not see the world in such black and white terms.
Just a thought, Bippy
Like this post, and the “sharing” of several other posters in this thread, I have been here.
The answer to “what will the drug do”? Or, “what good is it”? What it does (and despite the unpleasant “tapering off” period, I had a VERY good experience and it helped me a great deal). What these drugs do is not “put you into a stupor” they help even out your emotions.
So, for instance if, like me, you can barely function without crying jags, and an overwhelming hopeless feeling, the drug helps calm those feelings so that your rational self CAN come to the fore as it were, and help you help yourself.
With me, as with another poster in this thread (sorry I don’t remember which one), there was an immediate and dramatic improvement within 4 hours of my first dose.
I was on the drug for the minimum time required and have not gone back in the three years since.
The course of anti depressants was prescribed by a counselor and in concert with therapy.
If a therapist isn’t helping, then it’s not that you (collective you, and usual disclaimer that not all people ARE going to respond to treatment), can’t be helped, it may be that that particular therapist isn’t the right one for you.
For me group therapy has help me develop skills to cope better with my depression. I have this terrible tendancy to dwell on the problems and mistakes of the past. It’s like a endless loop playing over and over and over in my head. I just keep thinking about how badly I screwed up and how awful I feel; which makes me feel worse leading to another time around the loop and starting the spiral into a major depressive episode.
In therapy I’ve learned how to short-circuit the negative feedback loop. These are people who are pledged to be confidential about issues I don’t want my co-workers or even family to know about. When I feel myself going down, I can call one of them and they’ll listen (or more likely suggest we go for a walk).
But it all comes down to what you make of it. Your therapist or the people in group can’t make you better. They can only help you make yourself better.
Before I started therapy I was skeptical of it. Now I’m convinced I might not have made it through the last few months without it.
Just before I started I posted the following on another board:
The advice I got then was to just open up and be honest. Then you and your therapist can work together to develop your goals and, hopefully, find a more healthy view of life than thinking everyone is only vulnerable or cruel.
I was going to respond with some kind of “here’s some background info about me” stuff, but upon re-reading what I said in the “cocaine” link above, that petty much sums it up. Up until last month, I had two years sober since that incident. I’ve since started drinking again (which is turning into a HUGE mistake). I can’t really say I feel any better or worse than I did when I was using drugs. The internal hurt and lonliness don’t go away. In all honesty, the suicide question is neither amplified nor hindered by drugs and alcohol, at least not for me. It’s simply a question I ask and talk to myself about. I’m not looking for attention, I’m not looking for pity, and I’m not looking for handouts. Period. I’m just looking for other’s reasoned thoughts on the matter. Most of what I’ve read here has been exactly that. And I am grateful for it. Shit, I’m even grateful for the bullshit comments. You gotta’ have perspective!
I feel much better for having discussed this with you all. Thank you.
This is in my opinion one of the best sites around on suicide
http://www.metanoia.org/suicide/
“Suicide is not chosen; it happens
when pain exceeds
resources for coping with pain.”
very true! 
Life is full of up’s and down’s… I was very suicidal up until I had my son… I remember looking into his face the day he was born and thanking God I had not given into my depression! Trust me it will pass and you will be thankful you had the strength and courage to get through it!
I would also check into anti-depressants ~ it is amazing how much they even out your moods and make you feel a lot more in control when faced with stress, disappointment, heartache…
I stayed out of this thread for a couple of days because I had job interviews, and I’d rather not think about suicide before them. Mad Dog, I apologize.
First of all, for those of you who are new to the SDMB, we do have an on-line support group for people who suffer from depression at Cecil’s Place. It is a strictly private group, but it is there for you. Please, feel free to join us.
I’d also like to address nothingnobody’s comment:
I’m religious and I’ve been suicidal. In my experience, what you described is completely wrong.
Excuse me. What I’m about to write isn’t going to be easy, but I hope it’ll answer MadDog’s question. For the record, I’m in my late 30’s, I suffer from clinical depression, and I have been suicidal within the past two months. I’ve also spent far too much time for my taste of late between “I don’t want to live” and “I want to kill myself.” When I cross that line, I become acutely aware that I’m also single, and unemployed. I have no hope whatsoever, and believe that killing myself will do no one any harm and, in fact will benefit the world by leaving one less person on the dole, one less person draining society. I believe my current circumstances will not change, and I am destined for a life of futility and pain. Pain, by the way, may be the understatement of the year. I believe I am powerless, worthless, and going to die anyway, so why not get it over with?
I have been living with clinical depression for over 20 years. By now, I’m pretty much an expert at battening down the hatches and riding it out. On the other hand, the main reason I have never owned a gun is because if I did own one, I probably would not be posting this now.
I am in therapy. Someone (sorry, I forgot to note who), asked what the difference is between talking to a therapist and a very good friend. As it happens, I have to very good friends who also suffer from clinical depression and who have been of tremendous help to me over the years. Here are the main differences between talking to them and talking to a therapist. First, they have lives and issues of their own. While they have been wonderful to me, they’ve got at least as many sources of stress in their lives as I do, and it would be unreasonable for me to expect them to be there for me 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, although we have made that offer to each other. Second, and perhaps more important, they’re not trained professionals. They don’t have the background or the insight my therapist does. Finally, for me to depend on them alone would not be fair to them. I have a pretty good idea of what my death would do to them; that’s one of the thing that’s sustained me at times, just as the knowledge of what the death of one of them would do to me has sustained him at times. For me, depression is literally a life-threatening illness. I cannot morally ask an untrained professional to save my life. I’m also lucky. The therapist I’m seeing is a very good one. If any of you are in the Pittsburgh area, e-mail me, and I’ll be happy to give you her name and address. Thanks to her, old wounds I’d resigned myself to living with are healing, and I’m even being able to let go of some of the anger that’s sustained me over the years that’s been doing more harm than good of late.
RexDart, I usually like what you post, but the fear of being asked about being treated for mental illness on a job application kept me from being treated for depression until I wound up flat on my back in a mental hospital, close to catatonic ten years ago. One reason I am vocal about my experiences with depression is in the hope that one day it isn’t a stigma any more. Yes, I’m being treated for depression. A couple of friends of mine are being treated for diabetes. They have screwed up blood chemistry; I have screwed up brain chemistry. There shouldn’t be a moral difference between the two. Also, quite frankly, in order to be turned down for a job because I’ve sought treatment for mental illness, I have to be alive. That to me, seems like a good thing.
One last practical note, and then I’ll shut up, I promise. Studies have shown that the most successful treatment for depression is a combination of medication and therapy. Based on my experience, I’ll vouch for that, too. My own pet theory is that the medication levels out the brain chemistry so that therapy can get at any underlying problems. Some of my depression is caused by life experience, other aspects of it probably are chemical. I’m not on medication now, and, with the exception of some rather awful attempts this fall, I haven’t been in years. On the other hand, while I was on antidepressants, I think they were necessary. Right now, my therapist and I both agree, the best antidepressant for me is a new job.
Mad Dog, and anyone else out there who’s wrestling with the demons of depression and suicide, my e-mail address is in my profile. Click on the E-Mail button below this post, and it should appear. Please feel free to e-mail me if you need to. Like I said, “Been there, done that, and the t-shirt wasn’t worth it!”
Take care,
CJ
“There is but one serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.”
-Albert Camus
Hey, I got my Bartletts on Wednesday, and I thought it fit.
well… as much as i’d like to have all the answers i’m sure none of my little theories apply to anyone else but myself… no doubt people commit suicide for vastly different reaons, some of which i probably could not even begin to relate to…
I’m going to keep this short, because it has probably been said already.
The main reason why people DON’T commit suicide is because however awful they feel, they know they are not always going to feel the same.
You may feel differently in 5 minutes, tomorrow, or a few days, but the only certainty about moods, including despairing moods, is that they change.
I’m writing from experience here…
Presumably the people who actually do it are those who forget this. Anti-depressants can pull your mood up enough to ride out the worst of it.
All the best…
mrsface, I won’t pretend to speak for anyone else here, but what you’ve described re: 5 minutes feeling different is so completely alien to what I went through. It wasn’t just a mood. It wasn’t a bad day.
It was years. And years. If I count them all up, I get around … 12. And I was lucky. My father suffered (albeit, most of the time, not as intensely as I did) for more than twice that before he finally was able to get help.
The pain became my life. Life was pain, with very few exceptions. And the main reasons I didn’t commit suicide were that I didn’t want to hurt my parents and that I was afraid of being found before I could complete/failing and having to face people the next day. It had jack shit to do with some ethereal “it’s not always going to be this way”.
That you had this experience is wonderful. Glad you didn’t go through with it:) But please don’t try to speak for everyone on an issue that is so intensely person to each individual who goes through it.
Just for anyone who is still holding to the “It will get better” mantra:
Think about the present, because in many cases that is all someone who is suicidal really cares about. Telling someone “it will get better” is like saying “the world will end”. It may happen someday, but what the fuck guarantee is there?
Hey…great site. Thanks for posting it. Now to go clean the tears from my glasses. Seriously, it hit home. Thanks a lot.
I’ll answer your question in a second. But first…
To me you sound selfish. You sound self-centered. You sound… well, just like I was about 10 years ago, towards the end of my 10 year long depression that put my wrists in serious danger about once per week.
Before I continue, IANAShrink. But I’ve seen many professionally, and one romantically. I’ve read dozens of books and articles, from pop-psych to serious medical journals. I’ve educated myself on the subject (and continue to do so).
Now, it could be that you need meds. In which case ignore all of the following. But if I’m right (and I suspect I am), then it sounds like you really just lack self-esteem.
Consider what you said (I’m paraphrasing): “People don’t want to help me, they just want to talk about themselves.” and “When will someone help me?” Let’s translate: “People only want help for themselves, and that makes them bad.” and “I only want help for myself, and that makes other people bad.” I sense some projection going on.
You also only seem to see bad in the world. This is usually a sign that you only see bad in yourself, but you are unwilling to take on the burdan. So once again, you project.
And then you feel like the world has let you down. And when you project that attitude on the world, you push people away (see my 2nd paragraph – that was the nicest thing I could muster up). Then you perceive the world as uncaring, and… well, vicious cycle. And self-fulfilling prophecy.
And the most important thing of all – you’ve now come to expect the world to be responsible for your happiness.
Does it have to be this way? No. Like I said, I was in your shoes. I’ve so been there. And I dug myself out. I won’t pretend it wasn’t easy. In fact, it was the hardest thing I ever had to do. But it was so well worth it. Where I used to see a despairing world where no one cared, I now see a beautiful world where I have lots of support. And it wasn’t the world that changed.
If I seem overly harsh, I’m sorry. If you want someone to really listen and try to unselfishly help you out, you can e-mail me at nealtodd@msn.com. I’ll do my best.
Either way, I can now fill in the blank:
Things will get better when_________.
When you decide to make the commitment to make them better by empowering yourself, rather than sitting idly by blaming others.
I was not trying to “speak for everyone”, apologies if it sounded like that. The OP asked what makes people cross the line from suicidal thoughts to the suicidal act. I simply offered an opinion based on my own experience and a certain amount of reading. Of course depression is not “a bad day” or “just a mood”. But it is a mood in the clinical sense of a persistent depressed outlook which is not always justified by circumstances, and moods can be shifted, whether through medication, therapy or environmental changes. Also, I don’t think I implied that depression always lifts in a few minutes - I said that moods can change in minutes, days, weeks or months…the message was that they CHANGE.
BTW, you sound as if you think it would have been better if I had said that depression never lifts and the depressed mood is likely to go on for years. I don’t think that would have been very responsible. When people start discussing suicide, even if it is in a message-board like this, alarm bells start to ring, for me anyway. I’m also aware that many people who are depressed will be reading this thread even if they don’t post. Therefore the messages in the posts could have an impact. So I’m going to repeat what I said before - in MY experience, depression does lift, life does change (often surprisingly fast) and it is ALWAYS worth holding on and asking for help.
There is nothing “ethereal” about hope - it’s what keeps most of us going, depressed or not.