Ah arfie, no insights, but i do know what you mean. It is people who have fone it that created the eroneous belief that people who talk about suicide dont commit suicide, which we all know is not the case. Suicide , like all the other assortments of baggage , is as unique and individual as the person who commits it.
And while i dont have insights, i do know when i feel it, that sense of manipulation, but there is always that lingering doubt, what if i’m wrong...

When it was suggested that I may have Borderline Personality disorder, I started researching everything I could about it & a major them to what I read about this disorder was suicidal ideation. I had my history with suicidal ideation, and I’ve almost succeeded in my attempts. But for me there was a difference between my thoughts of it and the times I acted on the impulse because for me the times I’m most at risk are the ones where I don’t think about, Ive just snapped and acted. There was no thinking or planning about it. It was like a switch was flipped and I didn’t think.

I’m on the fence about all the information I’ve read of Borderline primarily because I what I read about suicidal ideation. There were so many different versions but too many were so negative and so completely misguided in my opinion it was like being back in the dark ages of psychology where asylums and patient abuse was considered treatment and a cure. I’ve known some people who did fit the mold of using suicidal threats as a tool to manipulate people and it disturbs me so much. I know there are people who are bad and manipulative in the world but after being in therapy since 7 & knowing just how difficult it is, how stigmas, misdiagnoses, out dated thinking can do so much damage to people seeking help, it fills me with so much anger that it’s those kinds of people who are keep treatment in the dark ages and hindering those of us who just want to heal.

I don’t like the term suicidal ideation. The things I read and the continued stigmas, dogma, and ignorant bs some of those professional opinions of what it is and why people have it boils my blood.

There should be a better term for it or a different term who use suicide as a tool to manipulate people. Many of the things I read made me hate the term ‘cry for help’ even. So many mental health professionals still have the opinion that any suicidal ideation, attempts, and cries for help are only used to manipulate others into give the person attention.

The times when I have brought up my thoughts, feelings about dying was not because I had any intention of doing it even though I wanted to, but because I was terrified by feel like I wanted to die, and I wanted the desire to die to stop, because I knew if the beautiful and precious reasons I had to live were no longer enough to overcome those thoughts I needed serious help to overcome it. My attempts though I didn’t give warnings before acting, I snapped. I didn’t want the world to stop me & I didn’t care what anyone thought.

So what information I learned about how both are view still this day, really upsets me. It’s not right in my opinion. I think there are times, like someone with a terminal disease that is drawn out but everyday is misery & pain, when feeling like dying or wanting to is a rational reaction to an extreme situation, not a good reaction but a natural one. It’s when it persists, and how we overcome or let it consume that makes the difference. It is when that ideation has no place but cannot be shaken that it needs to be addressed.

Anyhow. Sorry. Just my thoughts and I apologize for the aggressiveness of them. It’s still a raw nerve for me because of the challenges with my previous provider. Having been there, felt, unfortunately attempted it but thankfully failed, and having lost family and friends because of it, it’s probably always going to be a sore spot for me. But I’m trying to work past it & stay open minded and receptive to not all opinions of it are those that anger me so much.

Hugs!

Suicide attempts were last resort cry outs for help for me in the past. I couldnt identify what my problems were, the flashbacks combined with anxiety and depression (which I can now name) were crazy making. You take a mom of two beautiful kids, she doesnt work, doesnt struggle too much in her relationship with her spouse, from the outside looking in what on earth could be my problem? I even had an ex friend say that to me. Disgusting. So I felt like people thought it was a manipulation tactic, like even my suicide attempts were inauthentic, I was a mess.

I've said to myself that if x,y or z happens I'm doing myself in. I expressed it once to someone I love and it took me a few months before I realized how disgusting it was of me to say that and corrected my statement. It wasnt to make them do what I wanted, it is a fact. But it's so rude to say it out loud.

An ex would say he would kill himself every time I broke up with him. Walked in on him with a friend of mine yet he would kill himself if I left him? I see the manipulation now but at the time I didnt know a better solution to comforting him was to call the authorities and report his threats against himself. It was such a scary feeling responsible for his suicidal thoughts, it eliminated my own feelings of being used and betrayed. Sure got him off the hook.

I honestly can't remember what ^it^ was being called in 1972 when I started therapy for my *suicidal ideation.* I was beyond arguing names by the time *suicidal ideation* became the most used name for my strictly personal ^it^. At present, I don't believe you can find names pretty enough to make a hard problem soft and comfy.

In my strictly personal sorting, the first of the folks in my life to use threats of suicide and/or self harm were siblings acting out in the same kiddie whorehouse nightmare which so heavily damaged my own psyche. The result was unmanageable levels of guilt and genuinely callous responses to my support group peers who suffer the phenom, by whatever name. "Can I get you a razor blade? Would you prefer a rope?" In my birth family we called this coping tool, "Calling their bluff." and the guilt feelings I have over that technique are tremendous.

That callousness and guilt attached are still a problem for me. I have peer supporters who immediately begin work to get me out of the room when one of our peers is struggling with suicide and/or self harm while comforting me that nobody gets to be good at everything. Don't feed your guilt demons over ^it^.

It be the guilt factor which makes me believe this particular psychosis is in need of further therapy. Girl howdy I am eaten alive by guilt when I get flashbacks to "calling their bluff." The guilt factor attached to the times the childhood conditioned reflex gets past my therapy guards is every bit as intense as when I first started plying ^it^ to my *abusive* siblings.

Thanks for the sort space and support, guys. It be a snotty knot inside my strictly personal skin. Sorting. . .

Vitava, a line you wrote really jumped out at me: " there was a difference between my thoughts of it and the times I acted on the impulse because for me the times I’m most at risk are the ones where I don’t think about, Ive just snapped and acted." My greatest depressed period was following when I was molested along with several other kids by a pedophile who went on a rampage through my elementary school at age 11.

It was a perfect storm, because my parents' furlough from foreign service moved us back to the States when I was 12 and I suddenly was the new kid who had no friends and was in an unknown environment for me. I went through puberty right then, too, and understood sex for the first time. That led me to make my biggest mistake of telling my mother, seeking support, and having her unleash her wrath on me for the rest of her life out of complex sexual hangups she had from her childhood on a farm.

I went through about a year of desperation dealing with parental attacks in the home, and my own flashbacks to those attacks, all in isolation. Years later I'd go back overseas and meet with the other kids who survived that pedophile and receive tremendous support, but at that time I was separated from them by thousands of miles. I lost heart, and those black suicidal urges came over me for the first and only time in my life. I had to fight them alone, and for the first time I experienced what you describe Vitava. I didn't fear the long, brooding depressions that led to thoughts of it. I feared my own impulses about it, and for the first time I didn't trust myself.

I got through it and never attempted somehow, but it taught me a little from experience about what people meant whenever they talked about depression, and it taught me that suicide was not a simple matter. What I learned about what you said about suicide was that when a person has those impulses, they're less in danger of acting on them if they're with someone. Getting back together with those friends who were survivors meant so much to me that I put a lot of stock in survivor gatherings--the reason I come here.

Thanks for that insight in what you wrote, Vitava, and to you, arfie, for starting this thread so we could dig in and unearth it.

Finding honest and compassionate words for ^it^ and sorting the tangled ^it^ lines is the hardest part of sorting in my stuttery mind. This particular ^it^ knot is especially hard. When I attempt to discuss ^it^ in person still triggers my stuttering/mute psychosis horrifically. My backspace key has been my most used computer button in the course of this post. Digital stuttering?

I knew that if my mother didn't get out of her hospital bed...she would die. I was even willing to sacrifice my own peace and let her sit and rant at me...if she would just get out of bed (it was late at night, the nurses wanted PT to get her out of bed the first time...I was going to come back the next day). She waited too long, most probably threw a stroke and died.

Tangled mess...yes.

I don't know if it's insight or not...but I gained a lot from this youtube video.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpHiFqXCYKc&t=628s

Agree that each of us are individuals. My 2 attempts were not impulsive, but well thought out and I proceeded with the plan without depression, nor much emotion. Just a task to complete, without leaving a history of a suicide in the family. First was interrupted by a medical emergency (acute pancreatitis); second by realizing that I needed to time it differently to not inconvenience family (have bills paid on time; documents easily locatable, etcetera). Nobody knew what I was up to either time. For some, it may be a cry for help, for others a manipulation or power play. And then there are ones like myself. Hugs to all us survivors.

@Patti
Very different demographics, but your experience resonates as the same effect I gained from my siblings, etc. I took a look at your link and, alas, it was recorded in an audio range my hearing cannot decipher. I may surf around and see if the good doctor has writings available.

Healing hopes for the rest of you. In my strictly personal therapy, my strictly personal suicide attempts and self-harm issues were/are treated separately from the phenom for which I now seek a more clear understanding.