# How to Survive Suicidal Thoughts



## David Baxter PhD

*How to Survive Suicidal Thoughts*
by  Therese Borchard
March 15, 2016

The standard advice you’ll hear if you express suicidal thoughts is to call a suicide hotline or check yourself into the hospital. Trained volunteers, such as those at The Samaritans,  provide an invaluable service to severely depressed people who call or  email them in desperation. But for some of us, suicidal thoughts can be  present for many months or years, and we can’t hang out on a suicide  hotline or live in the hospital psych ward indefinitely. We have to  learn how to become our own trained professional who helps us tease  apart our thoughts until we arrive at the truth that will keep us safe  from harming ourselves. The most difficult thing I’ve ever done in my life is to resist  taking my life in the midst of severe, intense, chronic suicidal  thoughts. I try to remind myself every now and then that no matter what I  do from here on out, I am already a success because I am alive. I  somehow managed to resist the incredibly convincing messages of my  brain — the forceful urges of my psyche — to make an exit out of this  world. As I mentioned in another blog,  not taking your life in the midst of intense suicidal thoughts can be  like not sneezing when you have an urge. Everything inside of you thinks  that disappearing from this world is the only way that the pain will  subside, so you listen and follow the cues without thinking.

*Suicidal Thoughts Are Like Hiccups — Symptoms of a Condition*
 I don’t like to write about my suicidal thoughts, especially as they  are happening in the present, because I am ashamed of them. They don’t  fit into the Zen picture that I am trying to create for myself — all  the mindfulness exercises I do, the nutritious diet and yoga,  and trying to live, without judgment, in the present moment. I’m afraid  they mean that I’m not aware and grateful of all the many blessings in  my life — which fills me with immense guilt.

 But talking about suicidal thoughts saves lives. I know this. Because  people realize that other good, grateful, Zen-attempting people  experience them, too. The thoughts that try to convince you to leave  this world simply come with severe depression. They are mere symptoms,  like hiccups, of a brain condition or fragile chemistry that feels at  times too painful to endure. Just as chills, nausea, and fatigue are symptoms of the flu  — and you wouldn’t blame a person inflicted with that condition — the  chronic ruminations demanding a fast exit from here are symptoms of  acute depression and anxiety. They mean you are sick rather than “bad.”  They are not an indictment of your character.

*You Want Relief From Pain, Not From Life*
 The best thing I have ever read on suicide is called _Suicide: Read This First_ on Metanoia.org, hosted by Psych Central.  The page has had over 23 million visitors, if that gives you any  indication of how many people consider suicide. “Suicide is not chosen,”  Martha Ainsworth  writes. “It happens when pain exceeds resources for coping with pain.”  It’s a simple formula that makes so much sense and puts things into  proper perspective. She explains:

_When pain exceeds pain-coping resources, suicidal  feelings are the result. Suicide is neither wrong nor right; it is not a  defect of character; it is morally neutral. It is simply an imbalance  of pain versus coping resources. You can survive suicidal feelings if  you do either of two things: (1) find a way to reduce your pain, or (2)  find a way to increase your coping resources. Both are possible._
​
Ainsworth offers five important things to think about, like  recommending that you delay your decision by 24 hours or a week, and  insisting that people do get through this. She includes some great resources,  including various articles, books, support groups, and websites that  will help you feel less alone. Her third point involves a tweak to our  thoughts that is life-saving:

_People often turn to suicide because they are seeking  relief from pain. Remember that relief is a feeling. And you have to  be alive to feel it. You will not feel the relief you so desperately  seek if you are dead._
​
Making that distinction has saved my life on countless occasions: I  don’t want to die. I simply want a reprieve from my pain. I must trust  that the relief will eventually come because all of our feelings and  thoughts — and especially our most excruciating pain — are impermanent.  They can’t last forever because nothing does. So taking our own life is a  permanent action for a temporary problem.

*Do the Thing Right in Front of You*
 During this past depressive episode, the suicidal thoughts have been incredibly intense — probably because I’m getting such little sleep, and sleep deprivation alters your perspective on everything. Recently while standing in line at the grocery store, I started doing “death math,” the  kind of arithmetic to determine how long I have to stick it out before  arriving at a natural death based on the average deaths of my ancestors.  When I realized it was a good 40 years, I burst into tears in front of  the cashier. I knew I absolutely couldn’t hang on for that long. In  fact, I was sure I couldn’t hold on for one more day. I was filled with a  crushing desire to be done right now, and that feeling of panic  overwhelmed me: “How do I get out?” As if I were trapped in an airplane  bathroom and the door won’t budge.

 “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t go on,” I said to myself. Every muscle and  gland in my body tensed up as I continued to bawl my eyes out in front  of this poor woman scanning my items.

 Then I remembered something that a friend told me the night before: I  don’t have to worry about making it through an entire day. Hell, I  don’t even have to tackle a whole hour. All I have to do is the thing  right in front of me. In that moment, it was loading some groceries onto  the belt. That’s all. If I still existed once they were all on the  belt, then my next step was paying for them and hauling them to my car.  “Do the thing right in front of you,” she reminded me. “Nothing else.”  Everything you need is in the present moment, she said.

*Your Only Job Is to Stay Alive*
 “All I have to do is stay alive for this moment,” I said to myself  over and over again as a kind of mantra as I walked out to the car with a  cart full of food, trying to be grateful for the groceries but failing  once again at gratitude. That was my only job — staying alive.

 That’s the only job you have if you’re wrestling with the kind of  intense suicidal thoughts that accompany severe depression. Your only  responsibility is to keep breathing. One long breath after another. “As  long as we are breathing,” explains meditation teacher and best-selling  author Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD, in one of his sitting meditations that I listen to every day, “there is more right with us than wrong with us.”

 Your only job is to keep breathing, one moment at a time. You will  eventually see that the painful thoughts, as convincing as they are, are  a season and won’t last forever. Like all emotions and feelings — and  everything in this life — they are impermanent.

_ Originally published on Sanity Break.
_


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## Daniel

> Remember that relief is a feeling. And you have to be alive to feel it.



When I was about 18, my psychiatrist made the same point.  It was very memorable.


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## Jesse910

I turned to this post today because it is where I am.  It has been a day filled with lows and intense anxiety because I am tired.  For 7 months, I have vacillated between trying to hang on and wanting to get off.  I keep smiling to fend off my therapist and primary care physician.  A psychiatrist has been added to the mix but only as a consultant.  I tell myself that I can hang on.


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## David Baxter PhD

And you are right. You can hang on.

What has been happening since you were last here, @Jesse910?


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## Jesse910

I had a job I loved for nearly 9 years.  There was a chance in management and I left for another job.  Within two months, I was not catching on fast night and I was let go.  I go another job and within two months, I was dismissed.  On the verge of getting another job, but I am worried.  Something is wrong.  The stress is too great and I feel overwhelmed.  I hated both jobs because I was not trained and I started to panic.  Covid-19 did not help.  I feel like something I was good at is not causing me grief.  Depressed even when I am smiling.


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## David Baxter PhD

I think it’s pretty normal to be stressed about starting a new job. 

What is the new job? What will be your duties? Is this something you have done before or something similar?

In view if the COVID restrictions, will this be something where you will be working remotely from home? Or will you be going into the workplace?


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## Jesse910

The potential job is working as a legal secretary for an advocacy firm dealing with sexual abuse victims.  The one difference in this job is that the environment is one that requires compassion for the clients.  This will be the priority and not a focus on billables and yelling and screaming attorneys.  I underwent a 4-part interview which included a 4-hour online test that I did not think I would pass, but I passed all aspects.  Because of the anxiety I have been experiencing, I am concerned about my abilities.  The psychiatric consultant is recommending an anti-anxiety medication to my cocktail of meds.  My thoughts scare me. I know how to die.  I will not allow myself to be hospitalized.  In terms of Covid-19, I did not adjust to working from home (re the second job), I was hired for that job  and two days later, the entire office was sent home and the attorney for whom I was assigned was a passive-aggressive.  They gave me a severance package so that I would not sue.  This job would have me initially working from home.  Eventually, I would move into the office.

I do not feel as tough as I once did.


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## David Baxter PhD

Understandably...

It sounds like the new job would be a much better match for you.

I would strongly recommend that yo follow the advice of the psychiatrist and give the anxiety medications a try at least. Maybe once you settle into the new position, you'll feel you can do without them but it just seems wise to me to give yourself a chance.

Do you know what he is recommending for the anxiety medication?


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## Jesse910

Abilify.


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## Jesse910

Perhaps instead of wallowing in negativity today, I should have come here for a reality check.  I keep trying to do everything on my own.  Thanks David.


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## David Baxter PhD

You don't need to, Jesse. We're always here.


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## Jesse910

Okay.


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## Daniel

Jesse910 said:


> I keep trying to do everything on my own.



It's the American way  

One of my favorite lyrics that comes to mind when I am depressed:   "It's the loneliness that's the killer."

And one of my favorite sayings regarding anxiety is by Robert Thurman:   "If you think it's you against the universe, who do you think is going to win?"


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## David Baxter PhD

Not just the American way...

"Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way" ~ Pink Floyd, _Time

_


Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day 
Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
And you are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say

BREATHE REPRISE

Home, home again
I like to be here when I can
And when I come home cold and tired
It's good to warm my bones beside the fire
Far away across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells.


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