TLDR: This post deals with suicide.
If in immediate danger, call the emergency services phone number or go to the nearest hospital or police station or reach out to a trusted person.
If you’re having suicidal thoughts, copy out and follow this template:
I commit to staying alive
For:
- [insert reason for staying alive no.1]
- [insert reason for staying alive no.2]
- [insert reason for staying alive no.3]
If in immediate danger I will:
- Call [insert emergency services phone number, helpline phone number and trusted person’s phone number]
- Go to the hospital or police station
Keep this plan with you at all times and if in immediate danger, follow the steps. This will help when your thinking is clouded as it tells you exactly what to do with minimal thinking.
My plan looks something like this:
I commit to staying alive for:
- My child to grow up with a dad
- My wife to continue to have a loving husband
- My work not yet done
If in immediate danger, I will:
- Call [helpline, emergency number, trusted person]
- Go to the hospital or police station
- Get all the help you need (including professionals such as a psychiatrist, psychologist, therapist, or counsellor, but also trusted friends or family)
- Live one day at a time
- Know: This too shall pass
It’s been a rough few weeks.
Around the time I wrote Dragon, Desert and Precipice, I experienced an event that triggered extreme anxiety. It led to a chain of events, negative thought patterns, and waves of suicidal thoughts that took me right to the edge.
Anxiety is so much worse than depression for me. I can handle depression, but the speed anxiety takes over my mind scares me greatly.
It’s amazing how I can have so many reasons to live: a wonderful family, a supportive boss, a nice working environment, no major financial problems, a roof over our heads and so on, yet still my mind can switch those off and lie to me with broken logic. You have a problem? Here’s a quick solution for you…
So after that triggering event, I almost took my life. However, defeated and exhausted, I went to bed. Thankfully, I made it through to the next day and began to get the help I needed.
On the day I almost took my life, I’d given my number to a social worker in case I made it through to the next day. The social worker reached out to me and gave me some direction. I told my boss what was going on and he set aside a considerable amount of time to talk to me and regularly check I was okay and help me come up with strategies to survive such as keeping busy, getting exercise and distracting myself. He also put me in touch with a counselling organisation. I saw a psychiatrist. I reached out to close friends and my wife. I listened to emotional music. A YouTube channel fuelled me with inspiration: Believe and Achieve.
Although these things helped, it still takes time, so I started taking anti-depressant and anti-anxiety medication. So far, there have been no side effects. The side effects are why I was initially hesitant, but the need to survive overruled my hesitation. Slowly, week by week, the anxiety and suicidal thoughts have subsided and I’ve mostly bounced back.
As I began to recover, my mind was still in ‘problem-solving’ mode. I still had waves of suicidal thoughts. Thankfully, these subsided over time as I received the help I needed. When I was still in crisis mode, the counselling service I reached out to helped me create the safety plan at the top of this post. I highly recommend you create your own. For a deep dive, read my post on Suicide prevention.
In times like these I keep coming back to the ideas of Jordan Peterson:
- Do the one thing you can and will do to improve your situation.
- Break it into the smallest part.
- Build on it day by day, one day at a time.
- Get all the help you need.
So the message of hope is that help is available and things will get better. It takes time, but This too shall pass. There will be brighter days. Don’t trust your mind’s faulty logic. Get all the help you can – there’s no shame in that. There is a compelling future for you, just take it one step at a time.
Love JR
thejourneyx 