Recovery from suicide attempt - it can be done

[Junior1962]

Hi everyone 

I wanted to post something positive about how recovery from being suicidal can happen. 
I am a first timer. I’ve had episodes of depression but don’t usually go deep enough to be suicidal. My heart goes out to all of you and your mental health struggles. Bipolar runs in my family. Mum was a hospital admission last year and sadly, is now a resident in aged care. My 32 yr old son has autism and bipolar 2. 
My story is one of a battle with depression while supporting Mum (My older brother and I worked together) in hospital and Dad - who has Alzheimers- at home. Both are in their 80s. I was suicidal a year ago and made plans - but had a powerful spiritual experience and didn’t follow through. My naturopath helped me to sort the many Imbalances in my body and I recovered - for a time. 
Dad followed Mum into care in January and my brother and I sold their house. I then found myself being drawn into being a caregiver for Mum when I was already exhausted and struggling. Suicidal thoughts crept in but I pushed them away. I just tried to keep going - until I couldn’t. 
One sleepless night, I attempted …..

My husband took me to the ED… I was offered mental health support and I accepted. I was in a daze. This was 4 months ago. I was diagnosed with caregiver burnout.
I had five sessions with a psychologist, two with a psychiatrist- all from Monash Health and Medicare funded - and found myself doing a lot better. I’m now seeing a private psychologist and have improved even further. 
My son is almost my fully transitioned into supported accommodation and I am learning to deal with the things that wore me down. 
Very few people know what I did. I haven’t felt ready to tell them. But my whole outlook has changed. Getting help and being prepared to face my demons is what has changed me. I’m not good at asking for help. I’m better at helping others. I’m actually working on that in therapy. 
My message to you all is,- don’t be afraid to ask for help. Don’t be afraid to open up and let people in. They can’t help you if they don’t know you are in pain. If you don’t like the health professional you are seeing, ask to see someone else. A good relationship with that person is paramount. Therapy won’t work if you don’t trust them. 
Most of all, trust that you have it in yourself to overcome this. Your life IS worth living. People DO care. You just have to let them in. 

[therising]

Hi Eagle Ray

I'm so happy to hear you've developed such a deep connection to your body which is coming to serve you. It's interesting learning about 'body language', of a unique nature. While I used to believe body language was simply about how we physically express our self to others, learning how our body expresses itself to us is something I find far more fascinating. It is such a highly intelligent thing, this incredible body we have.

The way our body speaks to us, with all of its prompts, amazes me. Get up in the morning and it says (in its own unique way) 'I'll lead you to naturally stretch but you have to continue, you have to continue the stretching routine. Don't stop at the one stretch I prompt you with'. The way it vents stress, with that all too familiar sigh, while hoping we pick up on its cue to begin a constructive period of conscious breath work. Or the way it brings the hand to a sore spot that needs massaging, while perhaps dictating 'Keep going. Keep going with this rubbing/massaging I've led you to begin'. If my knees could speak, I know they'd be saying to me 'At the age of 52 we have served you well. We can no longer manage all the pressure you put on us without us expressing dis-ease. We are in pain. We beg you to lose the weight we're trying so very hard to support'. Our body can manage incredible levels of dis-ease before it reaches intolerable levels, leading to the expression of what it can no longer manage without help.

As you touched on, I've heard that when we let go of stored stress, trauma, sadness etc, the body will express the dis-ease before it releases it, hence the pain. We'll feel the block before the flow.

[Eagle Ray]

Hi Junior1962,

The topic of past lives is very interesting. I saw a documentary about a 5 year old boy who kept telling his mother about a past life. He lived in Glasgow but had this whole story about a previous life with another family on the island of Barra in the outer Hebrides of Scotland. He’d never been there and his family had never spoken of it, yet he knew about a number of things very particular to the island and a cottage by the sea. He talks about his ‘other mother’ from a family there. His mother consults a few people including a psychologist who specialises in children recalling past lives, something which they can start to lose as they grow older. I just looked up the name of the documentary and it’s called The Boy Who Lived Before and it’s on YouTube. Just thought I’d mention it in case it’s of interest. While some people they consult are skeptics, the psychologist and his mother take him seriously and take him to Barra as he’s been saying how much he misses his other family there. This seems to settle him a lot and numerous things are as he described. Although emotional for him at first, it seems to help him going there. It was very interesting and apparently not uncommon among children worldwide to have these kinds of recollections.

 I don’t consciously recall such things myself, but I do have a sense of feeling like I’m carrying memories from my ancestors I never met such as grandparents and great grandparents who died before I was born, such as my Dad’s mother who died shortly after his birth. The more I’ve learned about them I feel like I can connect bodily experiences I have with stuff they went through, if that makes sense?

[Eagle Ray]

Thanks The Rising. Yes our body speaking to us is so interesting. It is happening for me hugely at the moment. Many somatic memories are surfacing from the past. A week ago I had some bad feelings come up. They even made me feel almost self-destructive. Then I realised those feelings were connected with shame from stuff done by others to me in the past including early childhood. I was then able to express anger about those things which alleviated the shame and sense of powerlessness. I felt this anger suddenly appear in tension in my arms, neck and shoulders. I threw a cushion repeatedly into the couch. I did some screaming in my car (so as not to freak out others) and also into the wind by the ocean when no one else was around. I also felt the urge to run, like the completion of an escape response. It helped enormously to release stuff. That same energy would otherwise routinely turn inwards towards myself, so I’m learning to externalise and purge that energy. I felt so much better for it. Still have plenty to process and work through, but feeling now like I have tools to move out of collapse/self destruction into the expression of healthy anger and letting go of past pain. I had to listen to and allow communications from my body in order for that to happen.

[therising]

Hi Eagle Ray

I'm so glad you gave yourself the freedom to vent in so many powerful, liberating and constructive ways. I think while anger is such a natural and incredibly powerful emotion, shame is an emotion brought into existence more so by humanity, based on so many destructive mental programs. Shame can get in the way of a person's recovery and evolution.  Over the years, while I've found guilt to be a constructive emotion in the way it leads me to greater consciousness, shame has never ever served me in any way. I believe it leads to nothing but sufferance. I should say I only ever use guilt as a highly constructive emotion. That emotion or the feeling of that specific energy in motion leads me to ask 'Who do I wish to be in this moment' or 'Who do I wish to be from this moment onward?'. While it's an uncomfortable feeling, it's one that comes with the challenge of meeting with higher consciousness.

Anger can be such a 'phoenix' type emotion. While the anger and fury can be red hot, it can disintegrate some horrible mental programs that have integrated into our mind and our life. From the ashes a new aspect of our self is born. While the past does not change, the part of our self that has suddenly come to life leads us to see the past from a new perspective as it serves us up this new perspective, with love. It may dictate to us 'You see, you are not who you have believed yourself to be all this time, you are far greater than that, far greater than you have ever believed yourself to be'. When such a loving part of us comes to life, it can lead us to tears, as we may have never received such love and compassion as this before.

[Eagle Ray]

Thank you for your insightful thoughts The Rising.

 I strongly agree that shame is a destructive, extremely unhelpful emotion. I read a description comparing guilt vs shame. In guilt we think ‘I did something bad’ while in shame we think ‘I am bad’. Someone else has to have done something to us at some point for us to feel shame. The anger is realising this and rejecting the shame. But it can be a process even getting to the point that we identify we are feeling shame as it is very understandable we want to suppress it and hide from it. A week ago I was under what I could best describe as a ‘shame attack’. I was in a place by the ocean I often go to to feel better. Other people were around so I literally felt compelled to hide behind some rocks where no one could see me, where I could cry and let out the pain I was in.

 I’m working on disintegrating those mental programs as you describe. I’ve certainly released quite a bit of shame already and it is healthy anger that transmutes into a different energy. I’ve found I then have more energy available for other things in life instead of being frozen by shame.

Right now another somatic issue has come up. I feel it may be linked to my traumatic birth so it’s very primal. This one may be harder to shift - or not - don’t know yet. It’s more amorphous as it’s so pre-conscious. I know at least some circumstances of my birth which might help guide me on this one. It’s like my body is processing everything at warp speed at the moment and I just have to go for the ride - listening to my body communicating with me and then follow my intuition about what to do next.

[Junior1962]

 Hi Rising and Eagle

So glad to read that you two are still conversing. 
First, I notice the name of Joe Dispenza. We are doing some of his stuff in a metaphysical discussion group I am in. 

second, I wanted to tell you about a break through I had in my therapy - just yesterday. 
When I attempted suicide, I was weighed down by caregiving - having done it for over 30 years as well as, at times, growing up. Issues with my elderly parents last year really compounded all of that and I burnt out. 
more importantly, I had a strong sense of needing to be strong - something I’ve always had - and an inability to be vulnerable and ask for help. I have no doubt that it goes back to a recent past life in which I was the victim of severe DV. Anyway, in writing about my encounter with suicide, I wrote the following:

”the facade of being strong a shield against my core belief of having to fight for my survival alone”

We’ve been working on the ‘being strong’ thing for a while now and have made progress. Yesterday, in examining a question about - Oh my, I need to explain this too - I had an NDE after having suffered acute appendicitis as a child. I hadn’t told anyone I was in pain, just that I didn’t feel well. Many hours later, my appendix ruptured while on the operating table and I almost died. My parents hadn’t known I was in pain until I pushed my younger sister off my bed - which was uncharacteristic for me. Back to the present - I wondered whether I would have said I was in pain - or whether I would have allowed myself to die because I wouldn’t ask for help. My therapist wanted to know why I needed to know. I  said that I need to know in order to understand. 
now, to get back to my core belief - which came up in my previous session as well - yes I did believe that I had to fight for my survival alone. I couldn’t ask for help. I had to do it alone. In my last life my mother had not been able to stand up to my brute of a father and I felt abandoned. I died by his hand, as a teenager.
My therapy session was at 2pm and went for an hour. About two hours later it suddenly occurred to me that I DON’T have to fight for my survival alone. Not anymore. I can finally put the trauma of my past life behind me. I can ask for help. It’s ok. Nothing bad will happen to me if I do. 
last night, for the first time in ages, I snuggled up to hubby in bed. It felt good. 
I feel different. It’s amazing. 

[Junior1962]

Hi Eagle Ray

The Scottish boy who has had a past life story is one I’ve heard before. It’s amazing. 
I think it was Carl Jung who wrote about people having ancestral memories. That is, we carry memories from things that happened to our ancestors in our genes. I don’t know much about it but it makes sense to me. 

[Eagle Ray]

That’s so wonderful Junior1962. It sounds like something shifted at a deep level for you. It’s one thing to understand something intellectually, it’s another to know it in the core of your being. It sounds like you really know with your mind/body/spirit it’s safe to ask for help. When you feel different and amazing, that’s a fantastic sign.

I feel like what often leads to suicidality is an underlying feeling of some kind that remains unresolved, but is resolvable. Sometimes the feeling is amorphous at first, but using intuition to sense what it is can take away a lot of the power the feeling has to drive our behaviour. For me it has centred around intense feelings of shame, isolation and powerlessness that go back to childhood experiences and were compounded by later events as well. It’s when those feelings are activated especially strongly that I become vulnerable. The other factor has been severe, chronic pain which has also pushed me to the edge.

But being able to name what something is that’s driving you is so important and I think a key factor in turning it around. And being able to ask for help and knowing it’s ok to do so, as you describe, is so important too. I’m slowly learning to do it, though I can still play down how much of a tough time I’m having. I might seek help but then minimise how much of a struggle I’m in. I know for me this comes from patterns starting in early childhood. But I’m developing awareness of this pattern, so that’s progress, and I just need to practice asking directly for what I need rather than a) avoiding asking for help or b) asking for help but almost apologetically as if my needs aren’t that important.

Anyway, so glad things are going well for you and it sounds like you are feeling really safe, peaceful and connected 🙏🌸😊

[Eagle Ray]

Yes, Jung is very interesting. I realise I have done psychodynamic therapy before because years ago I did Jungian stuff. You asked me before about psychodynamic and I’d forgotten Jungian therapy falls in that category. I got really into writing my dreams down then. It’s a creative way of working that taps into the unconscious. I’m doing that from a different angle now with somatic therapy that works through the unconscious through body memory.

[therising]

Hi Junior1962

That is amazing. I'm so happy for you with you having made the kind of incredible progress you can feel on so many levels. My favourite kind of revelations are the mind altering life changing ones. They definitely have a feel to them, that's for sure.

Being a carer is a tough calling. Can come with so many 'rules' and so much internal dialogue (not all of it good). Being a carer for family members can involve even more rules and internal dialogue, such as 'Loyalty and care toward family members at any cost, for if I'm not a loyal person toward my family then what does that make me? What kind of person am I?'. Loyalty to parents comes with even more internal dialogue, such as 'They raised me, put their blood sweat and tears into my upbringing. How could I not do the same in return? How could I abandon them when they never abandoned me?'. Or this one, 'If I am not strong enough to care for this person, then I am weak. Why am I so weak?'. Much healthier would be 'If I am not able to care for this person, there is a good reason behind it, one I may need to dig deep to find'.

The ability to be both independent and interdependent is a tough ability to master. I think this is where intuition becomes the key in a lot of cases. Whether it's the inner sage or divine powers that be, when what comes to mind is 'You can't manage this alone' or 'You can't keep pushing yourself to breaking point, you need help', it pays to listen. I like to think of common sense as being the 6th sense, the part of us that dictates the best course of action, including a self loving course.

Joe Dispenza's back story is definitely a fascinating one. He's living proof of what the mind is capable of, having reformed himself after a debilitating accident years back. While I began collecting all of his books some years ago, I find 'Becoming Supernatural' to be the most fascinating to date.

Again, I'm so happy for you with you having graduated to a whole new level of self understanding. Time to get out the cap and gown. Happy graduation day. Ready for the next level?  🙂