Suicidality and perimenopause

[Eagle Ray]

Has anyone else experienced severe suicidality in relation to perimenopause? Did anything particular help? There is apparently a strong association for some women.

 I had a major drop in oestrogen a year ago resulting in severe anxiety/depression/suicidal ideation then. It’s re-occurring now. I have complicating factors of c-ptsd and complicated grief. Saturday was the anniversary of my mother’s sudden and distressing death. I was extremely bad on Friday and early Saturday.

I’ve been calling helplines and had some practical help. It helps regulate me for a few hours then I start to disintegrate again. It’s a feeling of totally failing apart. I do have a psych appointment on Thursday and I’ve booked a counselling appointment with the Australian menopause society as well.

HRT may help but I have to look at how it will interact with my liver disease which can be a complicating factor. It’s a rare disease and not well understood or even known about by most medical practitioners. I just feel totally overwhelmed.

[Eagle Ray]

Hello dear Croix,

Thank you for your kind walrus wisdom.

Yes, Centrelink is a kind of hell. Fortunately my psych has followed the required format. The doctor in his report attributes more severe symptoms to fibromyalgia and less severe symptoms to the autoimmune liver disease, even though I know the reverse is true. I asked if he could run a liver test last week because I'm getting intense bouts of illness and he said no, because my last liver results in December were good. Effectively he doesn't believe me. Many days I barely function and I know it's not fibromyalgia which I have lived with effectively for 36 years. I know the difference between that and the liver disease which started to develop in the last 8 years. But I am speaking into a void when I try to communicate. I am 100% alone dealing with it as far as the medical profession goes. It is profoundly isolating. I will see if the new doctor I try soon has greater capacity to truly be present with patients.

I'm sorry Croix for what you went trough with your experiences. I do know what you mean about seeing yourself kind of from the outside. It is most certainly how our mind and nervous system protect us. I think understanding that has helped me to be more at ease with dissociation when it happens. It's still not really pleasant though but I am thankful our bodies have these built-in self-protection mechanisms.

I love Streets of Philadelphia. I can honestly say there is a Springsteen song that is a kind of medicine for pretty much any difficulty I've faced. He has written a vast number of songs, so it is like having a toolkit or medicine cabinet of songs. He can go right into the experience of another human being with deep empathy in the way he tells stories about people's lives. At night recently I have been listening to one of his songs that helps calm me to go to sleep. It's called Matamoros Banks. I particularly like a live acoustic version he does which comes up if you google "Matamoros Banks acoustic". It tells the story of the spirit of an immigrant who has died crossing the border into the United States. It is a song of mourning and yet deeply calming somehow. He can take the hardest and saddest things and make peace with them. At the end of this version he sings beautifully in his falsetto voice. It is like having a lullaby sung to you.

Yes, I must find that stuffed kiwi. Hmmm, I'm not sure what the stuffing was made from 🤔 I wonder if the other kiwis will think this little one is an interloper. I think I just decided to call him Fred. He is a sweet little kiwi so I think the others will fall in love with him.

Hugs,

ER

[Croix]

Dear ER

Well, I listened to Matamoros Banks and read the lyrics. A sad sorry made more poignant by the current feels of a particular potential presidential candidate in the US.

Actually I saw right beside that song one of the ones I like" Viens, viens" sung by  Marie Laforêt which in turn is a sad song, a wife wife trying ot get her husband to return to the family heaving left for another.

Fortunately right beside it was a complete change of mood, "Ode To Joy" a Muppet Music Video starring multiple Beakers. Did you realise he can drink a glass of water and sing!

I'm sure when you do find your misplaced kiwi it will be welcomed by the inebriated community, they are a pretty friendly bunch.

I know half of this post is devoted to the ridiculous, which is not to belittle your troubles or feelings, just I do believe a balance can sometimes help, if not now then maybe later.

Croix

[Eagle Ray]

Hello Croix,

Yes, Matamoros Banks is both sad and poignant in the context of the spectre of the possible outcome of the upcoming U.S. election (which hopefully will not eventuate in an unfortunate way). I find somehow though the song helps me to feel calm with sad emotions.

 I watched Ode to Joy with multiple Beakers. Very good! Have you seen the drum battle on YouTube between Animal and Dave Grohl? I can recommend that one for some brief fun. I always wanted to bash the drums like Animal.

I love the ridiculous! It is a great antidote to depression. I saw a great interview on YouTube this morning with a 103 year old woman and laughter was one of her important keys to happiness. The video is called "We Learn It Too Late - 103 Year Old Doctor Dr. Gladys McGarey on Life's Secrets".

I find sad things such as sad songs can help me to feel empathy is being expressed for what I am going through, especially as I live alone and I have no one to share things that I am struggling with most of the time. It is like the resonance of empathy with how I'm feeling has a healing effect. But I agree that balance is needed, and the ridiculous is the most wonderful form of balance.

Thank you again. I have no idea if this will appear tonight. Whenever I reply it is always held up in moderation, almost always until the next day, and sometimes if it is a weekend it doesn't appear until Monday. So I have no idea if you will be able to read this tonight. I find it frustrating and isolating as I am already experiencing intense isolation at the moment and it is like I am communicating into a void. Others can communicate with me in real time but I cannot with them. I think it is because of the title of my thread which forces it into moderation and then it gets stuck there for sometime. Anyway, I can always watch Muppet videos to feel better.

Fred is looking forward to a sojourn on the iceberg. He's running around in little circles at the moment with excitement.

Hugs,

ER

[Croix]

Dear ER~

Although I do not know how normal operation works you may not realize the thread How Can We Improve the Forum explains you can email modsupport@beyondblue.org.au during the week and discuss such things as delays and their effects.

In the mean time bear in mind every time I'm on the Forum I look to see how you are (and I'd be pretty sure MK does too) - even if I do not post that day. You are not isolated.

Viens, viens (Come, come) is sad in a different way, being about loss, which can sometimes point to the different ways people can suffer. You will easily find the lyrics (in English)

Finding songs that seem to echo at least the level of distress one is feeling does help -or so I find - as it shows I'm not alone, plus I can get distracted from my own woes feeling for the person in the song.

I think Animal was very generous to concede to Dave Grohl, I thought they were level pegging (not surprising when you consider how the clip was made.)

If you are looking for another foreign language song - this time an upbeat one - try Paulo Conte's Via Con Me which really needs no translation

I take it Fred is your fluffy kiwi, I hope he does not find an iceberg after a warm cozy cupboard or similar too much of a shock, or the inebriated kiwis do not lead him astray.

Croix

[Eagle Ray]

Thank you Croix,

I’ve just been feeling so isolated at times and I haven’t been able to reply in real time on multiple occasions because my post is held up, but usually appears eventually. In the last couple of days I just couldn’t call a helpline again as I felt unable to verbalise my situation anymore. I’ve also been very physically limited to do much and so I feel physically isolated in my home at times. Although I felt very ill yesterday I got some lemons off my tree and took some to two of my neighbours. I got to chat to one of them. She will be 88 this year and is an amazing person. She still drives 3 hour round trips to visit family in another town or attend appointments. No one really knows how bad things are for me at times and I don’t really want them to know necessarily. Saying you are severely depressed and have the thoughts of giving up that come with that is not something that I share with people. It seems easier to communicate about such things in a forum like this or a helpline that is set up to deal with such things.

But I’m doing a little better. I’ve been awake since about 3am listening to thunder rumbling away for some time now. Thank you for the recommendation of Via Con Me. It’s a lively, revivifying piece. I listened to Viens viens too. Yes, it is sad with an air of desperation and much emotion. The song The River by Bruce Springsteen has the feeling of desperation, especially his performances of it back from 1980 when it came out and he was right in the midst of that desperation himself in some ways. It was about 2 years after that he was finally taken over by his depression in a way that he was forced to start addressing it and he began therapy. But he said music, songwriting and performing were the first ways he self-medicated and music has played that role his whole life. He is someone who has kept growing and integrating within himself all the difficulties he inherited and experienced and turned a lot of that into wisdom, insight and empathy.

Animal was my favourite Muppet as a kid. It’s occurred to me that by bashing the drums wildly he was expressing what looked like cathartic rage-like emotions that I could not express in my home environment where I was having volatility expressed at me. So I probably just wished to get out a lot of pent up emotion but couldn’t safely do that, so maybe watching Animal was the next best thing 😂 In the Muppet version of Bohemian Rhapsody I like the bit where the lyrics start with “Mamma” sung by Animal and he seems confused and is looking for his mamma and then he’s saying “Dadda?” and goes off looking for them.

Yes, Fred is my little stuffed kiwi. He has been stored in a box so he might feel a bit exposed to begin with on the iceberg. If the grown up kiwis are too inebriated he can toddle about with the penguins who are always busy with some sort of activity. I think it will be quite the adventure for him. I wonder if MK’s big stuffed penguin will come along as well?

Hope you have a relaxing day on the iceberg Croix,

ER

[indigo22]

Hi Eagle Ray,

Sorry to have been gone for so long, I haven't been great these past weeks and have had to figure some things out that at first I couldn't make sense of.

I will go into it more in another post, but right now, I am interested to hear how you went with your 2 appointments in March. I do hope you got some help with them.

The person you talked about giving you a reiki session clearly had not been trained properly. I am a reiki 2 and this is the reiki creed (I am guessing she has not said it before)

For today only

Do not anger

Do not worry

Be humble

Be honest in your work

Be compassionate to yourself and others

I sincerely hope you have been feeling better.

indigo 💜

[Eagle Ray]

Dear indigo,

I hope you are going ok. I know sometimes things can come up that take a lot to process. I’m happy to listen and support you if you need a chat and it helps. You have so kindly supported me when I was going through my worst.

The appointment I had with the hormone specialist was excellent. She was completely on the same page and it was such a relief to have someone understand what I’ve been experiencing and an action plan for addressing it. She increased a component of the hormone medication and my sleep restored immediately and I’ve been sleeping well since. There were also significant improvements in anxiety levels. The one ongoing side effect is a histamine intolerance reaction that’s causing non-stop congestion and a cough. This is a known side effect and I’m going to discuss the option of upping the other hormone I’m on with her when I next see her in June, to hopefully counterbalance this side effect. Although irritating this side effect is far preferable to the extreme distress I was in before. I go to the city tomorrow for a scan that she referred me for just to rule out endometrial issues that could also be possibly affecting me.

The GP I saw was good in that he knew far more about fibromyalgia than other doctors I’ve encountered. I knew all the research he talked about. His main thing is treating conditions like fibromyalgia and ptsd with the medicinal form of a drug only made legal in recent times (cannot name here as not allowed to name meds). At this stage I think I need to focus on just the hormone meds for now as it will complicate understanding what’s going on to introduce another new med.

I submitted my DSP application just over a week ago. I ended up using the report from my local GP as it will probably support my case more in Centrelink’s eyes coming from a practice I’ve attended for the last two years rather than someone new. Although he didn’t follow the format requested by Centrelink my psychologist has and I also included a report from the employment agency I’m with. It is apparently often taking longer than three months for applications to be processed at the moment, so I know to expect to wait a while.

In the meantime photography continues to be a medicine for me and it has definitely been a lifeline at times. I have read of other people who have described it the same way. I think one thing it does is it keeps me looking at my surroundings creatively. I notice the patterns and forms of things and the quality of the light. I still need a lot of rest daily and I struggle with getting through daily tasks but just do what I can. I still have grief come up daily that is really powerful and I’m still finding my way through it. Right now I’m sitting outdoors and light rain has been falling on my phone screen creating mini prisms of multicoloured light. A cow is lowing in the distance across a valley. We have finally had some rain after a very long period of drought.

Take good care indigo and as I said, happy to chat if you feel the need for a chat,

ER xx 

[indigo22]

Hi ER,

I am so very happy you finally got some help, you have been through so much these last months, to hear you are able to get some sleep is music to my ears. I think it is a smart decision handling one issue at a time with medication, keeps everything clearly defined as to what's working or not. I hope that although you may still be struggling, the coming months will find your life and health improving with the help of the new medical people you have found. I am also very pleased you went ahead with the DSP application, I have no doubt you will be approved. 

When reading the end of your last post it struck me that you have a lovely way with words, very descriptive, I could see the prisms and hear the cow in the distance. I think you would be a very talented writer if that interests you.

I had my first tapping session with my psych toward the end of March after reading up on it so I would not feel uncomfortable with the process. What came up was that I don't believe I deserve help, clearly something I have held on to for a very long time because the emotions I felt were very primal. Streams of tears running down my neck and an inability to say the words "I accept myself", using instead "I forgive myself and I am doing the best that I can".  My psych helped me calm down from that with some breathing and EMDR and said "your intuition took you straight in deep". She said to drink plenty of water to flush the system and I left.

Then for the next few days all hell broke loose with my body. So as not to be too graphic, for someone who is a regular once or twice a day person, for the next 3 days I was dealing with 6 times a day. I had an appointment with my GP soon after and talked to him about the whole experience and asked him if this was normal. His response was that it can be normal when the nervous system is overwhelmed. I think in that moment a light bulb started flickering but I was still really confused about what was happening, and had to take some time to figure it all out. Between what the GP said and something my psych had said about being on alert, the light bulb stopped flickering and I realised that my nervous system has been in a state of dysregulation for many years, I just didn't know it because that has always been my normal. You and I have discussed it in relation to you, but I didn't think I had that problem. It explains so many things that I have just thought were my normal, but are all interconnected and feel a bit silly for not connecting all the dots sooner. I have mostly done that now but still dealing with the after effects to some degree.

I have to say I did feel quite defeated for a while which made the depression worse, thinking that with all the work I have already done, I have only scratched the surface. But I am now seeing it as a learning experience and an additional way of being able to people here. Not a pleasant experience but one that was necessary to go through to be able to connect the dots. At least if it happens again it will not be confusing.

I hope you have had a good day and got into nature for a while,

indigo 💜

[Eagle Ray]

Hello indigo,

I’ve just arrived in the city and just opened BB to see you just posted. Wow, that is a full on experience. I feel like maybe I understand that inability to say, “I accept myself”. It’s profound when our body has those reactions isn’t it. My psych suggested EMDR a while ago and I haven’t done it yet, perhaps because I’m aware of floodgates I’m not sure I want to open. I think many people go their whole lives never going into those parts of themselves where experiences are stored physiologically in the body. I’ve liked Somatic Experiencing because it has been about dealing with a specific incident and it is done in a titrated way so as not to overwhelm the nervous system. But even with that there was one time I went into an overwhelmed state after the session was over. It can be a delicate balance between allowing trauma to release and move through and out of the body and actually getting retraumatised and locked down again. But it sounds like you did the moving through even though it’s been a drawn out kind of process that hasn’t exactly been pleasant. I guess it’s kind of like toxins leaving the body, or perhaps restrictions leaving the body which is maybe a less full on word. It will probably ultimately be really helpful but just a bit yucky to go through.

I’ve just finished reading Peter Levine’s autobiography called ‘An Autobiography of Trauma: A Healing Journey’ which shows contextually how he developed his Somatic Experiencing method following his own childhood trauma experiences. Some of those experiences are harrowing but he gets the worst of it out the way early in the book. I could relate to the profound fear of obliteration he carried from childhood, the fear of intimacy and the struggle for self-acceptance. He had serious sexual trauma on top of dealing with parents who were not overtly warm or loving. I seem to have similar issues in my own body and sense of self. Tomorrow I have an invasive medical procedure which from past experience I know will trigger strong bladder pain linked to a painful bladder condition I have (sorry I’m now going into detail too), but I feel like I’m carrying some kind of trauma linked to violation and non-safety. The specialist kindly wrote on the referral that I have trauma-related pain issues and the clinic she’s referred me to is sensitive to women with trauma. But I would so love to rid my body of the fear and traumatic responses that feel so embedded in it.

Sorry just went off on a tangent, but I just thought of the Peter Levine book because it directly relates to that issue of trauma stored in the body and the journey to become truly alive in one’s own body. I would say that although you may have felt defeated, it’s probably just long held defences coming down and stuff is actually getting released that’s good to come out. Be really gentle and kind with yourself as it’s a tender time when that happens. You are so courageous indigo and I feel proud of you going through those experiences and putting the dots together. My dots are not all together yet. Some of them are, but some parts of me are still intensely locked down in self-protection mode and only distantly available to me in remote parts of consciousness I’ve not been willing to fully delve into yet.

Take good care and thank you again for all the support you’ve given me. Happy to chat anytime.

Hugs 🤗 

ER

[Eagle Ray]

Hi indigo,

I just wanted to let you know that I have replied to you and it will hopefully appear soon. It seems to be held up in moderation again. It feels so restricting not being able to communicate in real time, but just wanted to say I was really happy to read your post and although it’s been hard it seems like you’ve had a kind of breakthrough. Not sure if this message will get through until tomorrow either but thinking of you.

Hugs,

ER