Talking about not talking

Hi @TheVorticon,

I'm pretty sure it is ok to use the "s" word around here. From what you are describing, it sounds like what you are calling the "cold calculated" type of suicide is what I would call "rational" suicide. That is, that someone makes a calm and thought-out decision to suicide rather than acting impulsively during a flood of overwhelming emotion. Is that what you mean?

Personally, I fully respect someone's choice to do what they want with their own life, including ending it. Your life, your choice. Some people do not believe there is such a thing as rational suicide - that suicide by definition is irrational and a sign that the person was mentally ill at the time. That is not my view.

The tricky thing is though, that suicide is such a very big and irreversible decision. I don't think there are many decisions in life that are totally irreversible or that we can't bounce back from or move forward from if we realise afterwards that we made the wrong decision. However, this is the case with suicide. It is a very permanent solution to what are generally temporary problems. This is why I personally choose to keep on keeping on. I know from a million experiences that when I'm in the middle of the darkness, suicide can often seem like the best (or sometimes only) option. Yet at some point, things always shift. This tells me that no matter how hopeless a situation can seem in the moment, it is always possible that it will change if I just keep on keeping on. This has happened to me yet again within the past week. I have gone from being in extreme crisis to being quite settled because something totally unexpected came my way - something that I could never in a million years have predicted. This doesn't mean everything is all better. There is almost a 100% chance that I will sink back into crisis at some point. But right now I'm glad I didn't suicide last week when every fibre of my being was telling me that that was the thing to do.

I often take great solace in the fact that I will die one day. One of the very few things we can be absolutely certain about in life is that our lives will end. We will die. In a weird way this encourages me to keep on keeping on because I have a sort of curiosity about how the story will end if I let it run its natural course. The story WILL end, of that I can be certain. Thus it's merely a matter of whether I want to see the story through to its natural conclusion or whether I want to close the book part-way through.

Gee, that all turned into a long ramble didn't it - especially for your talking about not talking thread. I will shush now.

hello @TheVorticon

I am not talking to you

just passing by and waving so that you know that you are not forgotten and are well thought of here.

Hi Phoenix_Rising. Well I'm glad that we can use the word 'suicide' if we want to mention it. I seem to receive absurdly worded emails when one of my posts is removed from here, so was not in the mood to deal with one of those over a particular word.

I'm meaning something between the "overwhelming emotion" and "rational" types that you describe. Calm, but without much thought behind the descision.

It's great to hear about the good unexpected thing that helped to shift you out of crisis.

Hi mohill, thanks for the wave. Please consider this to be a wave back.

Hi @TheVorticon

Sounds like a rough night. How you travelling today?

Can I clarify, when you say there's no helpful way to talk about things, do you mean you don't feel you can express yourself here on the Forums or more broadly you feel like talking won't be helpful.

You give so much to this community (I just saw your awesome response to Hope32 from yesterday) so I hope we can give back to you, as much as you have given to this community.

Take care.

Yeah it wasn’t the best night. Things are mostly better today but I have to be careful where I let my thoughts go to and suspect I may have a repeat over the weekend.

I kind of mean both @NikNik. I can’t imagine having a helpful discussion about certain things here on the forums or anywhere else (a helpline etc.). Maybe I don’t have the “right language” to talk about things, or more likely I don’t have the “right things” to talk about. So I wonder if maybe there is no such thing as a helpful discussion for those things.

@TheVorticon

Maybe give it a go... what's the worst that can happen... it doesn't help and nothing changes... but if it does help, things may get a bit lighter and easier for you - I think it could be a risk worth taking...

Nik

hello @TheVorticon

interesting subject you have raised here in your last response

in fact I was only talking about this very subject yesterday with my psychiatrist

I have had issues of feeling not heard, dismissed during periods of my life

recently this has changed slightly due to progress in my learning of self

I have managed to create a new dilemma!! wonderful...not!

I now feel that I am being listened to...partially..or as much as some self-centred people are capable of..due to my being more persistent in speaking up...pushing into the conversation in some cases (always have thought this to be rude..interrupting>>however waiting around for a break in conversation usually overtaken and monopolised by loud, noisy people) is just not going to give me an opportunity to speak

Now I am left in a quandary as to why I am having to further explain myself...my responses??

So I have been reeling in horror that I cannot explain myself properly

well guess what......there is a strong possiblity that it is them not me ...Good grief this as logical as it sounds just has not occurred in my over programmed thinking brain

this puts a totally different perspective on being heard

As I have said before you are an intelligent, articulate, humourous, caring person

Does this great revelation that I am now working on help you see things in a different light? or even language as not in our programmed thinking?

@Former-Member I'm glad that you've found a way to speak up and feel some level of being listened to.
Definitely sucks that it's now led to being expected to explain yourself.

What is it about them that you think might be causing difficulty in communicating?

I have long thought of verbal and written language to be ineffective, although I know some people have great success with it.

Verbally, I struggle. I hit the wall of "I don't know" and can't think my way past, through or around it. I take full responsibility for this part of the communication failure, and as a result I usually don't choose to talk about things that are troubling me in that medium.

With the written word, I seem to hit a brick wall. I don't want to have to explain every single thing if I'm feeling any level of distress. I don't want to dance the line of appropriate phrasing. I'm not good at talking about feelings - as I said previously, I don't have the right words to talk about things. I can talk about how I want to react to the feelings, but that's usually not acceptable to talk about.

Talking to helplines with the written word is almost guaranteed to lead me to frustration. I typically feel as though I'm talking to an empty vessel. It would be less frustrating to talk to a square of carpet because at least then I wouldn't be hoping for understanding from the other party. If I wanted to talk in English with something that didn't really understand what I was saying and didn't have anything helpful to add, I could find an online chatbot.

As an aside that will mean nothing to anyone but myself, contrary to what one person has absurdly suggested, "a supplement" is not a more general way of saying "an online helpline service" when trying to discuss how unhelpful the latter has been. I can only hope that this suggestion was born of doing multiple things at once, because in common understanding there is no way that one could be expected to mean the other.