And maybe, I hoped, that meant that deep down, we all wanted to hold on to see if things could get better. And that we could. My mind had been clouded by the anxiety, despair, monotony, and a relationship that was slowly destroying me. To look at how things could get better if I attempted to make changes. The reason I thought I was just existing was because I really was.
I was miserable and I was stuck. But I did start to make changes. I started to see a therapist, who helped me gain some perspective. My toxic relationship ended. I was devastated about it, but things improved so quickly as I started to exercise my independence. Yes, I still got up every morning and made the bed, but the rest of the day would be at my hands, and slowly but surely, that started to excite me.
I think a huge part of feeling as though I was just some form of existence was because my life was so predictable. Now that that had been taken away, everything seemed new and exciting. With time, I felt like I was living again, and most importantly, that I had and have a life worth living.
But knowing that I got through this truly difficult time in my life gives me the motivation to get through any other bad moments again. I know that better than most. But I promise you things can and often do get better. You just have to hold on to that doubt, however small it might be. And speaking from experience, I can assure you that small, nagging feeling is telling you the truth. Hattie Gladwell is a mental health journalist, author, and advocate. She writes about mental illness in hopes of diminishing the stigma and to encourage others to speak out.
If this last…. Depression hurts. And while we often pair this mental illness with emotional pain like sadness, crying, and feelings of hopelessness, research shows…. The negative voice that nags us can really take a toll when it goes unchecked, and yet few of us know how to push back.
I remember astonishing watery sunlight and cold wind whipping wet hair against my face as I biked downtown Sunday morning. I negotiated the incongruous banality of a technical briefing in a windowless hotel conference room. I remember joking with a fellow journo about our lack of math skills. There was a scrum, something about provincial debt, something about early voting; a web file that needed updating and contextualizing; counterclaims from opposing parties to parse and write up.
Then I was free. Eventually, I made my way home. It was past midnight by the time I grabbed the plastic jug of bright-blue antifreeze from its spot in the bathroom, poured it into a pair of oversized pottery mugs. I placed the mugs of poison on the floor beside my burgundy futon-couch. I recall keeping the newspaper fanned out in sections beside me.
As a prop? Did suicide seem less pathetic if I just pretended I was catching up on world news? I swallowed the fistful of pills first, waited expectantly. I remember registering disappointment in their inefficacy before consciousness and memory dropped off a cliff. Which, sure. Recollections return in uneven swatches. Sleeping pills, even when taken as directed and not downed like peanuts, are one hell of an amnesic.
Now, when I try to pull memories out for reinspection, I find them frayed, viewed through a lens messily smeared with Vaseline. Some reappear in high definition much later: the way I tried to read a book in my ICU bed only to find the words bounced as my squinted eyes stung and watered, unfocused.
What do you tell the people you love about the thing you did that caused them pain? You have abashed phone conversations with your Calgarian grandparents. You hold your breath and avoid the topic altogether. After two or three days in the ICU , they put me in the short-term psych ward. Introverted at my best, I spent my institutionalized time impotently attempting to construct personal spaces.
As my eyes improved, I resorted to my childhood proclivity for disappearing into books, pulling my consciousness through that escape hatch and shutting it behind me.
Go, sixty-eight-year-old Caucasian man with short brown hair last seen wearing hospital pants and a brown wool cardigan and no shoes! Days were divided between Visiting Hours and Everything Else. The five of us—my parents, brother, sister, and I—went outside the hospital for meals and pretended everything was fine. Their outward resilience and our collective ability to laugh at the most horrible things helped me get through without choking on my own guilt.
Most of my psych-ward time was deadly cabin fever: marathon pacing, ear-splitting earbud music, books that were never escapist enough to hold my splintered attention for long. I spent interminable minutes in a luminescent white Space Odyssey cocoon whose broad vocabulary of echoing blurps and bloops mimicked the sound effects of a retro sci-fi film.
I learned the less-than-uplifting result of this diversion days later. An otherworldly neurologist—wide blue eyes growing wider, syncopated Scandinavian-accented voice slowing as she spoke—walked me through a series of white blobs I was told depicted my brain. I learned through later googling that, once in your system, the methanol in antifreeze metabolizes into formic acid, which can prevent your cells from grabbing and using the oxygen they need, ultimately killing you within about thirty-six hours.
Your optic nerve and basal ganglia can be among the first bodily bits badly damaged in this process—either directly poisoned by formic acid or suffocated by lack of oxygen. Depending how badly damaged they are, you could be blind or shaky and off balance for the rest of your life. I was sure if I just acted normal enough they would let me go. I tried to be courteous, lucid and calm but not suspiciously upbeat.
I met, as required, multiple times a day with nurses and social workers. The second psychiatrist was smart and sardonic and treated me like someone capable of communicating in multisyllabic sentences.
He also had a far better bullshit detector. He did not buy my argument that this whole suicide thing was an anomalous one-off, a mental misunderstanding, never to recur. He decided I had major depression. And that I was fucked up enough to merit more time locked up lest I try to off myself again. E ight hundred thousand people around the world kill themselves every year, which means about 2, a day, or three every two minutes.
Statistically, two dozen people killed themselves in the time it took you to get out of bed, showered, and caffeinated. Maybe forty-five during your commute to work, another ninety in the time you spent making dinner. Unless you, like me, take an eternity to do any of those things, if they happen at all. In which case, think of it this way: every time you mull killing yourself and manage to talk yourself down because you have more to do and more to ask of life, a handful of people have lost that internal, wrenching wrestling match and ended it.
Many, many more people try to kill themselves than actually do it—about half a million Americans are brought to emergency rooms every year after having tried to end their lives. For one thing, despite the supposed decrease in shame in having a family member kill themselves, our persistent societal freak-out regarding suicide can make both relatives and authorities hesitant to classify deaths as such. Even if they had at some point in the past, how do you know this specific incident was a suicide?
If someone is depressed, even suicidal, but also misuses drugs, how do you know for sure whether an overdose is purposeful? How do you know for sure whether a single-vehicle crash was careless driving or driven by a need for death? Take the necessary precautions to make yourself safe.
Remove any items you could use to harm yourself from your home. Do not isolate yourself. People are often too nervous, ashamed or afraid to talk about the fact that they are having suicidal thoughts. However, sharing these feelings with someone you trust is often the first step to feeling better. Find someone you trust, such as a friend, therapist, family member, teacher, member of the clergy or counselor for a helpline.
Let the person know how bad you are really feeling. Seeking professional help from a therapist can be particularly helpful. Calling a helpline, such as the National Lifeline or Samaritans, can be an easy, free and anonymous way to get help. The helplines are open 24 hours a day and offer chat or email features, if you prefer to communicate by text.
Just talking about how you feel and how you got to this point in your life can be a huge relief and help you find a way to cope with the pain you are currently experiencing. Alcohol and drugs often intensify suicidal thoughts. Avoid all alcohol and any drugs that have not been prescribed to you by your doctor. Lack of sleep can contribute to depression and lead to an increase in suicidal thoughts.
Try to regulate your sleep, aiming for eight hours a night. If you find yourself without any energy and sleeping most of the day, it is important to get up and try to do something active. Even if it feels, like the last thing in the world you want to do. Studies show that exercise can be as effective as antidepressants when it comes to treating depression and anxiety. Try to get your heart rate up for 20 minutes a day, five days a week; it has been scientifically proven to help you will feel better emotionally.
Even just taking a walk around your neighborhood can help your body start to release endorphins, which reduces depression. Suicidal thoughts are usually accompanied by a lot of other negative thoughts about ourselves. It is important to recognize that these negative thoughts are not accurate. They are a part of your Critical Inner Voice and you can challenge them. It is important to have compassion for yourself in your suffering. Instead of beating yourself up for feeling bad, try to treat yourself the way that you would treat a good friend.
As Dr.
0コメント