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Bluepalm, I appreciate your post so much. I definitely relate to the idea of suicide/death as a source of comfort. I had just made a post about suicide as a back-up plan that provides a sense of control, mastery, and power for me. But it is absolutely a comfort as well. It feels like something mine and mine alone, something solid that I can hold onto in an abstract, frightening, overwhelming world. If that makes any sense whatsoever. You described it beautifully.

Thank you both for your thoughtful responses. I wanted to clarify that I am talking to staff and the therapist here about having this thoroughly researched and specific plan; I am just not telling them the details of the plan. The therapist seems to be okay with me still having this plan upon discharge, just as long as I can be certain that I will not impulsively act upon it. I am working hard on this and becoming increasingly certain that it will remain nothing but a failsafe.


Thank you for pointing me to bluepalm's post as well! It is good to know that I am not the only one.


Gromit-- I think part of the problem comes when we believe that no one will be negatively impacted by our deaths, or even that people will be positively impacted when we are no longer a burden. I have a lot of these thoughts, but I do know at least my therapist will be gravely negatively impacted, as she has directly stated, and I care about her too much to ignore that.


I do not feel suicidal at this time. I just feel afraid to try with abandon, to jump without a parachute, as I need to do. And the plan alleviates that fear and provides a sense of control, and yes, comfort, as described so well in bluepalm's post.

Hey, I have what is probably an unusual point of view on something suicide-related and I wanted to bounce it off you guys and see what you think.


I am currently living in a voluntary program called a crisis residential and am working on my frequent suicidal thoughts. I have a "back-pocket" suicide plan, something I have no intent on acting upon but also do not wish to share with staff. I feel that I need to have something like an escape hatch, a thoroughly researched and readily available plan in my back pocket in case of emergencies.


I know that it is a control thing. It is also very trauma-related...from situations in which I was either literally or effectively trapped, I suppose. I feel that it keeps me feeling more empowered to walk through life knowing I have a way out if it is absolutely necessary. It makes me feel safer.


The question is: can I recover from my CPTSD symptoms with this plan in the back of my mind? Or does having this way out preclude me from moving forward with building a life worth living?


A while ago I thought the latter, that I really had to "close the door" on suicide completely in order to put all of my efforts into life. But now I think--but really am not sure--that perhaps having this secret plan could enable me to work toward a life worth living with less fear and a greater sense of control. Maybe I will feel less need to reach out to my usual maladaptive ways of seeking control.


Sorry this is kind of a long explanation. I just wanted to see if any of you guys had thoughts about/reactions to this topic.

I am not sure where to put this post. Or even what I want to say. I just feel like reaching out but don't know where to reach.


*this post could probably be triggering



It is, has been, and will continue to be snowing hard for some time, so I am inside my apartment alone with my dying cat. I have tried texting a couple of people who don't seem to want to talk to me, which I assume is because I am in a bad way.


I have isolated myself very, very much, to the point where my cat is my main support. I also have my therapist and my mother, but my therapist is not my friend and my mother is part of the source of my trauma.


I know it sounds silly that my cat dying is a huge, huge event for me, bigger than any family member dying or...really anything. But he has been there for me for 18 years, my entire adulthood. He has loved me unconditionally. I have left him over and over to go into inpatient treatment when I did not want to live anymore and he struggled because of that but he always waited for me and was overjoyed when I returned.


I feel guilt for not having always been there for him as he has for me. And it is so awful to see him in pain and discomfort. The worst part is that I have to be the one to decide when he should die. He is my one and only love. I know that is pathetic, but it is pretty much true. I have cut myself off from the world, too afraid to have friendships and definitely not romantic relationships. Assuming that people will hate me. Curling up in a little ball, living in my own little world.


I will have to put my cat down when the storm is over, I think. Then I plan to go into inpatient treatment of some kind for as long as I can stand it. I have been active in my substance addiction for a while now and as he dies, I start to think about why I am even here.

I apologize for the length of this post but I think it's helpful for me to put it out there even if no one reads it.


I relate to so, so much in this thread. I am really not surprised that so many people here, whether they excelled or not, are highly intelligent people. Just the way that the posts are written displays a high level of intelligence.


bluepalm beautifully stated something I have experienced--

It's been my paradoxical experience that although I was able to perform well academically throughout my education, no achievement was ever sufficient to banish a debilitating level of self doubt. So, while on the surface I was resilient, in that I kept on jumping hurdles, inside me I was never able to grab hold of my abilities and own them with confidence.


My experiences from infancy onwards so eroded my sense of self that external validation such as excellent academic results seemed flimsy to me.

I'm sure this is common among us, but my childhood was one of deep shame and "othering." My brother and sister were not abused, and I was told that the abuse was my fault, that I deserved it. When I was eight I told my mother that I wanted to tell my guidance counselor or teacher about what my father was doing to me and she told me that they would just laugh at me because "nothing wrong is happening to you." She was an elementary guidance counselor herself, so of course I believed her and really internalized the shame and doubted myself and my perceptions of reality--still do to this day.


I think I was a pretty good student in elementary school, but honestly I have few memories of my childhood. Like Kat said about her crying going unnoticed, in third grade I cried during the pledge of allegiance every single morning. One day in the beginning of the school year I thought about how bleak my life was and started crying, and even though I was immensely ashamed and tried so hard to stop, I guess there must have been a really strong cue associated with the flag and the pledge that I just could not stop it. No one said anything;  the class just recited the pledge and my teacher never said a word to anyone.

My therapist has suggested I finally felt safe enough to cry when I was at school. 

This sentence actually gave me goosebumps. I never thought of that. I think while I was deeply embarrassed about the crying, at least I wouldn't get hurt for it in school.


One thing I do recall from grade school was that I always had just one best friend who, as I see it now, displayed strong signs of BPD--controlling, manipulative, jealous, cruel. I still wonder how I could have ended up with this series of budding abusers, but I guess it was just because I was so very timid, such low self-esteem--I was an easy target and I would put up with it. I remember in fourth grade I consistently forgot to bring home the textbooks I needed for homework and got in a lot of trouble when my parents had to bring me back to get them. I think I had issues with dissociation, which caused a lot of forgetfulness.


In high school, I excelled, but without doing a lot of work or paying much attention. One French teacher would constantly say that I looked at her like her cat looked at her. Now I realize that was the glassy-eyed stare of dissociation. I guess I learned pretty early on how to make perfect eye contact and even smile and nod when I actually was not hearing anything that was said, so I was perceived to be attentive. My parents expected me to get good grades but never praised me when I did, and I think I just took the AP courses and got good grades because I thought I was supposed to, because that was what everyone else was doing.


I breezed through classes like AP Physics without even doing my homework, despised by the whole class for messing up the curve, but I still never thought of myself as smart. One reason was that my brother and sister were in the gifted program, but when I was tested I didn't get in. It was determined by an IQ test in fifth grade, and I distinctly remember multiple questions where I just said I didn't know the answer because I thought I would sound stupid if I tried to explain my answer. But then by the end of high school it became apparent that I was actually far more intelligent than my siblings despite the family mythology.


When it came time to look at colleges was really when it first occurred to me that I was intelligent. I ended up going to one of the best schools in the country, and my parents really, really took this to mean that they were excellent in some way, like Kizzie mentioned. My father especially would boast about it all the time, but neither of them had ever taken notice of my accomplishments up to that point, and they certainly had had no hand in it. And my personal response to my achievements was one of disbelief and maybe something like imposter syndrome, feeling like it was all some big mistake.


The college I went to was extremely rigorous, and even though my grades and scores were above average for the students there, I walked into every class convinced that I would fail, that I couldn't match the other students' intelligence and work ethic, that I didn't belong. So I would be afraid to go to class at all, and almost every semester, I would get halfway through and decide to just give up entirely on half of my classes, because I was never going to pass anyway, so why was I bothering to torture myself. In addition to the trauma I didn't realize was trauma, I struggled with an eating disorder, addiction, and bipolar disorder. I went to college on and off for three and a half years, my parents pulling me out every time I failed a class, until finally they pulled me out permanently after a suicide attempt in my fourth year. Others said that they functioned well until mid-life, but I functioned well until a very, very abrupt shift upon entering college.


I am still learning about all of these factors. It's been a very long time since I dropped out of college but I am now probably going to try taking a community college class in something that used to come naturally to me to try to build back up my confidence in my academic abilities. I wonder sometimes what my high school classmates would think if they knew what my life was like now. When I graduated, it seemed that I was without a doubt going to do incredible things with my life. But I guess that was because no one, not even myself, knew how deeply I was struggling behind the scenes.


Kat, I don't know if you are still reading this, but I think what you are studying to do is so deeply important and I really have incredible respect for those who work to better the education system.

Hey, I know it's been quite some time since this was posted, but I just wanted to respond to this comment--

Considering giving meetings of some sort a go, but tbh I've been sober for years so I'd feel like I'd be taking a place from someone who really needs it. Would be nice to talk shop with someone who gets the struggle, though.

I used to be active in AA for a long time, and now I do a program called Recovery Dharma. I think probably all recovery programs say that you should continue to attend meetings basically for the rest of your life. I know some older people who've got upwards of 50 years of sobriety and still attend regularly and are active participants in the program. These folks are a great help to the newer folks, providing hope and examples of how to achieve lasting recovery. And, as you know, being sober for a length of time does not mean you won't have times that you still struggle and need the support and connection.


Also, everyone is always welcome at meetings and you would not be taking a place for anyone.


If you do see this, there are tons and tons of Zoom recovery meetings now, which are sometimes less stressful to get to than in-person meetings. Some are local and some are global, and it can be really cool to meet with people halfway around the world with whom you can relate deeply. AA has tons, but I feel that Recovery Dharma is a little better for trauma survivors. They are very conscious of trauma reactions, very open and accepting to people of all types, and do not require belief in anything but your capacity to recover.

Hi. I would just like to preface this by saying that I have had a glass of champagne but I don't think I'm really drunk yet so I hope it is okay to be on the boards nonetheless.


I had been sober for 27 days but they have been really, really, really difficult days. I was inpatient for the first 12 of them, and that was mostly just killing time--the therapy and psychiatry were not really very helpful. What was helpful was that I made a group of friends and people told me things like I was fun to be around, which I don't know if I've ever heard before, and that made me cry repeatedly. Happy tears. I have been so isolated for many years, long before the pandemic.


Anyway, since then my psychiatrist has cancelled on me twice and it has become quite apparent that I am still manic or hypomanic and it is not going anywhere. It is not a nice hypomania, either--while I am not psychotic or doing anything dangerous, I am very anxious, agitated, and angry. I feel very edgy all the time, like I'm crawling out of my skin.


Anyway, the urges to drink/use/self-harm have been building as I have been feeling like I've been working so GD hard for my recovery and it has only been getting harder to stay safe, sober, and sane. I've been using skills all day, I've been staying active, taking my meds like clockwork, eating as well as I can, going to meetings, talking to healthy people, pushing myself out of my comfort zone to do things I am scared to do, etc. etc. etc.


I have also been doing a lot of work with "parts." It makes me feel stupid, like I am making stuff up, but I do kind of feel some validity to these younger parts of me from trauma times that are sort of at odds with me or each other. It is new to me and I am doing my best with it but I don't really know what I am doing and I often feel like I am "faking it." I have a multitude of things for which I am feeling quite a bit of guilt. Some reasonable, others not so much, just a habit of personalizing everything.


Today I know that the drinking was very much an effort to "punish" myself, as it came along with a strong urge to self-harm--I stopped to buy first-aid items just in case as well. I was/am feeling a lot of guilt and shame. I think it was a complicated thing that had to do with "parts" and I could have chosen to go to a place in the park that might have been comforting to younger parts but I chose self-punishment over it.


Anyway. I am sorry for blathering on. I feel like I have no one to turn to when things get like this. As I was just saying in a comment on another post, I have friends who get the alcoholism/addiction, and friends who get some simpler mental health issues, but who gets complex ptsd with a dissociative disorder and addiction issues and bipolar disorder and eating disorder and let's just add the rest of the DSM in there for fun... I don't even get it and I've been at this for a very long time.


I don't even need someone to experience the things I do...I just wish I had someone who was able to listen compassionately and understand to some extent and really be able to be fully nonjudgmental. But if I can't even do that for myself then how could anyone else?


<end emotion dump>

Hi Panda. I am really struggling with drinking among a bunch of other CPTSD- and bipolar-related things. If you still want someone to talk to, I could really use someone who understands. I have people who understand the drinking, and people who understand some of the mental health stuff to an extent, but no one who really understands both. So it's hard to reach out for help because I feel like the answers I get aren't usually quite the right fit for me.

Hi. I tried to write a short, concise intro but it turned into a novella. I like writing and went to school for writing, and although I am not talkative in person, when I get to a page or a message board or an email, I can tend to go on.


So I will try to write a bit of a better intro soon. But for now, hi, I am going to try to get to know this board and its many subsections and its inhabitants, and become a contributing and helpful member.


This place seems great. I used to use myptsd.org, but I was very wary of the fact that every post is searchable on google, and then when the website was restructured, the chatroom became barely used. I also very much identify more with CPTSD than PTSD, so I hope I will find a suitable home here.