My Anxiety is Suicide

[Ben1989]

Hi all,

I’m really going through the worst at the moment. I’m 90% sure my anxiety is my mood or depression leading to suicide. I often think of sort of how I would do it but never think about actually doing it.

In my therapy my therapist intends to give me safety statements but it’s difficult as my panic and anxiety is ‘am I suicidal?’.

With my oLd ALS worries you could ‘test’ with physical checks etc but I have no benchmark.

My therapist and I are struggling with safety statements.

(Admin: please leave this in the health anxiety section)

[nomorepanic]

This is more about depression so why does it need to be left in the HA forum can I ask?

[Ben1989]

Because it’s an anxiety related thing. At least that’s what my therapist says and what I hope it is.

I’d like to have replies from the anxiety side of the above

[nomorepanic]

Ok so more GAD related then?

[Ben1989]

I’m just hoping my suicidal worries are just my anxiety thinking the worst and not actual

---------- Post added at 17:38 ---------- Previous post was at 16:25 ----------

One safety statement is ‘just because I think it doesn’t make it true’ but she mentioned we need to work on one or two more. I guess I’m hoping the forum could help (and also to stop my panic)

[MyNameIsTerry]

Nic, I suspect this is more about intrusive thoughts. The statements his therapist is trying would suggest this.

Ben, could you truly know with your ALS regardless of self testing as anxiety would always find some impossibility and try to panic you over it? So, perhaps you can change how you address it as your therapist is suggesting although he/she has given you a statement that could be applied to all intrusive thoughts scenarios including anything HA related.

Are you filling in the safety questionnaire? In that it asks you some questions and they help the therapist to understand the difference between someone at risk and someone struggling with the thoughts/feelings.

It asks if you have ever felt life is not worth living. I would tick Yes to that in every meeting. It asks have you been researching ways to do it. Now, you mention thinking about it but that is not quite the same as researching how to do it. Then it asks out of 10, 1 being the lowest, what would you rate your chances of acting on it? And then it asks what keeps you from acting on it.

So, for me it would look like this:

1. Yes
2. No
3. 1 out of 10
4. Family, loved ones.

My therapist said that showed how I wasn't really a risk but just sick of anxiety. She said she was satisfied I was a no risk/low risk. She also said they would be more concerned if I had been researching it so if you have please make sure you tell your therapist everything and if there are times when you are concerned you may act on these thoughts/feelings please reach out to the NHS lines, The Samaritans, your doctor, etc.

Perhaps think about whether this is because you are in pain? Have you just got sick of feeling this way? A common misconception about anxiety is that you can't be depressed because anxiety is the opposite with the heightened feelings but that's just nonsense because it implies no one with anxiety ever gets fed up and must be happy.

[Ben1989]

For instance the other day I was driving to London and I was driving fine for miles until I really took notice of a bridge randomly. I then panicked and thought about the amount of people that use bridges. I then panicked and thought ‘is that how I’m going to kill myself?!’. How you analyse that I don’t know. Then my thoughts would spiral as I imagine my daughter without a father, wife without husband etc and then I get seriously down.

I would say I’m 95% over any physical anxiety now such as MS, ALS. It’s tricky how I feel. I feel and hope I’m not suicidal. I have so many safety behaviours where I’ll shake my head when I hear the word, turn TV/Radio off whenever it’s mentioned etc.

But for I got to London and then was ‘fine’. I met up with my friend and managed to disconnect. Is this a good sign? As soon as I drove back my thoughts and feelings came back though.

---------- Post added at 06:29 ---------- Previous post was at 06:23 ----------

Terry you mentioned about the safety statement being just for generic HA has made me quite panicked as I feel it doesn’t apply to me now

---------- Post added at 06:56 ---------- Previous post was at 06:29 ----------

I feel very helpless

---------- Post added at 07:21 ---------- Previous post was at 06:56 ----------

I would give anything to going back to just believing I had MS.

And yes Terry, that is similar to the questionnaire I fill in. It just asks if you think you would be better off dead. I ticked 3 (out of 4) on that this time. My appt is later this afternoon but I’ve really regressed from last week

[ankietyjoe]

I have known two people in my life that have committed suicide. Neither of them feared death and were in fact quite comforted by the prospect of the end.

They didn't worry about it, and weren't anxious about it.

I think Terry is 100% correct that this is anxiety based intrusive thoughts.

I've mentioned this to you before, but suicide is not an inevitable 'symptom' of depression. It's a choice that a very small number of people make. Very small.

I would imagine the fact that you're actually trying to avoid the subject and worry about it almost guarantees that you'll never actually do it. It's just an over intellectualising 'what if' scenario playing over in your mind.

[MyNameIsTerry]

Ben, what I was saying is that the safety statement can apply to all intrusive thoughts including this one about suicide. It could be applied to HA just as it could any other theme because it is saying thoughts don't have to be reality, they can simply just be random meaningless thoughts with no insight into anything. We have them more than we realise but with anxiety we start to notice ones that we feel are more important and geared towards panic.

Your safety statement can be applied to the thoughts you are having now.

Seeing a bridge and thinking about it is a case of a trigger to the cycle. There can be many such triggers. Have you ever smelled something in a shop and had a memory? It's just how the mind works. Fight or flight does the same except it's response is in line with it's process as it works with dangers but in those with anxiety it's just that it has created irrational dangers and we have to change how we respond so it learns to change it's response to a trigger.

The fact being with people takes this away feeds more into it being intrusive thoughts, as well as how you've explained how it works. The mind is distracted. For someone depressed to the point of feeling this bad it must be a serious struggle to push such feelings away which they hide from others rather than them going away due to distraction. And there are those who are a risk because they are comforted by the thoughts as Joe said about people he knew rather than scared by the thoughts.

That's why I wondered if this is more intrusive thoughts which has self harm themes. It's less commonly seen on the HA board but more common on the OCD board. I've been through them too.

Intrusive thoughts are ego dystonic, the opposite of our beliefs. They aim to find what scares us because the greater the negative reaction the more they become reinforced in the cycle. But you will find much of what is discussed on the HA board involves intrusive thoughts which are essentially a typically scary thought that pops out of the subconscious. The trigger for it could be a twitch that triggers a subconscious "is it ALS" or seeing a bridge that triggers "should I jump" and the reaction is anxiety/panic with all the usual obsessive negative thinking that only reinforces the cycles importance.

[Ben1989]

You both make great points which I greatly have taken on board.

My therapist told me that all rational thinking is gone with panic and since Saturday night it’s all been a bit panicky. I cried on my wife as I was leaving for work this morning. But I have no additional safety statements to reassure myself and the spiral was created