Episode Summary
In this episode I explore whether or not I would actually have ended my life had I not gone to the doctor and asked for help. I share my mindset over the weeks, months and years in the run up to that day. To the external observer, this will be an insight to what people contemplating suicide think about when considering taking their own life. Some have described suicide as a very selfish act. This episode might help you decide whether that is true or not.
Episode Transcription (edited)
Welcome to this episode of the Hope, Help, Happiness podcast.
Today I want to explore a topic that is relevant and is something that I have been exploring in my own mind recently. I want to use this episode as a way of maybe vocalising that and really exploring it.
The topic today is the question:
“Would I have actually committed suicide?
8 weeks ago I went to the doctors feeling suicidal. Just the act of going to the doctors interrupted that pattern and set me on a train of action. It lead me to a state now some two months later, that having discovered the health service in this country isn’t going to fix me, or at least it’s not going to attempt to fix me for another 216 days since I first went to the doctors, I realised I’ve got to take control of my healing.
Since then, I’ve started to feel much better and I’m in a much better place than I was two months ago. Looking back, I just wanted to reflect on this question – would I have actually committed suicide? – or was it just me crying wolf. I’ve been reflecting on this and I just wanted to share those thoughts.
At the time when I went to the doctors, I was feeling incredibly low. I was feeling helpless. I was tearful. I’d spent many, many days over the previous couple of months just staying in bed because I couldn’t face the world. Because of the nature of my work, I had the space to do that especially as the work had pretty much dried up, so I had no commitment. Therefore it was easy for me just to stay in bed and do nothing.
I was tearful – crying a lot because of the feelings of helplessness and also the wretched feelings I had about finding myself in this situation. I was feeling completely lonely. That loneliness was part of isolating myself from society, from my friends and from my family. This is because I didn’t want them to know or to see how I’m feeling. I’m sure I’ll explain that more in another episode.
All those feelings meant I was in a really bad place and I was struggling. I was ruminating a lot – spending a lot of time thinking negative thoughts with my mental state getting worse and worse and worse. So my mindset was contaminated and it felt I couldn’t cope or deal with the challenges I was facing. What was going through my mind were phrases like “I can’t”, “This is too difficult”, “It’s hard”, “I’m so useless”‘ blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and getting more and more negative, negative and negative.
This was how I was feeling.
Now this isn’t just something that had just emerged because I’d had a few recent setbacks and problems. For the last three years at least, I’ve had feelings of stress and overwhelm together with really bad emotional experiences coupled with a relationship I was in and the challenges I was facing with work.
So there’d been this build up over a period of time. It’s on top of a very poor foundation of weak emotional strength based on the fact I’ve been suffering from these challenges for most of my life. So this wasn’t something that had just appeared. This had been building up slowly little by little over an extended period of time, getting worse and worse and worse and worse and worse; to the point where I felt I wanted to take my own life.
I had been at this place about eight months ago as well and had actually got to the point where I was sat with a strap around my neck feeling it was going to be the time to take my life. But I was so frightened by that experience – the fact that I’d got there, it shocked me out of it and I thought, right, I’ve got to try and do something about it.
I set myself a target of trying to work on something to move my way out of it. Rather than focus on dealing with me and dealing with the challenges (which is what I’m doing now), I put my attention where I’d always put it. I thought the reason why I had the problems was because I wasn’t generating any income and that was affecting my self esteem. This is because I had this driver for approval through my work. I felt and to a certain extent still feel it’s the only way I could be valued in this world.
So I set myself up to try and do another business project to generate a revenue stream. my plan was once I’ve got money coming in, I could use it to “fix myself”. That was my rationale. I worked on that project for four months and it failed and set me back completely. That was Just before Christmas which is when it started to go rapidly downhill for me. I suddenly thought it doesn’t matter what I do, nothing’s going to work.
[And as an aside this a classic symptom of learned helplessness].
I became resigned to the fact that it doesn’t matter what I do, nothing’s going to change. And that’s when the thoughts started to get deeper and I started really thinking about how this is going to happen.
One of the things about doing that is there is a concern for what the people who you leave behind will feel or think about the fact that someone they love and care for suddenly takes their own life.
And so I thought I needed to explain to them. I started to think about who were the significant people in my life who I would need to reach out to. Who are the people that are important for me to be able to say, look, this is why I’ve done this.
So I started planning a list of people who I would write a personal letter to, a handwritten letter, to explain why I’d done it. Before that I’d even thought about writing a book to explain everything so people would understand. But that seemed too overwhelming a task (which is how the idea of this podcast emerged because it’s a bit easier just to talk into a microphone!)
I was going to catalogue my whole journey through life and all the challenges I’ve had and why I had come to this point where I felt it was the only option. I even had a title for the book. Then I had a photograph taken by a professional photographer. He was looking for some subjects to do some test photography and captured a great picture perfect for the cover of the book. It was probably the best picture I have ever had taken of me because it captured me perfectly – a melancholic expression devoid of the usual artificial smile for the camera.
Another thing I’d started to think about was gauging the length of time I had left to live by the amount of money I’d got left. And at the time it was about six to eight months of living expenses. I started looking six to eight months ahead to the point where I sort of mentally decided this was it.
For example, I’ve got a trip to the States planned with some friends later on this year. I was thinking, “Well, I won’t be going on that”.
The concept of having another Christmas – that had gone.
Something that I suppose is really quite quite sad given that I’m single right now, is that I suddenly realised I’d never make love to a woman again. It was quite upsetting to realise that.
These were the sorts of things going through my mind.
I even started planning the funeral – what readings I would have, who I’d want to tell I’d passed on. I was even going to record a message that I would play at the funeral trying to explain why I’d done what I’d done.
I started planning about getting my affairs in order so that my brother wouldn’t have the administrative burden of coming down and sorting things out. I was going to cancel direct debits. I was going to throw a whole lot of stuff away to save someone else the bother. I was going to gather all the policies I’ve got in place together, all the documentation and create a folder for him to work through.
I have some artwork I inherited from my stepfather when he died. I was going to take them up to my brother and ask him if he’d “look after” them beforehand without realising I was actually giving them to him.
I have a motorbike and I was going to ask my brother to sell it for me but in reality I was going to give it to him with all the paperwork so it was essentially his after I’d gone.
I live in a rented apartment so I was going to make sure I’d cleaned everything out. I was going to give notice on the property. So effectively on the day I would do this, I would have left the property meaning the landlords wouldn’t have to deal with a deceased tenant.
I was planning on doing all of this because I didn’t want to create any work or problems for the people I’d leave behind. Part of that was also planning sort of withdrawal from the people I know – though I’d been doing this anyway in the isolation I created because of how I’d ben feeling.
And of course I’d even decided how I was going to do it.
So that’s where I was.
But even then I still had some reservations. I was fearful of it physically hurting me or maybe getting it wrong and damaging myself, not actually doing it and ending up being in an even worst situation.
I’d even thought about leaving a message on Facebook to say goodbye to the world. I’d also thought about somehow informing the emergency services of where to find me so that I’m not found by people who are close to me. That perhaps is a bit selfish because those poor people have to deal with that as well.
All these thoughts were going through my mind.
And the answer to the question “Would I have actually committed suicide?
Well at the time that I went to the doctors, I probably wouldn’t have done it then because with the planning I was considering, I wasn’t ready to do it.
But had I not gone to the doctors, if you extrapolate where things were going with the thought process I had, I would have done it.
I would have taken my own life at some point in the not too distant future.
I’m pleased that I’ve arrested that for now. And I say for now because I’m being a realist here. I have been at this stage before and sort of recovered from it. I’ve been low and back up again. But I’m not naive enough to think that this is it.
It’s possible I may still find myself hitting a low again. I’m hoping now with the work I’m doing that if I do, I’ll be able to deal with it.
But had I not interrupted myself, I think suicide would have been inevitable. At the moment I am pretty convinced that I’m never going to do it. It’s how I feel right now in this moment in time with the optimism I’m started to create from the small progress I’ve made just over this last week.
Thinking back to that day, I will be eternally grateful for those two special people, and a third who called me whilst I was sat in the doctor’s waiting room (I didn’t take the call for obvious reasons). Their brief input into my life at that particular time, demonstrating unconditional love and affection for me, effectively saved my life.
So until tomorrow.
