My Body Warning Me

Today in group, we talked about the function of suicidality.

It's a cry for help so others recognize the extent of our pain when otherwise they may not take it seriously, it's a form of escapism so we don't have to confront problems that feel impossible and take control when we don't have agency, and it's also our body's way of telling us we're pushing too hard, that we might need more rest and care than we realize.

I've thought a lot about the first two, but it wasn't until partway through group today that I thought about the third. I get suicidal because I don't express my emotions or recognize their legitimacy, and I tend to ignore bad feelings I'm having. It's crazy that I denied struggling with mental health until my first hospitalization, even though I had multiple episodes of suicidal behavior and deep depressive episodes where I couldn't get out of bed before that. When I'm at work, I treat my body as a secondary consideration, putting off the need to go to the bathroom, to eat lunch, to sleep. I push it off and feel good at first because it helps me stay locked in and very productive.

Even now, the second I start to feel a little better, I begin to discount how bad I felt when things were bad. I tell my psychiatrist to take me off meds. I act like someone struggling with addiction when they're in clean mind, convinced that the risks of the problem escalating are behind them.

I'm working on treating myself better when I feel bad, recognizing that I struggle with severe mental illness and realizing that it isn't just made up for attention or because I'm bored. People have said invalidating things to me before, and I have fully internalized them. I need to trust what professionals have told me, which is that this is very real. Being in group with other people who feel the same way also helps me come to terms with the fact that this is real.

Here are some invalidating moments I replay in my mind:

• The time the nurse in the ER told me I should hold on to what little dignity I have left, right before they proceeded to stab my arm with needles like a pin cushion and accidentally popped my blood vessel in the process

• The time my therapist at university health services told me that I was probably sad because I'm just bored, that the only reason I was still suicidal was because I wasn't trying hard enough, that if I needed her help with DBT skills coaching I should just go to the ER instead even though it would mean I couldn't graduate if I got hospitalized

• The look on my resident dean's face when we had a conversation about the rope I bought on Amazon. It was a condescending, disgusted look, as if I was an alien

• Many more, but that's just to name a few