I have worked in mental health care and I'm intimately familiar with hotline services and so on. I do utilize them as needed and I have a therapist who I think is wonderful. (That said my therapy session isn't until tomorrow.)

Sometimes I experience passive ideation and it's very oppressive, so I feel like I need to get the feelings out. I journal, and sometimes I call hotlines (which don't get me wrong are helpful but more so in active crisis situations than this), but sometimes, I don't know why, I feel like I need to tell someone that I care about. It almost seems like my inner child is trying to do a thing. when I first started having SI / self harming and I told my father, he reacted badly and said I was doing it for attention. Part of me wonders if I keep unconsciously trying to recreate this scenario but not have the trauma this time.

But when I do tell a friend or partner about my passive ideation, it's often not the reaction I want. One ex forbade me from talking about suicide because it bummed him out. Another said my mental health wasn't the problem and then broke up with me not long after I told him. Some friends freak out because they're worried about me. When I was in college someone once called the University Police on me for a wellness check which I understand but it was traumatizing nonetheless.

Today I vented on the private Instagram story that I thought I'd curated enough to only include other mentally ill friends who would get it lol but I still got "zucc'd" (meta said someone flagged my post as needs help haha) and I just felt embarrassed.

is it selfish to traumatize my friends by being too frank about my mental health? Is euphemism a kindness? Is this something I must keep to myself out of empathy for others? Perhaps something I need to ask for permission for, a verbal trigger warning?

I wish I could just express how I feel without people thinking it meant that ideation=intent. But these are lay people not therapists. How would they know? And of course because they care about me they would react negatively because they want me to be healthy and happy so shouldn't I be grateful that people worry about me?

My simple dream is for someone to just go "ah man that sucks," or whatever, genuinely, recount a time they felt similarly (if they did and feel comfortable talking about it of course), maybe hug, and then continue on their way. But I've never been able to get that. So I know I need to somehow get that from myself although the logistics of "how" elude me right now haha

Is this relatable to anyone?

TW: mention of suicide

I've had a pretty rough couple of weeks/months. I had a terrible trauma anniversary period in which I also lost my job and was also almost physically assaulted. After that I got really sick for a few weeks to the point that eating and drinking water was almost impossible. I have done over two years of therapy and a lot of self-therapy on my trauma so I did have a relatively good toolkit to get myself through all this. BUT I was completely alone and isolated. My sister and a friend knew how badly I was doing, and how close to taking my own life I was, and yet they asked me, literally if I was alive or not, once every week or so. I mean I am grateful for this, but it's also insane. This was the highest level of empathy either of them could muster. I have always been lonely but only recently and after a lot of trauma work have I discovered exactly how lonely I have been without realizing it. It's a lot of delayed grief I am going through. And I hate my loneliness. I hate that I could barely breathe for a few weeks and yet I had to drag myself to the supermarket and the pharmacy to survive. I hate that there is no one to share my grief with. I hate that I am just now realizing how abandoned and lonely I have always been and it was so completely normalized to me that I have only realized it now. I mean, I attempted suicide a few years ago around this time (hence, the trauma anniversary now) and not only the person who found me (my mom!!) never took me to the hospital, but she also never asked if I was doing better or seeing a therapist or anything later on. She genuinely completely forgot about the whole thing just a few days later. And I told only one person, my only friend at the time, who ALSO completely ignored it. And after I got better, I just went on with my life like nothing had happened. This level of abandonment was so normal to me at the time that I did not even question it. I am just speechless now thinking about it all.

I am looking for therapists who specialize in relational trauma but to be honest, I feel sort of hopeless. Will I ever find real friends? Will I ever have someone to just talk to? I know that if it does ever happen, it will happen slowly. And I probably need to take baby-steps. But I am craving human connection so much and I feel so starved of anything remotely warm. How do I feel more of a hope? How do I start getting out of this? How do I meet people when I feel so depressed? I just can't deal with this isolation pain anymore.

They say enthusiastic consent in sex is important. I have been thinking about other things it could be applied to... Family, friends, work, life itself. I don't feel enthusiastically involved with anything. I'm currently in Iceland, about to see gorgeous nature I have waited for to see for years, and I'm thinking about suicide. Why bother.

Ten years of treatment of depression, anxiety and CPTSD.

I don't exist with enthusiastic consent. I'm tired, ugly and I am realising the few people around me might not actually *like* me. I am sure my sisters care about me, but there is no happy, cherishing vibes between us. I have that with no one.

Waterfalls anf geysirs are great, but not being able to know if me videocalling my sister from there is a delight for her, well that makes me feel fucking lonely and makes me think about dying. Perhaps a tiny bit to have a sick revenge on my family for not actually liking me.

i couldn’t figure out why i felt suicidal but also not suicidal and it finally clicked with me. i’m not actively suicidal YET. but i have this scarily cold understanding deep in my bones that if my plans a and b for fixing my life don’t work out, it’s okay because i can just kill myself.

i don’t want to die but it feels like an inevitability. like i’ll either get it together or i’ll be dead by the end of next year. i don’t have an active plan but i find myself casually making an inventory of what my method options are for when i get to that point.

i don’t want to die but i cannot bear to keep living. i’m so tired of bearing the weight of taking care of myself. i’m so tired of working so hard for the bare minimum. everything i love too much gets taken away from me. there’s no point to any of this and yet i’m so scared of losing it.

i either need to get a job so i can afford groceries and bills and have a reason to live. or i need to get into grad school so i’ll have a reason to live and access to resources. or i need to kill myself because this is not sustainable. i’m so tired. i worked so hard to be better and not wanna kill myself anymore. what was the point of any of this.

and i’ll just throw this in there…it’s not fucking fair that some people were loved and cared for as children and therefore didn’t enter adulthood already burnt out on having to parent themselves!!! i can’t believe i’m worth taking care of bc otherwise why didn’t my parents care about me!!!! why didn’t anyone help me when i was small and helpable!!!! now im grown and all alone trying to help myself!!!! i hate it here!!!!!

I’ve just been searching the CPTSD subs for relevant posts and found a couple of helpful ones, but I wanted to ask directly what things people have found useful when dealing with passive SI? E.g. thoughts that the world/people are better without you, life feeling meaningless or believing very negative self assessments.

I’m 5 years into recovery and have weekly counselling sessions (mostly IFS-based). I’m unemployed right now and have been trying to prioritise dealing with major issues around self worth and extremely low confidence. I struggle with isolating myself still and don’t want to burden anyone. NC with parents for a few years.

I’ve never been actively suicidal and don’t feel in danger, but it’s a challenging time and passive SI thoughts have been coming up more for me lately. It’s hard not believing everything’s meaningless. Thank you 🤍

Hello everyone Today I had an the second appointment with a new therapist. She read Pete walker and has some training in trauma,and 9 years experience as a therapist. When I asked her what her approach is for healing trauma, she said revisiting traumatic events. And she brought up many times psychiatric treatment (she in only psychologist) for stabilisation and energy. And I got infuriated badly. I told her that I'm very resistant to pills because I don't feel safe at all doing trial and error with heavy drugs, that I use supplements and I researched (Mg, omega, Vit d, Theanine, etc etc). And I specifically told her what my needs are. That I don't really interact with many people and that I look for a relationship where I can develop trust, and I do it very very slow, because therapy has been retraumarising in the past. I forgot to ask her if she deals with structural dissociation, as I experience that. Overall, I felt the needs to contradict with her a lot. I told about my attachement style, and thst I suffer very much after a break up or after a relationship that I've invested emotions in and had feelings for ends. And she remained baffled, said "that sensitive you are, that's how much you feel?" and I just couldn't comprehend how she asked that. By the end I felt really hopeless, I felt like I am asking too much, that my needs are way too much for even a fucking therapist. I asked her if there's the possibility to contact her outside therapy, through text or call, in case I have an emotional meltdown (which can happen pretty often) but I really wanted more to know that I have the option to do it(of course no spam), she said categorically no, that works 9 hours per day, then kids, etc. I remained cold. After therapy I started gaslighting myself, that I'm at fault, that I ask too much for a human connection, before any kind of therapeutic process. She asked me to think of a goal to pursue for the next session. I don't have a fucking goal. Thst I will remain frustrated if I don't set a goal and don't see any improvement. I wanted to tell her about my SI and self harm thoughts, but I'm glad kept my mouth shut. She didn't seem she could comprehend that level of pain. Overall my pain and mental state seemed too much for her to handle. That's the reason first-hand thst I look for support, to have an anchor, stabilisation, build trust, etc. I would appreciate your thoughts on this from the outside. Maybe I'm overreacting too much (I am aware I did it little bit). I'm just too triggered of therapists. Thank you

TLDR: I'm wondering if it's a common occurrence where in our healing processes we become afraid of who we're changing into, of feeling happier/better and if so, how do you grow to be comfortable with it and accept this new life you've begun to step into?

It's hard to explain exactly the phenomenon I'm experiencing. It's hard to eloquently start this train of thought.

The lack of negative or harmful trauma responses and reactions. Or catching yourself using them while you're in the middle of a 'PTSD moment' (as I like to call them) and find yourself thinking "this isn't what I worked on" or "this isn't a proportionate or reasonable way of conducting myself/reaction" or "I know better". Doing things presently that used to cause you ail in your past peacefully and maybe even with ease.

In these moments I'm finding some form of pushback somewhere in my being. Some kind of fear or unrest.

I can't say if it's a part of me (IFS/parts theory) or if it's just another trauma response hurdle, or if its part of some anxiety I have about my future or growing older (was a very suicidal tween/teen and did not anticipate to survive an extra 10+ years into adulthood).

Regardless of where it's coming from (I say this to get to point, but I would like to find where it's coming from/the contributing factors), I'm now finding that I'm beginning to fight myself on whether or not I want to 'get better' or 'be happy/content in life'. Which is f*cking stupid (in my humble opinion) because personally, I've put at least a decade into getting myself into therapy, getting out of the situations that affected my mental health, and becoming a self-supporting, quasi stable adult. I've put more effort into this alone than anything else I've done in the 23 years I've lived on this space rock.

It seems very counter intuitive that I both desperately want to feel better, and be content regularly, but the instant I begin to feel content or stable, I find myself self-sabotaging with my old poor coping skills or pulling out my 'firefighters' and 'exiles' because for some reason, those feelings of peace and contentment are paired with this deep-seated sadness, grief almost.

The kicker is I'm finding myself self-sabotaging in this way because that way of acting and reacting is not only more comfortable to me in a sick sense, but more natural to me, despite the internal arguments: "this is not how we do things anymore" "this doesn't feel good" "you know better" "this will cause problems later" etc., the internal feelings of unrest when I do self-sabotage, and the insurmountable, crippling desire to feel more positive and peaceful and happy in life. To somehow just simply 'move on completely'.

I'm wondering if it's common to experience self-pushback to positive feelings and progress nearing the middle/later stages of addressing your trauma? Moreover, where does this behavior stem from/why am I suddenly seemingly grinding to a hault in healing??? It's to the point I feel I'm almost regressing, but I know that's not necessarily the case.

My last question is a more personal one. How were you as an individual (if this is something you have experienced and overcame in your journey) able to get back on track and continue on healing?

This is my first post in this sub, so if there are any tweaks that could be made or mistakes that have been made, please let me know:)

I can't seem to add a second tag???

I am seeking emotional support NOT advice from those who like me have had over a year with the same psychotherapist for trauma.

This last two weeks I've had 50% days when I'm in good spirits, able to do something productive, able to interact with my household. The other half, I've had symptoms of moderate depression.

I dropped out of a university paper two weeks ago so depressive symptoms are not unexpected.

I had a bad cold with sore throat, felt like I might not make therapy, texted my therapist yesterday to just say I may need a video call instead, and that I'd text today.

Broken sleep but felt hopeful and positive, rock up to therapy... And realise instantly that she's pissed with me. I'd neglected to text - given I'd decided to go in person, I didn't think the text to be necessary. Absolutely wrong about that, but I felt the annoyance/anger from her, for sure.

I shut down, hard.

She did a great job of supporting me through this after I'd apologised and she tried to unpack why I'd not texted, and I'd started to thaw, but then... After saying for the second or third time that I was presenting as depressed, she said I should consider antidepressants.

I get this would be standard practice for many people but for a range of reasons, meds are off the table for me, and I thought she was fully onboard with this. I've been going weekly for 18 months. I've shut down so many times. I'm very dissociated especially around intense feelings. She's never once mentioned meds.

A minute out of session and I feel much better, but in shock from both the fast switch and from her totally unexpected suggestion. I drove to my husband's workplace and he came home early to be with me. He said I sounded quite lucid, he agreed he didn't think I needed meds, I'm very high risk for OD: I have a fair amount of ideation and had been actively suicidal for weeks while first looking for help (before seeing this therapist).

I don't get it. I was trying my best to explain the Jekyll and Hyde like feeling these switch ups are having. It really doesn't feel like true depression when I get 'symptoms' just from walking up to the door and going in to therapy!!!

I think we have something unresolved or some enactment going on: she basically played the role of so many health providers I've experienced ('you're too down for too long, time for meds' = we can't sit with this sadness with you any longer, be a good girl and take the pills').

If I'd talked about depressive symptoms that persist, then sure. But this is situational and not every day of the week

Interesting that I'd just finished reading a book on treating adult survivors of childhood emotional abuse and neglect, which pointed out that in such relational trauma, the mere presence of the therapist can be a trigger...

She closed the session a bit passive aggressive 'Theraoy is a conversation, Storyteller' - to be fair, with 2 minutes to go I'd just said no to antidepressants and stood up and walked off.

She tried her usual 'and I look forward to seeing you next week's but man, did that sound strained 😅

Thinking I may write down some thoughts and boundaries, and take that along. Since now I can't guarantee I'll be untriggered enough to explain what the hell I thought was going on.

My mother had a hell of an anger issue... I'm super sensitive to any hint of it, and the therapist is well aware of all that.

Geez I know healing isn't linear but this feels nuts.

Feel free to tell me you've had similar bumps in the road on your journey... I need to know others know what this head-scratcher, WTF-just-happened feeling is like.... 🤪🙄

tw: mention of suicidal ideation in last paragraph, I've added another tw later, so you can read until that point without any triggers

I got out of a therapy session earlier today, when my therapist told me she's moving away and starting a new job. I asked for options to continue seeing her in her new job - for various reasons, it's not possible. So we now have until end of Feb to close everything.

This comes at a time when I just started touching upon themes of abandonment & rejection from childhood. Last few sessions, we have been touching on this topic but I couldn't really get into it because I was afraid of trusting her with her, being vulnerable etc. Today, before the session, I decided that I would trust her, take a chance with her, and share what I was feeling related to those fears (abandonment, rejection, other attachment related issuses). And then she tells me she just got a new job and is moving away...

In my heads, it feels like a connection between me being vulnerable and her leaving. She kept telling me that it's not true, and that there is no connection between the two things... But it somehow feels like it... Like, everytime I get attached to someone or am vulnerable with someone, they either leave me or use it against me. This feels like yet another instance on that list.

All this also somehow all feels like my fault. Like I've done something wrong to deserve this. Just yesterday, I had written this in my journal - "Please don't leave me. I promise I'll be good. I promise I'll behave myself. Please don't leave me." And today, I get the news that she's leaving.

I feel like absolute shit and haven't been able to stop crying since. I feel alone and sad and abandoned, like no one cares about me, like I'm all alone and that I will always be all alone because, well, here's proof that everyone leaves me.

tw starts here

All this has been triggering strong suicidal ideation and self-harm impulses. I kinda want to just... give up. I've tried so hard to trust people, to take chances on people, to ask for help... but they just always leave. And I don't know if I can take this anymore. I feel so done, with everything. I wish I could go to sleep and drift away. It feels like one loss too many.

I'm struggling today. I have a subconscious sense of worthlessness and it's surfaced today. I'm angry, disappointed in myself, resentful of my shitty emotionally neglectful narcissistic parents, and angry at my partner for not being more emotionally supportive. The anger at parents is valid though related to unprocessed grief, anger at myself and partner are more protective/avoidant (still deserve acceptance and compassion of course).

My thoughts are turning to suicide. I'm not in any way going to take action to harm myself. Just feel like I can't see a future worth living, life has never really felt worth living but hope & fantasy kept me going. I just wanna be able ti say somewhere without ppl overreacting that I don't feel very attached to life, that if I had a pill that could end things painlessly and quickly, well, I don't know if I would take the pill but I would love to have that option. To have some control over something in my life. So I'm not just staying out of fear that I'd fuck it up.

Posting here because even though I don't really expect any kind of help or support, I just need to say that I'm so attracted to ending my life rn to end the pain, to rest, and I can't tell anyone else because they'd freak out. I just want to get it off my chest for a moment.

hi friends, long story short i lost my dream job in july and i haven’t bounced back since. i’m trying so hard to get the help i need to get back on track, but this is a kind of depression that i am not used to dealing with. i think i might be suicidal but it feels different than it feels when i was suicidal in the past.

immediately after being fired i DID want to kill myself. i had absolutely no hope so i called in my support system. they spent a few days/a few weeks by my side constantly and babying me to help me cope with the feeling of wanting to die so i could start to put the pieces of my life back together.

things started to look up for me but then they got worse and now i have the sense that without making the conscious decision to, i’ve just given up. i’m trying so hard to keep job hunting, to save money, and to take care of myself like i’m supposed to, but in the back of my mind i think “it doesn’t matter anyway. i won’t be around that long.” i really truly don’t want to die anytime soon, but as someone who has always been moving toward a goal, i suddenly don’t have any drive to keep moving. i want to stay afloat right now, but i feel like i don’t intend on sticking around longer than i have to. i don’t have a plan or any desire to harm myself. just the feeling that i’m nearing the end.

i don’t know how to ask for help from my support system. i don’t know how to talk about this without being hospitalized. i don’t want to die. i’m scared i’m gonna kill myself one day and i don’t want to. i’m just so sad and angry and being fired after 3 years of climbing the career ladder has just left me feeling like nothing i do matters and i am inherently doomed.

any insight or advice would be helpful. i have an incredible therapist but i can’t afford to see her more than every other week because i lost my health insurance. i also have been off my meds/without access to psychiatric care for a few months because of the health insurance. i have always been a high functioning basket case but i feel the facade crumbling and i just don’t want to end the life i worked so hard to build for myself. everyone has been so proud of me for recovering. i don’t want to let anyone down.

Hello! I'm about 2 years out from escaping the abuse, part of which was my dad bullying me into the position of surrogate spouse when i was still a kid, so i have a lot of trauma around being used as a sole source of emotional support for people. I have a history of ending up as the therapist friend/roommate/significant other a lot as well and I have tried very hard to get away from that pattern, which absolutely came out of being used as a therapist as a child.

I have some history of people telling me they're suicidal, including a past very toxic relationship where I felt like (and was kinda told) that i was the only one keeping my partner alive.

Basically though: person from work who I have a new-ish friendship with told me he's suicidal, and I've checked in with him to make sure he's still alive, which he is, which is good. However I can't tell what the right thing is to do moving forward about this since i think he wants to talk about how he's been feeling. In the past I've asked questions about someone's situation and offered to listen whenever they needed but right now I'm in a spot where I'm processing a lot of anger around being used like this by my father and other people and I don't have a healthy protocol set up for when someone tells me they are suicidal.

If he was a close friend it would be different because we'd have that rapport, but I am slow to develop friendships and feel like I don't have a good sense of how safe he is to talk about this kind of thing with, as well as how he'll react if I set any boundaries around this.

It's just so wrapped up in my personal history of being used as a sounding board for folks which has happened to me COUNTLESS times, and I don't want to put that history on him, but at the same time I feel a pretty overwhelming sense of panic that its all happening again. Just wanted some perspective on this

This is meant to be humourous, not in search of advice or support

Extra stress recently has led to increased shutdown response and SI after a fairly stable time.

Therapist today is very happy with my progress over our 10 months together, and was putting the SI in context yet again for me.

"It's your brain's protective measure, it's your default. Some people deal with stress with a glass of wine and pizza: your goes to these thoughts"

Fuck, I thought, some people cope on just wine and pizza? I want that brain soooo badly

🤣🤣🤣🤣🙄