Quote:
Originally Posted by Soda_Voxel
TW: Suicidal ideation, depression, self harm, self hatred.
I haven't been extremely suicidal in a while, though I still have been depressed. But lately these thoughts have been coming back. A combination of my worsening anxiety and my constant depression and self hatred are contributing to this.
Anxiety makes me suicidal because I'd rather not be conscious than have to deal with all the stuff I'm worried about. I think of it like, "suicide would be one final stressor and then i'd be rid of them all". Depression and self hatred make me suicidal for obvious reasons. Similarly, I'm struggling a lot with internalised ableism as well.
I don't currently feel the urge to act on these thoughts. I do find myself fantasising and 'semi-planning'; losing myself in hypotheticals of when and where and how I would end my life if I were to do it. I do similar things with self harm, however the self harm is a much more active urge.
I am overwhelmed, stressed, angry, tired, sad, and self deprecating. This really sucks. |
Hey there Soda,
I am sorry the thoughts and urges are increasing in intensity. Emmie gave you a couple of ideas on what to do about the mental health component of what you posted. I wanted to talk a little about the internalized ableism. I am assuming you mean you have a disability aside from depression and anxiety? Maybe you can clarify this? I have recently been diagnosed with Autism and it is new having an official diagnosis. I am still coming to terms with it. But I noticed I can have some internalized ableism about this as well as my multiple mental health diagnosis. Sometimes I feel upset that I am not communicating effectively, sometimes I am down about my productivity levels and sometimes I feel so alone and alienated in my experiences. The way I see my mental health profile is that I was born with autism and developed Complex-PTSD, depression and anxiety. In addition, I have certain traits like being a highly sensitive person, some ADHD symptoms, auditory processing issues, social anxiety, OCD-tendencies etc. So for me, I learned that it is important to "work with' instead of against my brain/mind/body. Specificially the Autism, ADHD and Highly Sensitive Person traits, I do not see these as pathologies. With Complex-PTSD and my BPD traits (the fears and sensitivities) I see those two as acquired neurodivergencies. Anxiety and depression symptoms I see as manifestations of suffering and those symptoms I try to manage as best as I can with the knowledge that I will not be perfect and trying to accept that.
I recently had some hell-ish experiences between a very messed-up job experience with bullying and high stress, which led to increasing burnout, which led to quitting in an attempt to take care of myself before I hit crisis and that led me to a job that turned out to be a horrible traumatic scam and that led me to attending an intensive outpatient program that did more harm than good for me and I would argue worsened my state in some ways. I still have major fears of returning to work and potentially being bullied again, of being manipulated and hurt and to feel unsafe again. But I decided that this time instead of mitigating the crisis and returning back to a full-time job, I decided to analyze some structural ways in my life that are contributing to perpetuating burnout instead of supporting myself. I am trying to go slower and deeper with understanding my lifestyle and how to make it work better with where I am. I still have feelings of internalized ableism like right now I struggle with that I am not employed and have not been since January and that in my 12 years since I turned the age of being a legal adult (18 years old), I have not been consistently employed. I feel "left behind" in some ways. I feel a bit less-human. But I also know that people grow at different paces. I know this from having worked with children for some time. I know that sometimes children who struggle in math for weeks, will suddenly have a "growth spurt" in which the concepts click after struggling for some time. This is comparable to a mental health journey. I find that learning something new in a subject or discipline is comparable in some ways to the mental health recovery journey in that there are times when we are lost and confused and see no direction or way out of how to move forward and other times when we "see" more and have a vision of what's next to come.
I hope that the take away from this is that even if you do not have all the answers as anxiety and depression likes to make us believe we need to know the answers or else we are failures, that it all takes time and things can and do get better. I have been a user of teenhelp since 2012 which is 12 years now, I've participated in peer-based support groups including some that are neuro-affirming spaces specifically, spent time with peers in a clubhouse (a specific model, I can tell you more if you are curious) and spent time talking to others who were participating in services alongside me in group therapies and I have heard so many stories of recovery and I also know that community is a big component to supporting someone's recovery process. I think that therapists, psychiatrists, doctors, family members, friends, teachers, case workers are all important part of the support team and sometimes what is missing is people who are like us which I think specifically can speak to the internalized ableism. Because I nkw most likely, we are kinder to others than to ourselves and the internalized ableism underneath is a lot of fear and anxiety and judgement that we get from other people. But when we have people who "get us" and can support us, our internalized ableism doesn't have as much power. We become more compassionate to ourselves when we see others who want to be in community with us. It is very hard to live in a world where our brain, body, ability etc is seen as "wrong" or "bad" in some way. As humans we have a very deep desire to connect and belong, we need it to survive. So when we get the message that we are not good enough to be OURSELVES, this can be so damanging to our self-esteem and it makes it difficult to maintain resilience in life challenges. This is my opinion but I do believe it is backed up by research on toxic shame. It is a terrifying place to be in when someone feels unacceptable for who they are, they have to hide themselves constantly in some way. That is actually a big trigger of my dissociative symptoms, I've learned about myself. When I get the message that I am too shameful to exist, I do not want to anymore so I "cut off" via dissociation. Perhaps similarly, you get suicidal thoughts? One last thing, before I let you perculate on these thoughts is that occupational burnout is different than disability burnout. Living with a disability or condition that people around you may not understand or not know how to support you over time and the internalized ableism that comes with an ableist society can often times be one of the triggers to disability burnout. It is more complex than occupational burnout but can definitely include burnout around someone's career/job. For me, I noticed the occupational burnout and then I realized there's something deeper there and realized I am burntout in general by life. The constant depression, anxiety and mental health challenges is moving at a faster and more intense pace than what my resources can keep up with. I learned that the invalidation and well-intentioned people who were saying harmful things were contributing to my burnout. Definitely well-meaning people who simply couldn't understand the microaggressions and the suffering that it triggered. So I learned to include as one of my supports now is to read, watch videos, engage in support groups that are likely to offer non-judgemental interactions and can reduce some of my overwhelm instead of going to people who don't know how to help and may reinforce me to internalize more ableism onto myself.
I hope this helps and feel free to come back and post more if you need to.
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