Suicide

recovering from inkling is the practice of staying alive

Recovering from really coming close to ending your own life takes a little while. It takes a certain amount of time to be determined even in today’s generally self serving, fast modern world.

There are many stages in a suicidal mindset. And by stages I mean like a time line from first inkling or whatever trauma triggers your inkling will absolutely play a part in the progression of thinking and after that a type of ideation or thought process starts to lure the person deep in their psyche into thinking that ending one’s life would be the necessary relief. Now, it is my opinion that it really does begin as an extremely subtle frame of mind that takes place and takes hold within about 24 hours of the trauma to coalesce into some kind of real thing that could happen.

But it doesn’t happen. Thank you.

The recovery period could be an actual response to the initial inkling. And what feels like consideration is actually the story that isn’t going to happen but could have. Sometimes suicidal recovery is realizing what could have happened. And for some people that moment really crystallizes after they have admitted or talked about what almost happened out loud to someone else. Once it’s said out loud, even if it was a joke people can feel that you are serious and that you just overcame the will to self annihilate.

Congratulations and now you have to deal with your own shame that comes into your heart because whatever it was that stopped you from killing yourself holds a precious kind of power over your life whether it is known or not. Usually this comes as the drama in your mind of the pain from someone who loves you having to keep going in life without you after a suicide and that you would have hurt them so deeply as to change their life for better or worse and I think it’s worse.

I’ve witnessed, to varying degrees different stages in other people on the road through this kind of recovery. Once I saw a young man on the very brink of suicide walk into an emergency room. He sat down right there across from me with a nurse and he talked very frankly about his state of mind to the nurse that had been sent down from the psyche ward called the Johnson Unit. I witnessed the first responder. It was incredible and I won’t ever forget it.

The goal in my writing about this is just to say there is more to it than meets the eye. It all happens so fast and it can end tragically. Sometimes it’s the moment when you can’t reach the lock box up on the shelf and you are just too tired to try harder. So from that point on you didn’t do it. It’s like a fog and knowing that you’ve been triggered by a trauma response can really help. Something started the inkling after all.

Often it’s an excruciating level of being treated with no respect, verbally abused, and chastised while not being heard. Not being heard and respected by someone and then them using that against you can damage your will to live. It can be crushing and it can start a cascade of very difficult states of mind. Maybe the inkling isn’t there immediately but the absolute reservation of any hope can leave a person feeling very numb.

So if you are feeling like you are on one side or the other. Maybe something that you are anticipating will cut deeply and so you can start now to prepare yourself with meditations and listening to 432 hz music or possibly you are right in the middle which is a state of isolation and an odd secret knowing of your power. Or maybe you have come through to another side and you really must be extra gentle with yourself. Move slowly. No rash decisions.

There is a grief that is underlying suicidal tendencies. When things really hurt and we feel really alone just know that you can sit down right there in it. Be in it. Feel it. No one is coming to save you. Now it is time to step into who you are becoming after the transformation of living through it and feeling it. Let yourself change. It can really hurt but there really is no choice. You found the strength to stay and feel it. Finding the path of self love out of pain is the most amazing thing to do. You are in recovery from considering suicide.

In my life and work I have known many people who didn’t know how to navigate the inkling. They listened too closely to the whispers of darkness and they succumbed to a place that we can’t know. Let it be okay that you can’t know that place. That place is beyond you. It’s better to turn and walk the opposite direction. That is healing and recovery and your joy comes from there in time.

Death’s tentacles creep into the floorboards. Death can’t have you yet. We need you here. I need you here. You need you here.

We don’t hear a lot about the recovery from inkling. We hear of the deaths of people who didn’t know how to stop the pain. May God rest those in memory who we have lost to suicide and may we realize there are many more who are still with us. They are recovering or recovered. This can happen many times in life. We practice staying alive.