How I stopped wanting to hurt or kill myself

My motto for this month has been, “No negative self-talk.”  Almost every woman and many men who come to my office or call me on the phone have some way of talking to themself that is a put down or a negative comment toward themselves.  It could be as simple as apologizing when it’s not necessary or saying, “I was stupid to do that,” but almost everyone has a way to put themselves down.

For those of us who are abuse survivors, the problem can be much more acute.  When I got sober I found my thoughts often turned to wanting to hurt myself or wanting to die.

When I was a very short time sober, maybe one year, I heard someone tell a similar story to mine and at the end of it she said that she had not wanted to kill herself in five years.  I remembered this since then – it was about 20 years ago that I heard her say this.  For me, it was a complete message of hope, that someone with a similar story to mine could go five years without wanting to kill herself.  I think that was the day when I knew there was hope for me and the day that I decided to reach for being like her.  And today I can honestly say I have not wanted to kill myself in quite a bit more than five years.

Our minds have grooves in them and as we play the same messages over and over we deepen the groove.  I had a groove in my mind that was “I should drive my car into a tree.”  I had another one that I wanted to cut myself.  I did not do these things, but I did think these thoughts, over and over and over again. 

One thing I like to say is, “if you can hear it, you can change it.”  More on point perhaps, “if you can hear your thought, you can interrupt your thought.”  It was second nature to me to think, “I want to drive my car into a tree,” but as I started to listen to my thoughts I became willing to question them.  So when I heard myself say that, I could ask myself, “Do I really and truly want to drive my car into that tree?”  I began to think my thought through.  “I want to drive my car into a tree” was a shorthand way of saying, “I feel bad”. 

So then I asked myself, “why am I feeling bad?”  I took an approach Geneen Roth describes as “curiosity and kindness” toward my own thoughts.  And I found out there was usually a reason why I felt bad – I was upset by something someone had said, or I was tired, or I was hungry, or I was scared.

And once I found out why I felt bad – I could work to change how I felt – by eating, by sleeping, by talking to a friend, by writing about how I was feeling, by praying.  A big thing that helped me was the saying, “feelings aren’t facts.”  But more than that, I learned that I could change my thoughts and listen to my feelings.  Over time, my feelings changed.  But it began inside my head when I refused to indulge in thoughts about hurting myself, and started to take that first sign, the first thought of hurting myself, as a signal that I needed to do something to take loving care of myself and to help myself feel better. 

A friend tells a joke about the alcoholic with a flat tire who calls the suicide hotline.  I still go down that road sometimes, finding whatever I can’t handle as a reason to want to die.  But much more often these days, I can stop the thought before it starts, remember that there are ways, like roadside service, to deal with the flat tires of life, and that I can handle what comes my way without turning to negative thoughts and negative self – talk.  And I honestly believe that if I could make such a huge change in my thoughts that anyone, anyone at all, can make new choices and become a person who does not want to kill herself.  I find it to be totally worth it!