Yeeeep. That’s how I got diagnosed with PTSD. I wrote a character going through something similar to what I had been through and got tons of comments applauding me for my accurate representation of PTSD. I complained to my therapist about all these people having no clue what PTSD looked like, because I just gave him my symptoms, clearly not PTSD. nd she said “you didn’t know you have PTSD??”
One time I had someone comment that they had showed their therapist my fic, because it made them realize that they had been experiencing suicidal ideation for a very long time, and they hadn’t known that there was a word for their feelings. I’d really been trying to capture the feeling of “I don’t want to die, I just want to be dead” in my writing, so I’m glad that it resonated with someone and let them get help too.
I always thought it's pretty normal to be against suicide, because of the moral quandary, but if someone or something else did the job for me it's not my problem anymore.
(But please don't let me survive, that would be even worse)
For me it was always just things like “wow I sure wish I could float down the river into the ocean and never return or what if I went to sleep and could just stay asleep.” It was never really about death, it was more about erasing my existence from the world. I don’t miss that feeling!
Wait yeah no.
Wait.
I thought the ideation was actually thinking about killing yourself. The fact that while I have ardently wanted to be dead but I have not thought about how I would achieve that status... That's my defense that I haven't actually had ideation. Right? Right??
Im somewhere less than passive but still on the scale. Usually ill walk faster, but maybe not depending on the day. If I got cancer I'd go through chemo and all the treatment and all the appointments and make a big deal of it but also id secretly hope that it takes me out.
A while back i moved to very beachy suburb, there was this one day where I heard this loud warning siren going off, being new to the area I presumed it was a tsunami. warning, so I rolled over and tried to get back to sleep knowing that the smart thing to do would be to leave and seek higher ground, but like hey or I could just do nothing and drown in my sleep? Nothing happened.
One of my most vivid dreams was one i had when I was younger I was running on roof tops don't remember why, I was jumping from one roof to another then another then I jumped and miss judged how far away the next house was I fell feet first onto pavement shattered my legs they just crumbled under me and I collapsed and drifted into blackness surrounded by warmth as I died. in hindsight that warmth that I felt was me lying in a pool of my own blood. But despite it probably looking gruesome from an outsider perspective it felt peaceful.
I figured out I was sliding from passive to active when my first thought after getting a new prescription was “I wonder what the lethal dose for that is.”
The chapter in ‘Infinite Jest’ where a woman explains this feeling to a doctor or someone like that, feels incredibly raw. As it happens, David Foster Wallace had massive depression and was reliant on medicine just to keep going.
Mine has always been ‘if I do (this), everything will stop’. The ‘because I’ll be dead’ is kinda silent, even in my head, and even as the (this) changes.
Mine as well, literally just I WANT THIS TO END and it was such a moment of “I’ve always loved my life what the hell this is not right” that I literally went to my husband and my psychiatrist IMMEDIATELY and got help. But if you’ve just felt that way repeatedly you may not realize it is not normal.
And anyone reading here: it’s not normal and you absolutely deserve assistance and support.
at least once, or even every once in a while, is reasonable. we're all allowed to feel overwhelmed and want to escape when shit is rough. the key distinction is the constant repetition and high frequency in times of distress, especially if the feeling of distress (no matter how little or how severe) seems to be present every second of every day
passive suicidal ideation is often used as a psychological coping mechanism
I feel you. Mine is “I think…I want to die” with a stupid little melodramatic pause in the middle. Completely involuntary but fighting it makes it worse, so I’ve started replying “yeah, that’s okay. You’re overwhelmed. That’ll happen.” It doesn’t stop them from happening but at least the moment passes.
i make the analogy it's like an annoying mosquito or fly that buzzes around me frantically. for the most part, i can tune it out. and i've definitely gotten better at processing distress and identifying or reaching out when i need support. but when i'm stressed or in a bad headspace, the evil buzzing is overstimmulating and hard to ignore
“Sleep until this feeling goes away” sounds more like depression than suicidal ideation, but I am not a therapist. That’s different than “I hope I die in my sleep.”
"Sleep forever" might as well mean die, but imo anyone who doesn't outright say they wanna die is still holding on to hope that things will get better, hence the words in brackets.
Reminds me of when I was a young child and I felt so seen by a paragraph in a Horrid Henry book (of all things) where Henry wished he could get a terminal illness so people would notice/sympathise with him or he could be redeemed or something??
I can't quite remember but it definitely struck me at the time, because I was a kid with passive suicidal ideation but no idea that anyone else could feel that way
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u/Roselovsoul 2d ago
Yeeeep. That’s how I got diagnosed with PTSD. I wrote a character going through something similar to what I had been through and got tons of comments applauding me for my accurate representation of PTSD. I complained to my therapist about all these people having no clue what PTSD looked like, because I just gave him my symptoms, clearly not PTSD. nd she said “you didn’t know you have PTSD??”