The recommended thing to do when one is feeling suicidal is to either call a hot line such as Samaritans or go to A&E (The emergency department at the hospital). These, of course, aren’t the wrong things to do; The Samaritans is the best place to find advice and the staff at your local hospital will be able to find you treatment quickly. However, when one is feeling suicidal it can feel as though you are burdening someone if you phone the Samaritans and one can also feel a burden and a strain on resources if one goes to the hospital. Not to mention the fact that the A&E department of a hospital is rarely the calmest of places, especially on a Friday and Saturday night when it’s full of drunks and such.
There are ways of dealing with suicidal thoughts yourself though. If you have ever done CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy not your motorbike test) then you already have the tools there to deal with these intrusive thoughts. CBT looks at the negative thinking patterns that can lead to self destructive thoughts; Catastrophizing and ‘All or nothing’ thinking for instance. Try your best to be mindful of your situation and try to think of the positive things in your life rather than the negative.
Talking of positives if your thoughts are getting you down then write down a big list of everything that makes you happy or has ever made you happy. Material things, friends, family, pets etc make the list as long as you can and thinking of all the different memories associated with these happy things will help lift your spirit.
One thing a lot of people seem to make is a memory jar. This I think is a really cool idea. write down all your happy memories, or as many as you can think of, and put them all in a empty jar. When you are feeling low take one of the memories out of the jar and read it and hopefully the memory contained will make you smile.
The last way is to be creative. Obviously this blog is designed to say how much having a hobby can help someone’s state of mind but even creating something as simple as a blog post (writing this has helped me, I’m having a rubbish day!) can really help. There is a writer and an artist within us all, we just have to find them!
Thanks for reading. I hope you are all doing well.
