Something good happened to me today: I took a nap in the afternoon at my friend Sandra’s condo…and when I woke up after about 20 minutes I was in a negative state—I felt “suicidal!” How could this be? What do I mean by “feeling suicidal”?
Being a person with bipolar disorder and having been suicidal multiple times over the years, it is a specific uncomfortable set of feelings that grips a person’s consciousness and spreads fear throughout the system. “I just want to die” is the unspoken sentiment and it is extremely disturbing.
When I woke from that nap and felt so lousy, I immediately decided that I wasn’t going to sit back “and take it”! I decide to go work a walk and air out my sentiments.
This happened to be THE BEST thing I could have done to fight the feelings! Exercise, I have learned, is one of the antidotes to psychological stress. It helps me take my mind off my troubles—even when I have a faulty set of feelings that made me think I was suicidal! So I DISPUTED the feelings by consciously refusing to be overrun by dread.
Yes, that’s the word “dread,” that fills my personhood at times like these! After I realized that I was having this negative state of mind toss me around, I disputed the inner claim that I was indeed suicidal. I had NOTHING to be suicidal about! My life is progressing in a productive and meaningful fashion and I didn’t seem to have any lingering threats in my life that I needed to be all upset about!
And the greatest thing happened!! I simply talked and thought my way OUT OF and suicidal feelings—licked split!! Just like that! In 3-4 minutes, I disabled the negativeness and found myself in a pretty good mood—made even better by realizing what had just happened! I made the suicidal feelings and thoughts disappear!! It was absolutely AMAZING!!
After my 15 minute walk and exchanging the dreadful feelings with happy, almost comical feelings, I knew I had a winner here. I told my friend Sandra all about it when I returned from my walk. She inquired whether I was using my CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) skills to com to this conclusion—to overcome the negative thoughts and feelings.
I then remembered that I am a big believer in the principals of REBT (Rational Emotive Behavioral Theory) which states that most of the time, we have a thought first followed by an emotion. So when we can get in touch with and reign in negative thoughts and create an atmosphere of understanding and hope, we can overcome the destructive feelings—this time happening in a only a few minutes of talking straight to Al to myself. The suicidal feelings dissipated and I was set free!!
I am so grateful to my God that I could chase this positive experience of defusing the negative and amplifying the positive!
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