Suicide threats

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Just venting, I guess, but I'm really beat down by the threats, especially the ones that are transparently guilt-trippy. She has been making threats for years. For at least five years they have been pretty constant. Maybe they calm down for a few months, but never more than that. It is the go-to comment now any time she dysregulates, which is often. This is what I got tonight:

"every morning when you wake up you should wonder if i am dead.  I'll manage to figure out how to stop this horrible existence. you should wonder every morning if i am dead. gone. dead. without another breath.

i have absolutely zero doubt that if anybody called you to come identify my body, you would ask to schedule it at a convenient time.  would not want you to miss anything that matters just for ME."

What in the world do I do with that? Call 911. That's about the only advice I seem to get. Is there any evidence that doing that is helpful in cases of chronic suicidal thoughts? If there is, I can't find it, and my gut tells me it will make things much worse. She doesn't need to just get over a 72 hour hump, after which she won't have suicidal thoughts. They aren't going away without a lot of work on her part, and that's not going to happen in a short-term involuntary psych hold. So much of the literature out there is about acute suicidal thoughts. There's not much on dealing with chronic thoughts, except to just accept that it's part of the deal. But it's not a part of the deal I can not take seriously. It's not something I can ignore. It's not something I'm able to hear or read and then just go about my day. And it happens all the time now. I would need 911 on speed dial if I called for every threat.

It's maddening. I've gotten much better at handling other things, and much better at enforcing boundaries (probably part of the reason the threats have revved up recently), but I don't know how to handle this multiple times a week. I recognize that responding to it reinforces that this is the way to get my attention. I don't know how to ignore it. And I'm not ready to call 911. I don't think that ends up making my life or hers any better. Maybe I'm wrong about that, I don't know. Actually, "I don't know" is probably the sum total of my wisdom on how to deal with this.

 

[stolencrumbs]

Just venting, I guess, but I'm really beat down by the threats, especially the ones that are transparently guilt-trippy. She has been making threats for years. For at least five years they have been pretty constant. Maybe they calm down for a few months, but never more than that. It is the go-to comment now any time she dysregulates, which is often. This is what I got tonight:

"every morning when you wake up you should wonder if i am dead.  I'll manage to figure out how to stop this horrible existence. you should wonder every morning if i am dead. gone. dead. without another breath.

i have absolutely zero doubt that if anybody called you to come identify my body, you would ask to schedule it at a convenient time.  would not want you to miss anything that matters just for ME."

What in the world do I do with that? Call 911. That's about the only advice I seem to get. Is there any evidence that doing that is helpful in cases of chronic suicidal thoughts? If there is, I can't find it, and my gut tells me it will make things much worse. She doesn't need to just get over a 72 hour hump, after which she won't have suicidal thoughts. They aren't going away without a lot of work on her part, and that's not going to happen in a short-term involuntary psych hold. So much of the literature out there is about acute suicidal thoughts. There's not much on dealing with chronic thoughts, except to just accept that it's part of the deal. But it's not a part of the deal I can not take seriously. It's not something I can ignore. It's not something I'm able to hear or read and then just go about my day. And it happens all the time now. I would need 911 on speed dial if I called for every threat.

It's maddening. I've gotten much better at handling other things, and much better at enforcing boundaries (probably part of the reason the threats have revved up recently), but I don't know how to handle this multiple times a week. I recognize that responding to it reinforces that this is the way to get my attention. I don't know how to ignore it. And I'm not ready to call 911. I don't think that ends up making my life or hers any better. Maybe I'm wrong about that, I don't know. Actually, "I don't know" is probably the sum total of my wisdom on how to deal with this.

 

[Harri]

Hi stolencrumbs.  What a difficult situation and I am so sorry that you have to deal with this multiple times a week.  Of course you can't just ignore it and go about your day.  I am not sure there are many people who could and I am not sure it is a wise thing to do.

What if you said:  "I really care about you. I just don't have the skills to help you when you feel like killing yourself. If you say you are going to kill yourself, I will take you take you to the emergency  department"  Does that seem like it is doable for you?  911 should not be used as a teaching lesson for a person who threatens suicide frequently so the above might be a better option.

I also want to link you to our suicide ideation protocol.  It has some info on how to talk with someone when they are suicidal.  Often what we think is the right thing to say is not.  

SUICIDE IDEATION EMERGENCY PROTOCOL  

What do you think?

[Turkish]

My ex was a little like this when pregnant with our second child. After she stormed out of her mom's house on Christmas day leaving me with then S1, she texted, "BRING OUR SON HOME!"

We returned and I found her curled up in the bathroom floor. She had written kind of a suicide note on our computer, the language similar to what you got. It was the closest to calling 911 that I ever got. 

I don't know of this will help you,  and your wife sounds like she's on a deeper place than mine was,  but her trigger was shame,  as well all pwBPD.  I worked with her to realize that admitting to suffering from Depression wasn't shameful. But the opposite.  The core debilitating feeling for a pwBPD is,  "my feelings are inherently worthless; therfore,  I'm inherently worthless and unworthy of love."

I don't know if you've done this, but it might help by simply stating, "I see that you are hurting, how can I help support you?" 

[stolencrumbs]

My ex was a little like this when pregnant with our second child. After she stormed out of her mom's house on Christmas day leaving me with then S1, she texted, "BRING OUR SON HOME!"

We returned and I found her curled up in the bathroom floor. She had written kind of a suicide note on our computer, the language similar to what you got. It was the closest to calling 911 that I ever got. 

I don't know of this will help you,  and your wife sounds like she's on a deeper place than mine was,  but her trigger was shame,  as well all pwBPD.  I worked with her to realize that admitting to suffering from Depression wasn't shameful. But the opposite.  The core debilitating feeling for a pwBPD is,  "my feelings are inherently worthless; therfore,  I'm inherently worthless and unworthy of love."

I don't know if you've done this, but it might help by simply stating, "I see that you are hurting, how can I help support you?" 

Thanks Turkish. That idea that a feeling of worthlessness is at the core is helpful. I read a post a long time ago you made to another poster that said that, and it really resonated with me. It helps make sense of a lot of things my wife says. They are all presented as accusations, but I think that feeling is at the core.

I have asked how I can help and support her. If there is a response, it's a list of impossible things. More often, the response is "there is nothing you can do." She is in T now. It took years and many starts and stops with many different Ts, but she has now been to this T for a couple of months. My wife is very sensitive to labeling anything or "pathologizing" any of her behavior. Calling anything 'depression' isn't really an option. We've been through depressive episodes before, and managed those okay. I'm sure there is some depression now, but it is different, and she flips out at the suggestion that it is playing a role in how she feels. Her T has started introducing some DBT stuff to her, without mentioning BPD. Hopefully that continues and maybe she buys into it. She hasn't so far.

Harri: I think the chances of her getting in a car with me to go to the ED is approximately zero. I have suggested it, though not in exactly the way you suggest, which probably would've been better. She often tells me this (meaning her whole current life, not a particular moment) is an emergency and should be treated like a crisis situation. To which I've said, "okay, we need to go to the ED. That's what I would do if this were any other crisis where you're life was at stake. I'd call 911 or get you to the ED." Needless to say, we've never been to the ED (for this.) Her response is usually "you don't get it."

[Turkish]

It took a lot for me to convince her to come out to her family about her depression.  When she did it helped.  Anything beyond that is me "throwing her sickness in her face." It was years later I found out she is diagnosed with Anxiety.  I read it on a family mental health history form for one of the kids. 

[stolencrumbs]

It took a lot for me to convince her to come out to her family about her depression.  When she did it helped.  Anything beyond that is me "throwing her sickness in her face." It was years later I found out she is diagnosed with Anxiety.  I read it on a family mental health history form for one of the kids. 

I've gotten that exact comment a lot.

I think it would be helpful if she would let some of the people she's close to in on how she feels, even just a little. She's not close to her family and doesn't have many close friends, and none that have any idea how she feels on a daily basis.

She has been diagnosed with depression and anxiety. She was in T about a decade ago for that. She didn't think it helped. She also thinks what she is experiencing now is not depression and/or anxiety. She believes (or at least says she believes) that what she is experiencing is the natural and normal response to living a life that is as horrible as hers is. She doesn't want to feel better if that is not accomplished by fixing the list of things that she sees as being wrong in her life. If those things aren't fixed, she doesn't want to live. So any suggestion that there might be some way of getting her to feel less suicidal is rejected, because she doesn't want a short-term solution. She wants "things to be right."

That's the gist of what I hear most often, and I've not been able to get past that barrier.