My pwBPD has planned his suicide

[onelittleladybug]

My pwBPD has a suicide plan. He told me more than once that he plans to carry it out once his parents have passed as he doesnt want to cause them pain. He said he is not sure he can wait it out. He also said every time he hears of a celebrity taking their own life he remembers he has a way out and the thought gives him peace.

I said I understood, that I had experienced that feeling but probably less than him. I told him I love him and Im here to listen. That I wanted to be there for him and I deeply appreciated that I get to have more time with him.

I dont know what else to do or say. I desperately want to get him into therapy but I know I cant push him. It breaks my heart, not that he wants to die but that he does not want to live. If that makes sense. It breaks my heart that his life is so full of pain that he would rather end it.

If anyone has experience with getting a loved one into therapy or dealing with suicidal thoughts I would really appreciate some feedback. Its not an immediate threat. He is traumatized by police from events in his life, calling the police in an untimely moment would create mistrust and make him feel even more alone.

I keep thinking if I could find a way to get him into any kind of talk therapy session, I have the feeling its more likely he would go if I went with him for the first time or even the first few. Any ideas or thoughts?

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[flourdust]

My ex used to threaten suicide all the time. She didn't have any history of actually attempting suicide, and I came to view her threats as attempts to control me. Only you know your pwBPD's history -- he may be intentional, he may not, or you might not be able to tell.

The approach that I took was to call the local mental health crisis line when she made suicidal threats. They were trained to evaluate those threats and take appropriate action if needed. Once she was confronted with this crisis line, she backed down from making these threats. I believe this is because she wanted to get me to react, not to get actual help.

I can't tell you if this is the right choice for your situation. I do see a lot of FOG in your post, though. You have FEAR that he will take his life, FEAR that he will react badly to you if you call professionals for help, FEAR that he will be upset if you push him into therapy.

I also see OBLIGATION to be his front-line mental health support when he threatens suicide, and OBLIGATION to not call the police because that will bother him, which would make you feel GUILTY.

If you recognize and push away the FOG, what does it look like you should do?

[onelittleladybug]

Thanks for the feedback Flourdust.

Its a very timely and necessary reminder that I cant forget to take care of me and focus all my energy on him.

I came to view her threats as attempts to control me.

Im aware of the possibility and I can imagine that scenario for a lot of people. In this case I dont think he is trying to control me. I think he is actually confiding in me. This isnt an immediate threat, its a long term plan.

I do see a lot of FOG in your post, though. You have FEAR that he will take his life,

Definitely. Ive lost 2 people in my life to suicide. If given the chance to go back I would do a lot of things differently. I would rather be in FOG for a bit and sort things out with time than brush this off. I did once before.

FEAR that he will react badly to you if you call professionals for help, FEAR that he will be upset if you push him into therapy.

More concerned about getting the RIGHT kind of help asap. This pwBPD was in and out of juvie most of his teenage years. Anything to do with authorities is highly triggering for him. Imagine being 14 years old in jail for doing something stupid. It was something that me and many of my friends got away with. He is still traumatized, has never worked through it although he is in his late 30's.

I dont have a lot of leverage to push him into therapy as Im not a spouse. We are on again off again romantic partners, friends and neighbors. But aside from that pushing is just not a good idea anyway. He needs to be motivated somehow into going, there has to be some belief or hope inside him to go. He is not going to go if he doesnt have any faith in it. How can I help with that is what Im wondering. This man doesnt interact with a lot of people. He has severe social anxiety. He cant go into a movie theater without going into a panic attack. He recently tried to join his family on a trip to the beach over the holiday weekend, when he arrived he got into a panic attack and drove straight home. Its a 2-3 hr trip each way. Things are pretty serious and he is not getting anything from his family other than "snap out of it" kind of reaction.

I also see OBLIGATION to be his front-line mental health support when he threatens suicide, and OBLIGATION to not call the police because that will bother him, which would make you feel GUILTY.

If I thought that calling the police would help I would choose that option and live with the guilt. I just dont think its effective at all. Is it obligation if I feel like Im the only person currently in his life that can help? The other people around him (his family) is not helping at all, in fact I feel like things get worse when he is spending time with them. But I have not said anything about this to him and I wont.

Im worried that this will escalate, that he will not be able to hang on. Ive seen him in panic attacks several times already. Its very concerning to me. I dont think I could easily survive either if I was having those as frequently as he is.

If you recognize and push away the FOG, what does it look like you should do?

I think I need to be aware of my FOG, but also trust my instincts with this. Im going to call a local DBT treatment center today and see if I can talk to someone there. He had a paranoid episode over the weekend. He is a fan of the band whose member took his own life before the weekend.

Im aware that I need to put more effort into take care of myself. FWIW I spent least of the weekend with him, I was very busy with my own plans. My feelings over his state are mostly intense sadness.

[Meili]

I know that you have seen this information before, but I wanted to post it here as a reminder to you and for anyone else who might need it:

Workshop dealing with suicidal ideation in others

When my x threatened suicide, I went through a great deal of what you described, and basically for the reasons that flourdust described.

I FEARED that if I took any action, she would push me away for good.
I felt OBLIGATED to do something to help her though in that she was crying out for help (even though I had no belief that she would do anything, she'd cried wolf many times in the past about things like this)
I knew that I would feel GUILTY if I called the appropriate authorities because it would ruin her career.

I handled the situation by calling her mother and she had to explain everything to her. When it was all over, she just looked at me with disgust and said, "I can't believe that you told on me to my mother."

I was lucky in that I was nearly 99% certain that it was all an act to manipulate. Had I thought otherwise, I would have followed the protocols in the link provided.

[flourdust]

If I thought that calling the police would help I would choose that option and live with the guilt. I just dont think its effective at all. Is it obligation if I feel like Im the only person currently in his life that can help? The other people around him (his family) is not helping at all, in fact I feel like things get worse when he is spending time with them. But I have not said anything about this to him and I wont.

Yes, that's OBLIGATION. It's the white knight syndrome.

There are some interesting articles on this here:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-white-knight-syndrome

If you push aside that obligation, what's left?

[onelittleladybug]

If you push aside that obligation, what's left?

Choice. I choose to help. I am thinking of myself into the future, able to say I did something while I could. It may or may not work but I can say I tried. Because this matters to me.

Its no big sacrifice for me to stick around, to encourage, to try to open his eyes to possibilities he hasnt seen before. Im not feeling like I am losing any part of me. I am getting something out of this r/s which is why Im still around.

Some years ago my said to me that something that happened between us made him feel guilty. I said "oh please dont, guilt is the most useless feeling". He said "no thats not true, it means something about who you are to me". I thought a lot about those words and still am processing them.

[Harley Quinn]

Ladybug,

  I'm so sorry to hear that you are going through what I did.  We could be writing about the same man.  In fact, your words are exactly what my ex used to say:'It's not that I want to die.  I just don't want to live.'  It was very painful to hear because I knew that I by myself couldn't help him to find living less unbearable.  

He had a plan.  Always did and found it very reassuring.  He would panic if there was not something (anything) already at the ready - for an emergency.  He had a remote place near a river that nobody else knew the specific location of, where he would hide either sharps or cocktails of drugs and cleaning products (bleach and the likes) with syringes so that he could relax knowing that if he could no longer cope and something tipped him over the edge then his way out was already taken care of.  At one point he handed over his emergency supplies to me and I destroyed them, but as soon as he was dysregulated again he was distraught and unbelieving that I could do that to him and had to immediately seek out replacement supplies to calm himself.

My ex would talk about all of this very calmly and openly - not in any way in a threatening manner.  It was simply normality to him.  He did lots of research online regularly to check out best methods (would find the history on my laptop) and sometimes 'tested' these by way of non lethal attempts.  Sort of checking for himself if that seemed like the way he wanted to do it when the time came for real.  I cannot describe what that did to me.  

I keep thinking if I could find a way to get him into any kind of talk therapy session, I have the feeling its more likely he would go if I went with him for the first time or even the first few. Any ideas or thoughts?

What I found was when I was able to get him into A&E (probably ER to you) and get him to stay long enough (low functioning, has ADHD and SAD, massive paranoia and mistrust of authorities too) to see a CPN (don't know if they're called something else where you are, so basically a psych nurse on the crisis team) and talk about things, this made a difference in a positive way.  It is hard for him to trust, yet when someone wins his trust and respect they can get through.  Remember, these people are trained to win the trust of sufferers of mental illness.  We lined up ongoing treatment through a couple of different services through speaking to the CPNs, and whilst he didn't stick these out, what was covered by way of crisis management plans and coping strategies did give me a lot of useful knowledge (we did all therapy appointments together as he wanted me there to keep him calm) for coping with these situations and definitely stuck with him too.  I found him making himself lists of his own ideas for coping strategies after this point and really trying to affect his behaviours even when no longer in treatment.  He was unfortunately sectioned more than once and did have another negative experience with the police (not all CPNs won his trust... .)but I'd not change anything about trying to get him the right help as you say.

Something else that was helpful for both of us was to have the emergency out of hours crisis helpline for our area, and to be able to call the mental health service that was dealing with him (whilst they were still prepared to) during the daytime to speak to a duty officer if a crisis arose.  Both of us made use of this facility a number of times.

Ladybug,  things moved for us from him talking calmly about his get out plan to him deciding to self harm (to the point of self mutilation) to him beginning to make actual attempts, and even those that probably intentionally failed filled me with horror and more FOG than you can imagine.  I do hope that you can encourage your partner to attend an appointment with you and that the professional is able to build rapport.  He needs a crisis management plan.  I will happily tell you how things ended for me if you ask, but right now I'd rather know that you are taking care of yourself and that you are considering all of the options.  If you upset him by doing something that he isn't happy about then so be it.  I'd rather he were upset than you being too concerned about upsetting him to attempt something for both of you to get support on this.  Because not only does he need help.  You need it too.  

Love and light x

[onelittleladybug]

Oh HQ Im so sorry you went through that   that sounds so painful, I can only imagine how painful that was for you and how distraught you must have been.

In fact, your words are exactly what my ex used to say:'It's not that I want to die.  I just don't want to live.'  It was very painful to hear because I knew that I by myself couldn't help him to find living less unbearable.

I just wanted to clarify that the words I wrote were mine not his. I might be projecting with the 2 suicides in my past but this is what I heard behind the words.

I said before and I mean it, if I have to choose between calling the police to protect him, and how he will react and feel about me I will choose the police. I just dont think its helpful now.

The message to me was "dont invest in me, Im damaged and beyond hope. I dont have anything to offer, Im waiting for my way out". He had a gun once, its gone. I asked him about it and he said he sold it to his dad. There is one sharp hunting knife in the house, he keeps it (weirdly) by the door in case of burglary. Not where I would keep it but oh well I also wouldnt keep a knife in the house. He is more likely to deliberately drink himself to death than do anything violent. He is not physically violent with me or anyone else. He is prone to verbal abuse but he reins himself in on a regular basis and is able to stop for extended periods. He does get paranoid, he will imagine Im trying to poison him. He has an eating disorder, IOW he hardly eats. He doesnt cut or self mutilate, thats the only mark on the list that you cant check off for him but you could argue eating disorders and substance abuse are a form of self mutilation.

Ive expressed a boundary about weapons. Im not ever comfortable being in the house if there are weapons around. This part is easy for me as Ive been setting this boundary all my life. If that knife is moved from the door to somewhere else in the house I am not going to stay there anymore. I am a declared pacifist so I can hide behind that without him taking it personally.

I am seeing this as the comorbid depression. I am deeply worried about the depression level now. He doesnt have an immediate plan but the fact that there is a long term plan and that its consistently there is a huge alarm for me. This post is more about me realizing this is for real, than there being an immediate threat.

It sounds like the situation with your ex was very urgent and immediate. I cant even imagine the trauma you have been through HQ Im literally tearing up reading your story. I think the situation with my pwBPD is less immediate but nonetheless important and something needs to be done.

Here are my thoughts (and thank you in advance for hanging in there with me): I think if I can talk my pwBPD into seeing someone about his panic attacks ONLY, thats the emergency that can be responded to. My hopes (not plan, not expectations) are that if he has a good experience with whomever treats him for the panic attacks he will slowly open up to receiving help for other things (depression then ultimately BPD).

I know people worry about me and I appreciate it. Its not lost on me. I live next door from my pwBPD, whenever I feel like things are becoming unstable I get up and leave his house and its easy for me. That said I probably worry as much and spend as much mental and emotional energy on all of this as anyone who loved a pwBPD. Ive been robbed of peace of mind but that feels normal to me with my background.

What Im getting from your story is that I should expect things to get worse before they get better, or just get worse. Im taking the warning seriously and I appreciate it.

but right now I'd rather know that you are taking care of yourself and that you are considering all of the options.  
If you upset him by doing something that he isn't happy about then so be it.  I'd rather he were upset than you being too concerned about upsetting him to attempt something for both of you to get support on this.  Because not only does he need help.  You need it too.

I am listening, I hear you. I am thinking about that part and how I can still take care of me.

Im heading over for a talk. My reply was not as well constructed, there is more to comment on. For now I will say Im just really grateful for you 

PS When I come back I want to talk about trust. You said very interesting things about that.

[JoeBPD81]

Hi ladybug and Harley Quinn,   

I'm sorry to hear about your situations, you both have been very kind to me and I wish I can offer some support.

In the reverse gender roles, my GF most of the time has no motivation to live. She was forced into therapy by her doctor, because she was dangerously underweight. It was that, or hospitalization, with the risk of losing custody of her sons. So, therapy. I was desperate then, but she liked the therapist, and it was a good turning point, even as everything goes slow. She refuses to think about recovery of her anorexia, but she wanted to talk to the therapist about getting help about "Wanting to want to live".

She tried to kill herself twice, and did self harm. Her therepist says that her anorexia IS the self harm she chooses. We think it is more something that gives her an illusion of identity, and a feeling of belonging to a comunity. But it is also true that focusing on that, being in control and very strict to herself, it takes down most of the need for self harm. It serves the same purpose, to take the mind away from the emotional suffering.

I've stopped her from hiting herself with a rubber band. And once I had to take a knife from her hand, in a very scary moment. She also asked me several times to take all the knives from the kitchen and hide them.

Very soon after meeting her from the 1st time she talked to me about her attempts at suicide. I feel she does this as a warning, she feels no one should invest in her, that she doesn't deserve to be loved. And she is sometimes blunt about her. She talks about dying as the ultimate end of suffering, about ending a life where she never could fit. She finds herself not capable to fuction, even as she is brilliant and everything she attemps, she excells. She doesn't say it in a threatening way. Many times she adknowledges that it would hurt us a lot (me and the kids), but other times, she says we would be way better without her.

I think all of this might sound familiar to you. It is one of the big differences in my life, compared with the people around. Suicide is a thought that is there often, and should be taken seriously. I think I have some "adventage" as I had some time in my life when I thought about doing it myself. I was young, and heartbroken, and I had moved to a new city and felt disconected to everyone. Apart from that I've felt unmotivated to live for some periods, knowing I was useful to others, but not wanting to live for myself, waking up in the morning and thinking, "oh, crxp!". So, I don't get shocked when I hear people not wanting to live, I understand this life doesn't feel so great for everyone. It has its good things but it has a lot of effort and fears that sometimes outweight the good. Depression makes you not value that small and good things life has to offer. Most people have something that says that living is better than nothing, but some of us don't have that conviction, or we don't feel it. We don't think it's a tragedy, we feel it is reallistic.

Myself, I know it is wrong, maybe some chemical in my brain or something. So I live assuming I'm wrong, and trying to value the good things, even when I don't feel them. I have responsibilities, I have people depending on me, and people that like me. I have interests even if it is in silly things.

For people with BPD that feeling of emptiness or hopelessness, is overwhelming. Meaning that nothing can be put on the other side of the scale that mean something to them. It is a feeling that hurts and they need to stop the pain. Sometimes thinking about it and having a plan, it makes the pain more manageable. We can't know that they won't actually do it, so it is scary as hell, and it takes a toll on us.

My GF's family does things worse too. I'm her support, emotionally and economicaly. And that puts more pressure on me, and of course increases the FOG. I see it this way: either I do everything in my hand so she stays alive, or I don't. If she ends up dead, knowing I stood up for myself, or knowing it is not my fault, it's not going to bring her back, and it would offer me little comfort. I can't lose myself in the process, I have to keep my mind cool, but I can't think "this is not my problem", and I can't lower my guard.

I thank God that it's been a while since she has talk about it for more than a day.  Yesterday she was told something ugly by her mother, the whole family treats her as unreliable and shady, and the mother implied they are worried that my GF would go to their house during the hollydays and steal something there. My GF doesn't deserve that at all. She took some money when she was a teenager, over 20 years ago, and she paid it back, and she has been more than generous with all her family members when she had something to give. So, yesterday she felt very hurt buy her mother's words and told me that if she were alone, she would go to her mother house, that it is empty, and instead of stealing, she would kill herself there, and leave a note blaming them. They have these kind of thoughts, and they don't think it's alarming, it's just normal.

I think we have to incorporate these into our lives, take them seriously, but not get defeated by them (suicidal thoughts).

I think we have to do our best to tell them we want them in our lives, that they matter, and that they make our lives better. Also, that we understand how empty they feel, and how life sometimes seems too much effort. That we understand the plan and the thoughts offer some comfort. But also redirect them to other tools that can offer the same comfort, but are not destructive.

You can tell him that for you it is easy to find motivation to stay alive, maybe your parents or your education, or your faith, gave you the tools to feel like that. But that he is not to blame for not having those tools. But a therapist can help him find ways to "want to want to live". I've said this before, for some people life is like digging a hole with bare hands, and they see the rest of the people digging their hole with the propper tools, and think "why is it so easy for anybody else?" He can also have the tools and have things go easier for himself, if he allows someone to help him. That image convinced me to go to therapy when I went. It's not that I need help or be fixed, it is that I deserve to learn more tools to feel better, or to be reminded of those tools even if I knew them once.

I wish I could offer peace for both of you, but we are all fighters and we keep on fighting. I'm happy to have such good people to talk to. Take care!