by Lady Lee 57 Replies latest jw friends
Holy crap, Dear Lee. I am so sorry you are going through this, but so glad you are getting support (in more ways than one.) You are amazing, and I hope you can feel how much you mean to the faces and souls behind the typed words here.
And Big Tex... it is wonderful to see you.
Serious hugs to you both. The loss of Oompa will be felt (all over this Earth) for a long time.
Much love,
Baba
Sometimes, the best way to help someone is just to hear them and acknowledge them , for most likely in some way at least we share a measure of their pain . The greatest need is for connection... an encouraging word or an uplifting songs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjNgn4r6SOA
I find this quote so encouraging
"A man's reputation is what other people think of him; his character is what he really is.”
I believe in your inner character
Wishing you a smile & enduring hope
I just wanted to say something about your original post.
Suicidal thoughts, I believe, cross almost everyone's mind if even for a second or two. Where it lingers is with people trying to cope with a cult situation such as Jehovah's Witnesses. Having to face shunning or being mind fucked by the teachings of WTS into believing one is "bad" or "wrong" creates such a double bind where someone is damned if they follow their conscience and damned if they don't. Like a rock dropped into a pond the ripples go on for years and sometimes decades. My son has never met his grandfather. Which is actually a good thing but I digress.
But suidical thoughts are even stronger for survivors of abuse. Long story less long, growing up in an insane world you just reach a point where you want out. You just want to quit the game, you don't want to pass GO, you don't want to collect $200, you just want it all to stop.
My last therapist, Carol, once told me that although we can deal with abuse issues they will always be a part of us. All that pain, all of that craziness will be part of who we are until the day we die. But she said that recovery wasn't a 60 minute TV drama solution. She said it's a lifetime process with ups and downs and sometimes it means we take a few steps backwards before we can move forward again. She said that the goal of recovery is to make that pain smaller every day until it's the size of an atom. But it will still be attached to us and always have an influence on our thoughts and reactions.
Just a thought LL. Where we came from, even now, has a big impact on how we react and feel about our life in 2012.
Chris
Hi, Chris! How are you? Thought of you yesterday when Big Tex was going up in flames. I didn't grow up here, so I was surprised by how emotional people were about it, including my daughter.
@Lady Lee: I was asking about grandchildren, because I had a feeling that your youngest would never have said that to you if she had a child of her own. I truly believe that if she's lucky enough to be a mom someday, she'll realize the deepness of your love for her.
Thank you for sharing your story, your honesty and courage in discussing these very painful emotions will help many, I'm sure. I have a tendency to depression that was also inherited by my daughter. I has suicidal thoughts as a teen, but not seriously. My daughter has the even earlier. She was asking me about it when only 6 or 7. I found out years later that at age ten, she brought a lot of aspirin to school with her, in case she wanted to end her life. It seemed to be a fixation. As a teen there were two attempts.
After a lot of therapy, she is doing very well in her life, although I believe she will always be vulnerable. She never got baptized and I wouldn't let the elders any where near her, as I knew it would not help her. I left myself, shortly later.
I believe the JW mindset of constantly waiting to possibly be destroyed at Armageddon did add to the negative thought patterns she was born with. As a toddler she was obsessed with the Bible stories book. I shudder to think what those violent stories did to her sensitive nature.
I had my own experience with suicidal thoughts after taking the drug Cymbalta. I didn't know that if you miss even one pill you will go into withdrawal. I had some very odd and unusual thought and I became very aggressive and argumentative. I finally realized what it was and got off the drug. It took months of slowly decreasing the dosage and it was really hard.
Lady Lee, I just wanted to pop in here and say how much I love and respect you. Reading your words over the years helped me out of a dark depression I fell into when I lost my religion.
Hearing about Oompa upset me too. I'm still at a loss for words over it.
Thank you LL- marked for later
Meds are only a crutch if you use them as a crutch. Think about it: you use crutches when your leg is broken. Then you don't use them once your leg has healed and you regain your muscle strength in the affected limb. The thing is though, some of us will always suffer with anxiety and at times may need medication. Medication helps you regain your strength and boost you during the initial days and weeks and then even during the months or even years that cognitive therapy takes to help you develop the skills you will need to cope.
Medication can save your life! Through therapy I have learned that my emotional pain was never depression. It was extreme anxiety and fear. And it was so painful it doubled me over and curled me up into a ball on the floor. The mental anguish sent me to websites that gave encouragement to those wishing to end their pain: suicide prevention websites. Medication helped ease that pain enough to make living bearable and I started into therapy at the time. I am still in therapy for anxiety. I cope much closer to normal these days, but I still have work to do.
Anxiety and fear can kill. Medication can stop that acute, unbearable pain long enough for counseling to help. I had a wise therapist I knew through St. Mark's, who put me with my current therapist, he insisted that my doctor prescribe anti-anxiety medication. He told my doctor that it was cruel for any doctor to expect a patient to suffer like that. And he was right. I take tiny doses of it now, as needed. Usually 1/4 to 1/2 a .05mg tablet. And only here and there. Sometimes weeks or months go by and I don't need anything. But during the crisis, I needed it daily. I am very grateful for it. It very possibly saved my life.
I so hated medication that I weened myself off it against the doctors advice. When the pain gets bad, I drink to mask it. 98% of the time I am great and lead a normal balanced life, but oh boy, when the black dog of depression hits, death seems wonderful. The other problem with myself is - I actually get bored of life. Fortunately the suicidal thoughts have not taken over completely. Only since the age of 32 have I felt this way. Weird. Scripture does of course no longer bring comfort. The only good thing - the JWs have one thing right - HELL FIRE is a totally wrong and stupid doctrine. So there is comfort in that.
It helps to have a doctor and therapist who know medications really well and who will not over prescribe and medicate you. I can't take anti-depressants as they make me do nothing but sleep. Anti-anxiety medications in very light doses don't do that to me. I do other things, that I have learned, before I use medication now. The first thing I do when I feel any pain is to count my blessings and do breathing techniques Dr. Mohr taught me. I know it sounds simple, but positive thinking can be very powerful, concentrating on the things that are going right, rather the ones going wrong.
One of the first things Dr. Mohr taught me to do was to chart and recognize the physicals symptoms I have when I am anxious.
