Passive Suicide Part 2: How I started to recover

This is the tricky bit, and for me, it hasn’t happened overnight. It’s been a process, it’s taken a lot of soul searching, me putting in a lot of work, a lot of courage and allowing myself to be in some very uncomfortable positions.

The starting point has to be that you decide you want to change things, even the tiniest glimmer of wanting to carry on is enough, hang on to that as best you can although there will be times when it just slips away again. Search for that glimmer, it’s hard, but it’s so worth it when you finally grasp that tenuous straw again..

The tiniest decisions can turn into the biggest triumphs, and very often this can mean agreeing to things that you know will challenge you but having the courage to do them anyway. Sometimes the things that are going to be the best for you will be the very last thing you actually want to do, but try.

A year ago I was offered a CFT (Compassion Focused Therapy) course, it was a group therapy and I wasn’t keen to put it mildly, I just didn’t have the motivation to turn up every Thursday morning for 12 weeks. Even so, I forced myself to go to the introduction day to find out more and left having even less desire to go through with it. That introduction convinced me further that this really wasn’t something that I wanted to do and I convinced myself that it was also something that wouldn’t help anyway.

My knee-jerk reaction was let them know that it wasn’t for me but I knew I needed help, frankly I didn’t have the motivation, or will, to actively get help at that point but I also knew it was the only thing I would be offered for a very long time so logic took over and I said yes.

To say that I was there reluctantly on the first morning would be putting it mildly. I’d had a terrible week with an enormous amount of stress and I was lower than low. How I managed to get out of bed at all that day is little short of a miracle, but somehow I did, somehow I drove the 7 miles to Leamington and somehow I dragged myself through the door in an almost zombie like state.

Sitting in the reception area were another 10 people of all shapes and sizes, interestingly though, only 2 men? A part of me was screaming to leave but I didn’t even have the strength to do that so I meekly followed them all in to the group therapy room.

A group of complete strangers, we sat there in awkward silence until the 2 therapists were ready to start, I sat there like a lamb taken to slaughter just waiting for the pain to begin, and, sure enough, it did. We started with an icebreaker (my heart fell into my boots at those words) but it turned out to not be too bad. We all introduced ourselves by name and location and then had to talk to the person next to us and find out something about them to relay back to the group.

I was lucky, I was sitting next to another lady, also called Vicky, so we had somewhere to start, thank goodness. She looked as though she was as thrilled to be there as I was but we managed to glean a little bit of information from each other and repeat it back to the group.

So, there I was, in a place I didn’t want to be, doing something that was making me extremely uncomfortable, to the point where I was questioning my own sanity in putting myself in a position that would make me feel so incredibly vulnerable. But, I desperately needed help, I didn’t want to live feeling the way I was and I had no desire to continue living a life that was so painful and felt so meaningless. I had spent so long desperately trying to find that straw that I could cling onto because my one reason for needing to live was my children. I had to keep going for them, they’ve experienced too much pain already in their young lives and losing me could be the final straw for some of them. Somehow I had to cling on to life, even though the thought of death, and feeling nothing, felt so comforting and alluring.

And death was beckoning, the end of the pain, the end of the constant anxiety over the future, the loneliness, the never-ending financial struggle to survive month on month and feeling of complete worthlessness. What was there to live for? My children. That was it, I did’t want to live for me, I HAD to live for them, it wasn’t a choice and somehow, breath by breath, I had to find a way.

So I guess that accepting help via the CFT course was the start of the journey? I had accepted that I needed help, I had forced myself to start the journey even though it was so painful to do and I made myself go, week on week.

Did it actually help? I’ll talk about this in the next article because I’ve decided to make this a series so that I can go into more detail, maybe something I talk about here will ring a bell for someone and they’ll find the strength to take the first step.

Until next time!

Film: ‘Kingdom of Us’ on Netflix: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fc8_spETMBY&t=11s

TED Talk: ‘Why my Autistic children don’t need a cure’ on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xts1F-PoUNA&t=11s

Book: ‘Unravelled’ on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Unravelled-inspirational-story-journey-darkness-ebook/dp/B00L1ENC0O/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1549448678&sr=8-1