Monday, August 8, 2011

bipolar disorder suicide ideation

I'd been thinking about using a rope, when the aftermath scene of who would find my body came to mind.
"Would it be the Princess or the cleaning lady?"
"I can't do it here!" I told myself. Then I started thinking about doing it somewhere I couldn't be identified, no documents found with the body. I thought about taking a trip up country, to the other end of Thailand, thinking if I found a rural area with limited police resources, maybe they'd just cremate the body and forget about it?


"Be better for the Princess and my boys back in Australia," I thought, "I'd just be missing."

"Jesus! I haven't thought about suicide for at least four years!" Burst into awareness.
"What the hell has triggered this?"
"Your depressed!" Another inner voice advised.

Was it alchol related, was it because I'd just watched my beloved Manchester City get beat by another last minute goal by those F'ing red devils. Thoughts about my two oldest boys came to mind, the pain of my last visit home and the subsequent estrangement from my oldest son.

"Fuck em all!" Sprang to mind and the planing phase continued, the how and where of suicidal ideation. The flight of thoughts went on for at least ten minutes I'd say, until a sudden sensation of fatigue deepened my breathe.

"Your in a loop - you loopy fuck!" I told myself, stuck in a dissociated mind state triggered by who knows what? Somehow the wave of fatigue sensation had brought about a more grounded sense of the here and now. I suddenly remembered that I write about being able to let go of these mind states these days.

"Why do I think I can write a book - for God's sake!" I say to myself, perhaps trying to maintain the flight into mind, and resist a felt sense of something?

"Soften," I said to myself, triggering a practiced shift into feeling for tensions around my heart. It broke the thought bubble state long enough to bring a more balanced mind/body awareness. I quickly felt the urge for flight again though, back into that loopy fuck, dissociated mind space.

"What is it?" Came to mind as I rehashed the "fuck em all" statement, and it poked me into feeling for facial tensions. Sure enough there was a shit load of anger in my jaw, and I felt my lips pressed together with my tongue pushing against the back of my teeth. "Unspeakable anger," came to mind and I whispered "soften," out loud, falling into another wave of body fatigue.

It was enough to trigger the "whole body" sensation that I've been practicing in my efforts to re-adjust a lifetime tendency for dissociated mind space awareness, over and above awareness of sensations within my body. For a couple of minutes I did the deep breathe exercise which brings oxygen into my blood stream and the enhanced body awareness so lacking throughout my life. The added oxygenation of my blood and the rise in body sensation, stimulated a rate and temperature change of blood flowing through my brain, and a state shift in mind space awareness.

"Let go," is the last thing I remember of conscious awareness before slipping into whatever proceeds REM state dreaming.

Its the next day now and I'm doing my daily walk, after a couple of caffeine hits kicked last nights suicidal mood into the waste bin of personal history. Funny! When I'm walking, ideas rain down like I'm walking under some tropical waterfall. So I've dropped into an air-conditioned shopping mall here in Bangkok to write them down, all the memories and thoughts about last night and what might have triggered the suicidal ideation.

I remembered checking for feedback on someone's blog, where I'd left a comment, when I got home.
"Hmm! You didn't get what you needed - did you!" Sprang to mind, along with thoughts about rejection and primal wounds. A chaos of chance and circumstance, coming hot on the heals of Man City's defeat.

"Defeat! - Now there is a word to conjure mind/body sensations, defeat and depression, a withdrawal into old and unconscious wounds, perhaps?" Today's date came to mind, which I'd written in my journal only an hour before, 8/8/11.

"Shit! Its James birthday tomorrow." James is my oldest child.

Is this a background trigger to suicidal ideation, the disconnection, rejection, failure, defeat and an underlying primal wound, waiting for the release of chaos, chance and circumstance? A scene from my lifeline crisis training came to mind, and that awful question about how long a typical suicide thinks about it before acting? As little as five minutes the trainer told us before relating the story of a young girl who'd thrown herself under a train.

A first love rejection apparently, with her cell phone connection lost during a pleading conversation with her ex lover. Within seconds she had hurled the phone and herself down onto the tracks. Thoughts about impulse, energy and circumstance had shocked me at the time. I remember thinking how lucky I was that fear and lack of energy had kept me alive to fight another day.

Now I remember giving that shitty mood to the Princess when I got home last night. Pity, we'd had such a good day and she was in amorous mood when I'd returned. All the more surprise at the bewildering fall into such defeated thinking.

"You know, lady in England understand she cannot speak with man for one week, when team lose."
"For one weeeeek!" She shrieked.
"Its tribal darling! - Very primitive stuff," I told her as I enacted the ritual of kiss and makeup.
"I'm sorry I rejected you last night," I whispered in her ear.

A little later as she put on her face for the day, she gave me a quizzical look, and asked.

'What rejection mean?"

"Hmm! Primitive stuff indeed, the primal pain of unspeakable rejection, the deep need for felt connection between us?" I realized she had never really felt it in her life, it wasn't part of the fiber of her being, such a well loved child is amour-ed against such negative sensations. An overwhelming experience of close proximity love, pervaded her sense perception, probably why she is so flowing, so spontaneous, so natural and relaxed with her delightfully expressive gestures?

"No history of pain sensed tensions in the fiber of your being, my love."

What do you think?
Is there more to bipolar disorder than brain malfunction, than disease? Do we really know what stimulates our thinking, our moods? A chemical imbalance notion of disease malfunction is perhaps a rather quick answer, considering the complexity of brain/body systems underpinning our manifest states of mind. The self education of the last four years has brought me a deeper self-awareness, even though primary motivations within my body/brain/mind will always remain unconscious.