Some problems get better with age because one's circumstances change, and better circumstances make people feel better. I have no idea what that change might be for you.

Some problems get worse with age because there are neurological costs to mental illness and treatment. For instance, severe bi-polar disorder, epilepsy, or schizophrenia can cause physical damage to the brain, and the medications that help control these disorders have side effects. A 40 or 50 year history of mental illness (or serious epilepsy) often leaves people with decreased emotional and cognitive functioning.

Some problems don't change much with age, because people keep doing the same things over and over again and keep getting the same results. There are... hundreds of millions in this boat.

Some people do commit suicide, that's true. My guess is that the usual cause is NOT that people get tired of dealing with the suicidal thinking. Something precipitates a surge in despair, like losing a mate, losing a job, chronic illness that gets worse... that sort of thing.

If you have been thinking about suicide for a long time, you might very well keep thinking about it into old age and die of heart disease, cancer, or stroke. It would probably help the quality of your life if you generated more positive thinking about your life.

While that sort of advice (think positively) is cheap and easy to hand out, I'm still billing you $100 for this brief therapeutic post.

Suicide is impossible. There's always something that does the killing - giving you the reason to swallow that cyanide capsule. Fear, pain, depression, and there are many more. Agreed there's no one pointing a gun to your face but there is something forcing you to take the deadly option.

It's like smoking. It's killing but sufficiently concealed under piles of profit money that we don't realize it. Even if we do realize it, there's little we can do about it.

Ach, no, not just another first world problem. A big problem. Get off the internet and get face to face help from someone you trust. And if you trust no-one find a helpline. You don't need philosophical theory at just this point, you need help. Theory later.

Everyone's situation is different. But what helped me (to be overly simplistic) was to scrape off layers and layers of personae. In other words, i had to demolish the building of my psyche and start over from the ground level. It was necessary because the building was collapsing. Your mileage may vary. Best of luck, success, and peace to you.

If you ever need someone to talk to, I'm here.

Suicide is impossible. There's always something that does the killing — TheMadFool

Yeah true, I agree with that. But there's always something that stops the killing too, like hope, or fear, too.

Similar to @0 thru 9 there was a lot of breaking down and rebuilding involved in my recovery process. I believe the CBT based therapy really helped with discarding the negative self-talk and beliefs, and gave me the tools to stop the same sort of beliefs from redeveloping.

If you're really depressed, being on the right medication can be a good tool to get you to a place where you feel motivated enough to start the work you'll need to do to get better - therapy, exercise, proper sleep, balanced diet, healthy relationships.

Even now that I'm in a pretty decent place, being tired from lack of sleep can bring back a feeling resembling mild depression, and the negative thinking tries to fight its way back in. Stressful situations have the same sort of effect on me.

As for suicidal thoughts, they are usually a part of the hamster wheel of depressed thinking when I'm tired or stressed, but they carry a lot less power. In my case, I'm not sure if they will ever go away completely, because I had two nearly fatal suicide attempts.

Some people do commit suicide, that's true. My guess is that the usual cause is NOT that people get tired of dealing with the suicidal thinking. Something precipitates a surge in despair, like losing a mate, losing a job, chronic illness that gets worse... that sort of thing. — Bitter Crank

For me one attempt was precipitated by a major crisis during an extended period of severe depression. The other occurred after a night of binge drinking, during a very stressful period in my life. My depression was fairly well controlled by medication at the time, but I think the meds were masking a lot of the stressors.

Feel free to private message me - I have a fair bit of experience with depression, recovery, and relapse, and may be able to offer some sound advice if I know more about your situation. (Although I like to keep everything in the open, in the hopes that it will help someone else.)

I understand, but it's not like I like being depressed. I remember waking up in my youth and being interested in the world or doing some things. Now, I wake up and just wait until I can go to sleep again. I am already in therapy; but, I suppose I am having high expectations or something as I don't feel as though it is helping me.

While that might be true it still doesn't take away from the fact that suicide is a personal decision. If you want to say that all decisions are motivated by unconscious factors, then that's just redundant.

Similar to 0 thru 9 there was a lot of breaking down and rebuilding involved in my recovery process. I believe the CBT based therapy really helped with discarding the negative self-talk and beliefs, and gave me the tools to stop the same sort of beliefs from redeveloping. — CasKev

My point is that the thoughts keep on returning and the hope that CBT might solve the thoughts did not come through. It's depressing that one has to live in a fortress and always be under siege by the negative thoughts.

No.

So, do you at least develop some tolerance to those thoughts? Becuase, it really is a burden as people say.

I've found suicidal thoughts are easier to tolerate if I usually have them. It might be easier to live life without suicidal thoughts but it's a lot harder to deal with them when they come back randomly and with greater force. And they always do. Better to be comfortably numb to these thoughts than crippled with a sudden drop.

I understand, but it's not like I like being depressed. I remember waking up in my youth and being interested in the world or doing some things. Now, I wake up and just wait until I can go to sleep again. — Question

I know that feeling. I'm currently trying to get out of that place as well. I keep telling myself I need to be more disciplined in my life, but then that's just another example of being hard on myself...

If I think about my life, I think I'm too hard and too disciplined. I'm doing very well in many areas of life at the moment because of all the discipline and work, but sometimes I do feel the absence of joy (although there's also times when I feel very joyful). Unlike many other people, I'm someone who has fought for a long time to be disciplined. And don't get me wrong, I wouldn't have it any other way, but then discipline is not sufficient for joy (although I would argue that it is necessary).

Being disciplined does give you a certain capacity to be "bullet-proof" though. It's good, in the sense that you don't feel bad about yourself.

I think we have different personalities. That's not to say that I can't change myself and be more disciplined, but personality is an amalgamation of everything we've experienced and been through in life. So, discipline has been a major part of your life, it sounds like, whereas I've figured out how to be "smart" about it and just barely get by without much discipline, if that makes sense. But if there's a good side to it, it's that I'm open to spontaneity, and I think my creativity is higher than most people. That could be related to lack of discipline, although I've gone through creative periods in which I was very disciplined about my creativity, but not much else. But I was just talking about general discipline in life; indulging in vices too much, not getting things done in a timely manner, general selfishness...but I can't respond to this negatively and say to myself "you're so undisciplined, come on, get it together!" Because that's just one more negative thought about myself. I have to find a way to positively want more discipline, to want self-flourishing and health.

Well, as an undisciplined person, I also feel an absence of joy. :P So maybe joy is about something else.

The issue doesn't seem to be related to discipline in my opinion. It's just a matter of repressed feelings from my understanding.

I think the Buddhist teaching of the impermanence of emotions is worth bringing up. However, if these thoughts are reoccurring, then I don't know what would help. Therapy takes time and often when one thinks things are getting better, the depression or suicidal thoughts return with a vengeance.

Is this a no win situation? That's what I'm feeling as of recently. Maybe I need to have more hope; but, it seems Sisyphean to be optimistic when those feelings return.

Mind you guys and gals, I also have schizophrenia (paranoid type), which makes my life all the worse.

Sometimes I have good days, and then there are bad days. I just feel depressed about feeling depressed. It's a self-defeating attitude and hard to cope with.

I've wondered if I have schizophrenia myself. I have been diagnosed with moderate OCD, mostly mental obsessions as well as depression but I notice in myself an underlying paranoia and anxiety that isn't really focused or directed at anything in particular. I've also wondered if I might be on the autism spectrum in any way, like Asperger's. I definitely do not do the "normal" things "normal" people do and obsess over my projects to the detriment of everything else in my life and find it hard to connect or care about a lot of the things "normal" people do.

I've made it this far but I wonder if I wouldn't benefit from some sort of medication.

I think that if you see suicide as a good thing, at least in some cases, it can help make it less of a scary thing to think about. Sometimes death is precisely what is needed to solve a problem. Also remember that most suicide attempts are failures, I think the statistic for adults is like 1 in 25 attempts are successful, and for younger people it's something like 1 in 200 or 300 or something ridiculous like that. Part of what makes suicide so tempting is how easy it seems to be to do, like you take a gun and pop yourself in the head, or chug a bottle of pills, no big deal or anything. But apparently it's a lot harder to kill yourself than your imagination makes it seem.

That being said I think if we lacked psychological repression techniques and were perfectly rational beings we would probably all be lining up for euthanasia.

I've made it this far but I wonder if I wouldn't benefit from some sort of medication. — darthbarracuda

The thing about medication, and if you don't 'need' it, then better live without it than become dependant on it. I might see if I can switch around some of the stuff I am taking and see if some newer medication might help.

That being said I think if we lacked psychological repression techniques and were perfectly rational beings we would probably all be lining up for euthanasia. — darthbarracuda

Yeah, I think that is true. I've heard hereabouts that depression is also a form of behavior that other animals feel also. Some birds will drown themselves if they lose a partner and primates also have behaviors similar to depression when confronted with duress.

The thing about medication, and if you don't 'need' it, then better live without it than become dependant on it. I might see if I can switch around some of the stuff I am taking and see if some newer medication might help. — Question

Sure but it's probably better than self-medicating with alcohol or some kind of substance.

I agree, keeping it natural is still the best of all evils

You won't grow out of suicidal thoughts by ho-humming in a thread like this, man. The more you dwell on it, the more it will consume you. It would seem that you're fed up with constantly thinking about suicide, yes? If so, then you should sit down and parse your life and see what's in your control, and what's not. I've found it helpful to separate things that I can work on from things that I can't work on. If you don't do that, all the shit's just crammed together, making for too high a hill to climb over. It doesn't mean that you're able to fix what you're able to work, though. I fail every day at fixing the things that need fixing, but it's a good start. For you, maybe stop making threads about suicide, here and perhaps elsewhere, don't read books about it, or talk to people about it. Think about it only when it pops into your head, and when it does, figure it why it popped into your head. Don't think about the thought, but why that thought was had to begin with.

And if suicide has become a topic that is as normal for you to think about as, "what am I going to eat for breakfast?" then you have to work toward making suicide a more outlying, rare thing to think about. Walruses. I dunno why, but I just thought of walruses. Do I think about walruses all day, every day? No. Would it be silly for me to contemplate walruses all day, every day? Yes. So, if I was thinking about walruses all the time, I'd stop and try and figure out why the fuck I was thinking about walruses so much. If I then discover that I've been watching nature documentaries about walruses, was reading a book about someone surviving a walrus attack, putting up walrus wallpaper in my house...then it'll become quite clear why I've been contemplating walruses so intensely and what I should do in order to stop thinking about walruses so much.

Question is, Question, do you really want to stop thinking about suicide/walruses? You first have to be willing to dispel such thoughts in the first place before you know whether or not you are able to get rid of them.

What you're really asking me to do is to repress the suicide thoughts. I can't repress them anymore. They're leaking out of me and causing me distress.

No, I'm asking you to analyze your life in order to determine whether or not your suicidal thoughts have an origin in the way you conduct yourself.

They're leaking out of me and causing me distress. — Question

In other words, find the holes which leak, and figure out whether those holes can be plugged by yourself, or if you need help.

No, I'm asking you to analyze your life in order to determine whether or not your suicidal thoughts have an origin in the way you conduct yourself. — Buxtebuddha

I can't find an origin. It seems like something biological to me. I'm still confused about the origin of my depression and subsequent suicidal thoughts.

You're looking for one thing? Just a origin? Every problem is a snake pit.

I'm pretty sure it has to do with more than one thing, but I have no idea what each and individual factor is. I know that there are biological roots, but apart from that no idea. I did have a mental breakdown when I was 17. I thought the worse was over but seemingly that is not the case.

I am already in therapy; but, I suppose I am having high expectations or something as I don't feel as though it is helping me. — Question

It may be that you haven't found the right therapist. I know I went through a couple of duds before I found one that was helpful.

It might also be that you're not on the right medication. I've been through many drug combos, and I'm finally on what seems to be the right mix. Thankfully, it's a mix that doesn't have any obvious side effects, so I'm not too motivated to try and get off of them.

Another thing that seems to be helping is something called repetitive trans-cranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS). If they offer it where you live, I would recommend giving it a shot. It can be expensive though, and typically isn't covered by medical benefits. Where I live, it's close to being covered by the government health plan.

My point is that the thoughts keep on returning and the hope that CBT might solve the thoughts did not come through. It's depressing that one has to live in a fortress and always be under siege by the negative thoughts. — Question

CBT will help with the conscious part of your problem - catching the negative self-talk that keeps popping up, refuting it, and replacing it with rational thought. It won't help with the poison that may be brewing underneath.

With a proper therapist, you should be able to drill down to the stuff that's tucked away in the sub-conscious. I think you need to dig up all the crap from the past in order to fully heal and move on in a healthy way.