@Danisace
A step-by-step guide utilising healthy grounding techniques and information assisting emotional regulation during a suicidal crisis.
When an individual is within a crisis it may be harder to process information or act within healthy behaviours. Please be patient whilst these thoughts are released.
Please also be mindful suicidal thoughts can be repetitive.
For more information on these processes, please see linked blogs within. If facing numerous traumas it can then mean you have 5 processes x the traumas, over 10 processes at once can cause more negative behaviours. This can cause PTSD – please see https://danisace.com/?p=961 – ‘it comes in three’s’ as this is a bit more complex.
1. Safeguard yourself & your area – By safeguarding yourself and your area you are removing triggers and creating a clean, healthy positive space for you to rest within. Suicidal thoughts are hard and sometimes require an individual to isolate / rest – you must ensure your space is within peace. If you are an individual who struggles with self-harm, remove / hide all harmful objects, and say no to any urges – you can also utilise self-harm prevention tools such as a red pen mark, the ice method, or the elastic band method, there are also organisations that provide safety kits for self-harm individuals. Ensure that you are eating and drinking plenty of fluids as mental health doesn’t need to then affect physical health. You can also safe-guard yourself by telling another individual about your thoughts so that if needed they can provide an intervention if you are unable too.
2. Understand whether you need support either via a person / safety plan – If you are struggling with your lifelines and are struggling to keep the thoughts from becoming actions, you need to reach out to someone. Now where you reach out is important, you must reach out to someone / somewhere who has capacity for a minimum of 3 hours whilst you process and say no to suicidal actions, some individuals who do not practice this as a role may not have capacity to support you properly and thus you may end up feeling worse due to feeling rejected / lack of understanding. You can reach out to organisations or an individual you know who has capacity / free time. If you do not have anyone around you but have been provided with a Safety plan please utilise this on how to keep yourself safe. If you can not keep yourself safe, please call the emergency services or have someone call them for you.
3. Acknowledge the thoughts / ideations but do not become them – If you have experienced suicidal thoughts from a child, these thoughts now might be part of your healing path as it is something that you are in control off. When facing trauma, sometimes suicidal thoughts / ideations are a natural response as its your brain trying to escape its current experiences as it knows how too. You have healed before and you can heal again, suicidal thoughts can also be a part of you and you can live a healthy life alongside them. So acknowledge your thoughts ‘thankyou for reminding me what i have recently experienced, but i will not become you today’ by doing this you know they are there but they are not going to become you.
4. Understand where these thoughts / ideations are stemming from – Is it a recent trauma? Is it a past trauma? By understanding the source this will help you to validate how you are currently feeling – that it is not from out of nowhere. If it is from out of nowhere, please see blog as there may be another cause – https://danisace.com/?p=211 – Trauma from Nowhere @ danisace.com. Understanding why you feel these thoughts will help to ease the pressure of the thoughts, it is okay to feel them!
Sometimes though you may need more in-depth support from a Psychologist or someone of a similar background.
5. Begin the healing processes – Emotional regulation is hard to comprehend as an adult if it has not been learnt correctly as a child.
Emotional regulation is feeling what you need to feel in a positive manner.
This can be done by understanding the processes of trauma and seeing how this aligns with you– for a full in depth write up please see – https://danisace.com/?p=987 -5 stages of grief, which aligns in with trauma processing.
When faced with any form of trauma an individual’s brain must process this trauma, when processing trauma individuals can either do this in a healthy manner, or in an unhealthy manner. Generally, a healthy manner is due to understanding and an unhealthy manner is due to a lack of understandings, with these 5 stages of grief processing – it may not work with everyone or be in any specific order but if you understand the processes and can align them in with your processing it may help with understandings.
- Shock / Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance
If you need support whilst you regulate SAPUK are available everyday 6am – 11pm, for more intense support hey@danisace.com
Thankyou for reading / podcast coming soon ✌️