Dear Suicidal Ideation, (part 2)
Dear Suicidal Ideation, (Part 2)
When everything shut down I wasn’t looking up the number of people dying from covid. I was looking up the number of people dying from suicide. I knew you’d further infest our minds after lockdown.
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My fiancé was telling me the number of covid deaths and I was telling him that this level of isolation was going to cause too many people to kill themselves.
The other day I read this article and it reminded me of early 2020.
It says:
In 2021, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory regarding youth mental health. The pandemic, he wrote, “exacerbated the unprecedented stresses young people already faced.”
The percentage of high schoolers who considered suicide rose again, from 18.8% in 2019 to 22.2%, and the percentage who attempted suicide rose from 8.9% to 10.2% in that two-year period.
This made me realize how hard I’ve fought against you and it reassured me of the ways I’ve done it. The article says we need to:
Normalize feeling a wide range of emotions, talk about these feelings daily, practice gratitude, show unconditional love to our children, don’t place value on their successes, and show kids how much they matter.
In my experience these are the best ways to quiet the idealistic ways of killing oneself:
Create a vision board—if I can focus on a future that is bright and joyous, it takes my focus away from the desolate future you see.
Give myself time to sit with you and let you write—giving you a voice that isn’t all consuming helps me separate from you.
Write a list of everything I am grateful for—bringing my focus to what is good and light in my life lessens the hold you have on me.
Extend this prayer to myself and others-Lokah Samastah Sukinho Bhavantu, which means May All Beings Everywhere Be Happy and Free—Belieiving that I deserve to be happy and free sets me free of the hold you’ve had on me.
See a Cognitive Behavioral Therapist to help heal from Traumatic Brain Injury—I wish I knew sooner that my brain injury gave you more power and CBT would give me the power back.
Today I’m grateful that you no longer take up space in my mind and my body. I pray that those who you are attacking find their way to help.
Love Always,
Danielle Mallett
To hear one of the poems from my book, Sunshine by Design click the button below, This Seed.
