Thoughts on Severe Thought Modes and Suicidal “Trances”

Today, everything feels different. A bit muted or muffled. Closer to “normal”, manageable.

When things are getting out of control, everything feels so big. Extreme. Like a catastrophe, the strength of some kinds of bad feelings that are hard to pinpoint and describe.

I’m starting to recognize the “healthier”, or more balanced kinds of days. I imagine the way things feel on these days is more like what normal/healthy people are feeling.

For a broad example, thinking about all the unknowns and inevitable losses of future decades — in bad times, this feels so horrendously unmanageable, it’s a physical sensation I can’t describe and a near-terror level of fear that I will become “stuck”, unable to manage whatever happens or ending up in some miserable situation I can’t reverse. Sometimes to near panic levels of fear, dread. That, or awareness of my difficulties with connections/socializing/whatnot feels like something I just can’t get past. I think this gets into that “trance”-like territory I talked about before, that suicidal people describe when they’re in that moment. Once they get into that, it takes time for it to pass and the further into the trance you get, the less the conscious strategies work and like people have described before, we need others to help delay actions or decisions until it passes. The brain is just in a different mode and struggles to listen to reason.

But then!
On a healthier day, depending on how good the day is, that awfulness could be reduced to just a general unease or slight nervousness even if I’m thinking a lot about it, the kind that I can imagine most people would feel. Kind of a “it sucks and it’s hard on the nerves”, yes, but the same way others experience it and I know that they mostly get through it just fine and I will, too. And, I’m able to redirect my focus sometimes onto something positive. You know, the “take action to change the current state” treatment. The kind of state of mind where conscientious therapy strategies can actually have benefit, where I can have some choice and control over emotions, at least to a point, and manage it myself.

What I haven’t pinpointed… what is different between those times as far as triggering them goes. In other words, how much of it is determined by my thought patterns and how much of it is biological. Which comes first. I suspect that it’s both, yes, and can go either way for order but not the same ratio of those day to day. Hormone drops/changes will influence them a lot for sure, but there are times outside of that, too. This is what I’m trying to balance now with medication.