I’m writing this down so I don’t lose this thought over time.

What makes something like Ideation so different from other habits, traits, or conditioned responses of the mind? I began thinking about this out of my frustration of feeling so little control over reoccurring ideation. No matter how joyful or at peace I may feel the occurrence of suicidal ideation has always been able to surface with little warning and does not subside merely by trying to force the feeling to leave or be dismissed. So is ideation really a condition? That is the question that I think may so often make suicidal thoughts so elusive and out of the reach of more traditional cures or therapies. It also makes the sufferer (or at least me) question the authenticity of these events that feel so consuming. The thought “am I imagining this” comes to mind.

When I mention frustration I mean that for me there have been conditions, habits, etc. that I’ve been able to take head on or at least acknowledge. For example, many years ago I was a smoker (yuck I know) and the habit had me going through over one pack per day. I made up my mind that I wanted to quit, I decided on the steps I should take to accomplish quitting, and I even set up a backup plan to deal with any aftermath. Basically the steps were – Stop buying cigarettes and throw away all ashtrays lighters or anything associated with smoking. Have ready at hand replacements to take the place of smoking such as lots of gum. Alter my rituals where I would normally want to smoke such as the particular times after a meal, breaktime locations at work, and so on. To my surprise I didn’t need any of these except for the first, throw away cigarettes and stop buying them. I made up my mind and I put in place a plan to make the change. Granted, many others don’t have it that easy but this worked for me.

So when it comes to something like ideation my first and strongest solution is to put together a plan of how I will either stop or replace those thoughts. Yeah… not that easy. I’ve changed various stimuli in my life, found more joy, and even tried just saying NO THIS IS NOT ME ANYMORE. I think the answer is still out there but I wanted to get these thoughts written down because it helps me document my journey – or escape – from suicidal ideation. I honestly thought at one point that there would be one key thing that I could change or treat as the root source. I’m finding that incredibly difficult to pin down. And yes this is a very analytical approach but it has been one that I needed to explore before anything else. Everyone is different. Not everyone can simply quit smoking or change something in their life just by committing to it. The work that is involved for some things goes beyond what can be chronicled and seems to be as different as people are different from each other.