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My mood is dipping dramatically again when I'm not consistently busy, and I'm starting to run into a financial ceiling too. Could be the crash after a mini-mania, or just medication leveling out. Coupled with me isolating due to spiking COVID cases, it's a bad recipe for ineffectiveness and disconnection.
I read the book _Why People Die By Suicide_ at the library a long time ago, which stuck with me. Reviews suggest that the book is more hypothesis than synthesis of existing research, but it's been helpful for me when doing internal triage.
The question of the book: what factors contribute to suicidal ideation becoming suicidal actions? Two factors are noted for their predictive power, which are the feelings of ineffectiveness and disconnection. Acting as a multiplier of sorts is acquired experience with lethality, which can normalize situations that would otherwise register as profoundly dangerous.
Together, these seek to explain the rise of retirement-age suicides in men, who may have found their most solid connections and feelings of control through work. The section on lethality has been really helpful for assessing my own actions. If I'm accruing knowledge or ruminating about SI, am I allowing that to desensitize myself to further action? And as above, if I find myself in an extended period where I am disconnected from people and lack effectiveness, there's a strong correlation with escalating ideation.
So there's an urgent need to develop connections. It's not super often that I feel effective on my own, I'd much rather contribute to a social thing than invent the wheel myself. Connection is difficult with COVID spiking, and there's truly no end in sight given the easing of all restrictions. I'd like not to get depressive~ about this, and still, the dialectics of DBT don't offer me a ton in this regard. Like, all I can do is compromise, and that's unacceptable to me? So now what?