As someone who has also struggled with suicidal thoughts recently (and who also has autism and very probably has ADHD), there's often no easy answer, as you likely know well enough. Here's some possibilities that have made it easier for me, and reduced my negative thoughts, and might help you too.
- People often feel suicidal when they care about a priority a lot - for example, not being inferior to other people - and feel they cannot meet that priority at all. I've been there too, For me, it was my overly harsh internal standards for justice, and not meeting them because, well, uh, I'm a person, we tend to be a foible-having lot.
- The intensity with which we care about that priority can dominate our focus, cause our thoughts and perceptions to bend. If we require some priority to be met for an acceptable life, but the priority is not met, the whole point feels sunk - we might think, what is the merit of other things? This grip can be hard to escape, because it draws on our biggest priorities and our emotions, and we can't exactly flip a switch to turn those off - not that it'd be helpful to anyway.
- This dynamic of painful dominated focus is not ideal. Why? Because you're hurting a lot under it, and I want you to not bear that hurt, and the cause of mercy wants you to not bear that hurt. Because life is valuable and I value yours, and the cause of humanity wants you to feel free inside your life and mind. These are some reasons, and there are many others.
- Sometimes, it can be hard to embrace this truth, that another thought dynamic would be better when you're in the worst of it. I know plenty well. Even if we struggle to fully trust and internalize that, though, we can anchor and ground ourselves by understanding rationally, surface-level, a different dynamic would be better, and there are reasons why. I mentioned some reasons, of the value of human life and reducing suffering, and I also had two dimensions of them; that I and others personally want the situation to improve, and that abstract ideals want them to improve.
- There are many reasons and dimensions of reasons we can use to remind ourselves that, rationally speaking, a different thought dynamic would suit us better. We can strengthen these reasons by drawing on our own personal priorities, our values and interests and connections, balancing the fact that other priorities can make this thought dynamic hard to escape.
- One way this rational grounding can help us is framing. When we clearly explain to ourselves that the rules of suicidal thoughts are rationally not the right rules – even if it takes time to fully trust and emotionally embrace that understanding – we can better focus on and value
protecting ourselves against these inappropriate rules, and gradually decrease our efforts to satisfy rules that do not work for us.
- Sometimes, when we're focused on just the priority we think we're failing (like not being inferior), combatting negative thoughts can be like fighting the sea. No matter how much work we put in to convince ourselves that we are not inferior, the problem may not be with our arguments of adequacy at all. Our arguments may be great, but that may not be enough to solve the problem, and putting even more improvement into them may be trying to fill a bottomless hole.
- Instead, a root problem may be the
imbalanced role this priority as a whole is holding in our thoughts and life. We may be relying too much on it as a potential source of esteem and happiness, and when this source does not provide that, we may be especially vulnerable to feeling terrible. This imbalance is another reason why clearly, explicitly bringing in other priorities to our thoughts can help, in addition to the reasons in the fifth bulleted paragraph I note. As we meet those other priorities more, we may gradually feel our minds improve and clear, since we are opening ourselves up to derive esteem and happiness from multiple sources. Even when we struggle with meeting one priority, we can support ourselves mentally by meeting other priorities.
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- As I mentioned, there's a limit to how much we can "argue with" our important priorities. They are deeply rooted in our psyches, we have big reasons for seeking them out, and improving how we conceptualize and react to them may depend on gradual change as we meet other priorities. Nevertheless, sometimes talking about these specific priorities can help, both to rationally ground us, give us ideas on how we may want to re-interpret our needs, and gradually contribute to change that helps us feel better. Let's talk about inferiority.
- You say the value of being better is that it lets you achieve more things. I don't think that's wrong. Here is a question for you, though. Are all things equally valuable? (Of course, you don't need to answer those questions, physically or otherwise. I just like questions as a rhetorical device.) There may be some things we feel a
need to achieve, and there may be some things that, would be
neat I guess to achieve but are not essential. A trap I, myself, often fall into is getting imbalancedly caught up in abstracted notions of power and capability. That can be one helpful way to see the world, but I traditionally struggle to distinguish between different
things that power might actually
achieve. Concrete, individual, identifiable things.
- Are there specific things you want to achieve but feel you lack the capability to, which makes you feel inferior? There are many ways to achieve things we consider important – maybe there is a different way to achieve your priorities that draws on the capabilities you have, versus capabilities you don't have?
- Is there a specific, identifiable point of non-inferiority that would make you feel satisfied? Like before, a trap people like me can fall into is chasing
ideas, like adequacy, without pinning down an achievable "good enough" level for them, getting stuck in an impossible loop. Even when we are experts in some areas, there are very often people better than us.
- As an example, among people who have played
Smash Bros. I am easily in the top 1%, and significantly better than that. I frequently get frustrated with people in Elite Smash because they are not good enough to provide me interesting competition. And... I am
much worse than the 1-in-a-million famous people who compete in international tournaments. I'm
competitive in small, local tournaments, but hardly blowing the competition away. And when someone cleanly better than me smokes me, sometimes that does make me feel inferior - but I'm already top 1%! Even if I somehow became the
best person in the world in Smash. Bros., I wouldn't be the best person in a trillion other activities. It can be valuable to ask where following ideas forever would lead us, and whether that is desirable or possible or both. (And I'll tell you what. Joy and empathy are historical challenge areas for me!)
- Similarly, if we want to make more friends, we can sometimes get too caught up in being "good enough" for friends, which can both lack a conclusive "achieved" end point, and also not be that helpful to gaining friends in practice. A reframe can help. What
things do friends like about other friends? What
things cause people to get closer to each other? Vulnerabilities, weaknesses foibles, as identifiable things versus parts of a soup of "being good enough", can be charming and endearing. Overcoming challenges, as a thing, can help people get closer together. Different prospective friends can differ. Some are not-great people who would treat me poorly and probably not who I want to befriend, and some are fine folks but don't jive with me for whatever reason. Who are the specific types of people and people I might want to befriend, and get closer to as friends?
