Coping with suicidal thoughts

There is more than one kind

Suicidal thoughts do not all look the same. They aren’t all sharp images or active plans. For most women, they arrive quieter than that, and they stay longer than the films tell you.

Sometimes they sound like: “I just don’t want to be here.” “If I didn’t wake up tomorrow, that would be alright.” “If something happened to me on the motorway.” The flat, far-away version. The one that doesn’t feel like a thought at all, just a low background hum.

Sometimes they’re sharper. A specific image. A plan you find yourself rehearsing without meaning to.

All of it counts. All of it deserves your kindness.

“I don’t want to die. I want it to stop.”

These two are very different sentences, and they get confused with each other constantly, including by you.

What you usually want, underneath, is for the pain to stop. The exhaustion. The relentless feeling that you cannot cope with another day of this. Wanting to not be here is, almost always, a wish to be released from how you feel, not a wish to be dead.

That distinction matters, because what you actually need is rest, support, and a way out of the pain, not the thing your brain is presenting as the only exit.

You don’t want to die. You want this version of being alive to stop. There is a different version waiting, even if you cannot picture it from where you are.

When the thoughts are new

For many women in midlife, this is the first time. Forty-six, fifty-one, fifty-three. A woman who has been functional her whole life, suddenly thinking these thoughts in a Tesco car park.

It can be terrifying. It can also feel like proof that something is fundamentally wrong with you. It isn’t. It is, very often, a body in chemical chaos meeting a life that has finally asked too much.

Hormones, exhaustion, grief, financial pressure, the slow loss of a sense of who you were. Any combination can bring them. Sometimes for the first time. The thoughts aren’t a verdict on you. They’re a signal that something is too much right now.

When perimenopause is part of it

Suicidal ideation can be a symptom of perimenopause and menopause. It is not on every leaflet. Many GPs do not ask. But the data is there, and the women living it have been saying so for years.

If you’re experiencing these thoughts alongside other midlife or hormonal changes, broken sleep, brain fog, anxiety, rage, a feeling of having lost yourself, please tell your GP that. Treatment for the menopause is, for many women, also treatment for these thoughts.

This does not mean menopause is causing all of it. It just means it might be part of it. And that part is treatable.

The layer of shame

Mothers especially. Women who are seen as the strong one. Women who are exhausted but have everything, on paper.

There is a particular kind of shame that comes with these thoughts when, by every visible measure, you should be alright. The children. The house. The marriage. The job. The lucky life.

That shame keeps women silent for years. Please don’t let it keep you silent. You can have a good life and a body that is in crisis at the same time. The two are not the same conversation.

You are not weak for having these thoughts. You are not ungrateful. You are tired. You are unsupported. You are carrying things you were never meant to carry alone.

What can help, gently

There is no one right thing. There is just the next small thing.

• Tell one person. Not the whole story, not perfectly. Just one. A friend, a partner, your GP, a helpline.
• Talk to SAM. When you don’t have a person to tell, or it’s the middle of the night, SAM is here. No agenda, no judgement, no list of helplines fired at you the moment things get real.
• Write it down. Sometimes the words are easier on a page than out loud. The Letter Generator will help you find them, for your GP, your partner, or someone you trust.
• Make the room less alone. Open a window. Put a familiar voice on the radio. Move into a different room. Small environment shifts matter more than they should.
• Slow time down. Drink a glass of water. Eat something, even half a slice of toast. Wash your face. The thoughts will still be there in five minutes, but you will have given yourself five minutes.
• Put off any big decision. Suicidal thoughts often pass, even when they don’t feel like they will. The decision part of your brain isn’t the part to trust tonight.

If tonight is the problem

Sometimes the thoughts get loud at a specific time. 3am. The hour after the children are in bed. The drive home from work in winter. The Sunday afternoon when the week ahead feels enormous.

If you know when your hardest hour is, you can prepare for it, gently. Have a friend on standby for a text. Have SAM open in a tab. Have the Samaritans number written down somewhere you don’t have to look for. Have a list of small, ordinary things you will do in that hour: a bath, a walk, an episode of something familiar, a phone call.

You don’t have to fix the whole thing. You have to get through that hour.

If you’re scared of yourself right now

Please contact one of the services below. They will sit with you on the phone or by text. That is what they are there for. They will not mind that it is you, or that it is now, or that you don’t have the right words.

• 999, if you are in immediate danger.
• Samaritans on 116 123, free, 24/7, in the UK.
• Text SHOUT to 85258, free crisis text line.
• Papyrus HOPELINE247 on 0800 068 41 41, originally for under-35s, but they will speak to anyone in suicidal crisis.
• CALM on 0800 58 58 58, for anyone, despite the name.

If you are reading this for someone you love

Thank you. The most important thing you can do is not look away.

You don’t need the right words. You need to keep showing up, gently, without panicking. Ask. Listen. Stay.

Do not try to talk them out of how they feel. Do not minimise it. Do not promise it will all be fine. Sit with it, the way you would with a child who was scared.

If you are worried about their immediate safety, call 999, or take them to A&E. You are allowed to ask for help on their behalf. They may be angry with you briefly. They will be alive to be angry, which is the point.

And tomorrow

If you get through tonight, that is enough. You don’t have to be transformed by morning. You just have to be here.

When you can, please make an appointment with your GP. Use the words “suicidal thoughts” out loud. If your GP doesn’t take it seriously, see a different GP. You are not making a fuss. You are doing the most important thing a person can do, which is to keep yourself here.

Whatever you do, please stay. You do not have to feel hopeful. You do not have to know how it gets better. You just have to stay until it does.