For the suicidal

Why is this on my website? Because it needs to be said.

Are you anxious, depressed, and/or suicidal?

First: Take a breath. Set a timer for 15 minutes, and do anything you can think of to distract yourself until your timer goes off. Why? Because suicidal impulses often spike in a five minute period of time. Fifteen minutes from now, you may feel different than you do right now. Maybe, set your timer, and then reach out to one of the resources below.

Second: If you are in a state of emotional crisis and feel that you have an urgent need for the perspective of tarot, it’s fine to contact me and ask if I can fit you in. I will try my best to be there for you, and talking to me may help you feel better temporarily. But: I am not always available, AND, in the long run, you will probably also need, and I strongly recommend that you seek out, other types of support from professionals who are trained in psychology (which I am NOT). Here are some resources:

• Start with your primary care doctor and ask for a referral.
• If you have insurance, check the back of your insurance card: Some insurance companies include a 24-hour nurse line there.
• In the U.S., you can also text START to the number 741741 to reach the Crisis Text Line (if you go to the link, you can click to text them through WhatsApp).
• If you are a young person of color, you might want to text that same line, 741741, with the word STEVE, to reach crisis counselors who are trained by the Steve Fund.
• Call or text the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 800-273-8255.
• You can call or text 988 to reach Lifeline (which is available in English and Spanish).

If you’re looking for specifically LGBTQ resources, consider:

• The Trevor Project, a hotline for LGBTQ young people: phone 866-488-7386, or text START to 678678. It’s available 24/7.
• The National LGBT hotline at 888-843-4564.
• If you are 25 or younger, you might prefer the National LBGT Youth Talkline, which is also staffed by young people, at 800-246-7743.
• The Trans Lifeline, a peer support hotline entirely run by trans people: phone 877-565-8860.
• In case my list becomes out of date, you might want to try PFLAG for other resources.

If you’re looking for Wisconsin-specific resources, you might want to try Prevent Suicide Wisconsin, which has a county by county list of hotlines.

Here in Milwaukee (and in many other places too), if you are feeling suicidal, or, even if you are not suicidal but are still unable to function, you can also walk into an emergency room and get immediate help–and sometimes that’s a better option than waiting months (which is the typical wait time in the Milwaukee area) for an appointment with a psychiatrist.

If you, for now, are not urgently in crisis but just need someone to listen, you can also try the text listeners at Seven Cups of Tea. You can also go through the Seven Cups of Tea training and become a listener, and believe it or not, being there for others can also help you to feel better.

Last but not least: a few more words about depression and feeling suicidal: If you are feeling suicidal, and therapy/medication do not seem to be helping, please know this: Your belief that the medical establishment can’t help you is probably well-founded on your own past experiences. I get that. But my belief that they may also represent your last best hope is equally well-founded. Because the truth is, you are a complicated person (we all are) and it takes time and effort to figure you out. It takes time for interventions to help. Usually things seem to get worse before they get better. You might have to go through several practitioners (and maybe even some incompetent or disrespectful ones) before you find the RIGHT one who respects what you’ve been through and is able to help you. PLEASE take some time and keep trying, and try your best to be patient with the recovery process even when it sucks, which some of the time it definitely, totally, will. It’s possible that this bad experience, the one you’re in the middle of right now, will be the learning experience that turns on the light bulb in the brain of your supportive practitioners and helps them to remember some solution that might be a better fit for you. Please give them (and yourself) that chance to try to think of something else that may help.

If you haven’t been helped by the mental health community, it is NOT because you are un-helpable or irredeemable or impossible or hopeless. You are NONE of those things. You are JUST COMPLICATED and it takes time for doctors to get to know you and to understand your unique situation.

I’m taking the time to write this long discussion of depression and suicide because I observe that MANY of you are in this situation. You are not alone, and no matter what you may think of yourself, what I think is that you deserve a good, competent team of helpers who are on your side. And right now we are losing way too many wonderful people to suicide. That’s why we need to have this conversation. Thank you for taking the time to read this.