Mood Miracles
These are your pages. We want to hear from you about your successes, recoveries, and triumphs. Please email me your story either written, video or audio and I will post it here.
Postpartum Depression
Interview with Marlene about how insights into how her mind works relieved her suffering
Suicidal Ideation - A Case Study by Dr. William F. Pettit MD
This is a transcript from a patient in a program at West Virginia State University run by Dr. Judy Sedgeman and Dr. Bill Pettit.
I went to bed that night feeling very upset, I started a fight with my husband, poor guy, he was trying to sleep. I wasn’t yet at that point planning to take my life that night, but I went out on the deck, and he came out to see if I was ok.
I was angry. I told him he had intruded on my space again, and I told him I would be better when I’m dead. I walked straight to my bedroom, locked the door, took out all of my pills, and started taking them very deliberately. I spaced them out so I wouldn’t be sick. I was not going to be awake in the morning.
I couldn’t face another day, I couldn’t face another problem. I couldn’t see another sunrise. I really felt my friends, my family would be better off if I was not here. I thought I would be better off. I was looking for some kind of peace. And it's kinda strange to think that, even as I was taking those pills, I thought this was the answer, and that I would finally be at peace. That was the only thing on my mind.
Then I had a thought; my mom died alone. My dad died alone. I don’t want to die alone. So I went out into the living room, and my husband realized what I had done, put a call through to Dr. Pettit, and got me to the hospital.
I actually look at that suicide attempt as successful, because the pain that I had back then, the, uh, the constant anxiety…just everything looks so different now. That part of me that was no longer serving God, that was no longer serving me, that was no longer serving anybody has gone. I had tried counseling and therapy before, but they never showed me how to find that peace inside.
It took me a while as I’m kind of stubborn. I understood what Dr. Pettit was saying, but it took me a while to see that it was my thoughts that were causing my pain. I had a journal, and looking back, I am shocked to see how angry I was, how scared I was, and now I am so grateful, just truly, truly grateful. Now that I see that I’m the one responsible for my thoughts, that I can’t control every thought that comes into my head, but I can choose what I’m going to do with them. I also realized that I’m not responsible for how other people respond to things. I was finally able to accept myself for who I was, because I never had before. I never felt that I ever measured up, ever. I never felt that I was good enough, and now I just know that I am.
That peace that comes over you is enormous, it's wonderful.
Transcribed from the University of West Virginia video