Trying really hard

[SofterSoftest]

I am constantly overcome with feelings of deep guilt about my desire to CTB, even while I'm actively putting the pieces together to successfully complete my CTB in late April. I've even started convincing myself to try and push through the pain to be there for people like my SO and others in my family - trying to find meaning in this life.

My question is whether it is possible to truly stop desiring CTB once you have been chronically suicidal for years. Has anyone in the recovery forum actually achieved this?

 

[Sanva]

i'm interested in this too. can't say i have much experience myself but i imagine it might be like recovery from an eating disorder, you can go for months or even years without thinking about it but sometimes it just pops back up, it's never fully gone. I think it's possible to "get it under control" for the lack of a better phrase, but that also involves having to endure phases where you have suicidal thoughts without acting on them. idk if that makes sense, hopefully somebody who has some actual experience can share their thoughts.

 

[rudebeat]

I would've completely stopped wanting to ctb at this point if not for some new health issues I've gotten in the past 2 years. I went from being one of the most awkward kids in my entire school of 3,400 people to being somewhat normal and having 5 friends in my senior year of high school and in college. I think there were 2 key things to my recovery. One was just switching what I did in my free time. For the first 16 years of my life I spent all my free time alone playing video games. Then I changed my habits and started watching youtube videos and twitch streams a lot. I think I subconsciously picked up how I acted socially from these.
The other was looking at any things I did that might be overloading my brain on dopamine and desensitizing my brain to it and cutting those things out of my life. This isn't just me guessing either, I could very clearly tell a difference in how I felt whenever I relapsed and did these activities again and how I felt when I stopped doing them for a while. Also for some of these things you can't completely cut them out of your life so it's fine to only try to reduce them.
Honestly even with the many horrible health conditions I have my life still has potential to be somewhere in the middle of good and bad, if I can get on a certain medication for one condition. If I can I might consider myself recovered for a while, although I might be forced to ctb eventually due to the fact I might be losing my vision.