On January 7, 2011, I decided to commit suicide. It was a cool and sunny Friday afternoon and I was walking down an overpass with a busy highway underneath. There was a concrete barrier next to me and a chain-link fence on top.

I thought to myself: “I can easily climb the fence and jump to my death on the highway below.” That thought normally would have surprised me, but after the last few months it didn’t seem like a bad plan.

I had just got off the phone with my ex-girlfriend of seven years. He informed me that he was with someone new. She had ended our relationship just a few months earlier and moved out of state. Her two adult children still lived at my house and I kept in touch with her in the hope that we would get back together.

So it was official. My ex-girlfriend had found someone new. She was out of my life, and without her I didn’t know if she was worth living.

I had no friends that I could contact or call because my best friend had died a few months before and my life revolved around my ex-girlfriend. Out of decency, fear, or both, he called my ex-wife (and the police) because he knew I was in trouble and needed to speak to someone quickly, even though he had no idea where I was.

Luckily when I was on the flyover my ex-wife called me and I answered. Through burning tears and a cracking voice, I cried on the phone yelling at him that I wanted the pain in my heart to stop. He really was a miserable soul, totally and emotionally destroyed by the pain of it all.

The breakup with my ex-wife was many years before, through the years we forgiven each other and became friends, so strangely enough, my ex-wife was the best person to understand my pain.

The relationship with my ex-girlfriend was more complicated. You see, I found out, sometime before all this, that my girlfriend had had a sexual relationship with another man she had met a year before dating me. Her relationship with this man lasted almost the seven years we were together, and her two adult children who lived in my house knew everything, but kept their mother’s secret.

So the whole relationship was full of betrayal and deception. Even after learning all of this, I forgave her and hoped that one day we could get back together. You may think it’s crazy, but this is how I felt at the time.

I learned that the man she had the affair with was out of her life and I was hoping that if I put all my heart and soul into the relationship, she would fully commit to me. We would live happily ever after. All the bit. I was really in fantasy thoughts.

The night before, when I was on the flyover, he sent me an email making it clear that he never intended to return with me. He didn’t have the decency to tell me on the phone or to my face. To make it even more confusing for me, she asked me to help her with the closing costs of a house she was buying as if I were her partner. I slow down money with high hopes for the future. He loved her and wanted to do everything he could to make her happy.

What she forgot to tell me was that she was in another relationship with a new man and that the house was for them to live in. That was the news he had received just before climbing the overpass.

I felt like I was being manipulated like a puppet. I loved her and her two children, but they didn’t respect me. They all said they loved me, but they were really just using me. I was devastated when I realized this.

The good news is that I obviously didn’t jump in, or else I wouldn’t be writing this article, but it came very close. I think if he was under the influence of alcohol or some other mood-altering substance at the time, he would have jumped.

My ex-wife successfully convinced me not to jump for the sake of our daughter. She made me realize the pain it would cause my daughter if she committed suicide, not to mention that she would be a terrible role model by setting a horrible role model. She was (and is) in recovery from drug addiction and has also dealt with depression issues. I felt bad thinking of her mirroring my actions.

Despite how distorted my thinking was, my ex-wife’s reasoning somehow got through to me and I knew that I didn’t want to commit suicide for the sake of our daughter, if not for my own. Your phone call saved my life. In a weird way, I’m thankful that my ex-girlfriend called my ex-wife as well, because she never got that call; otherwise I wouldn’t be here writing this now.

Looking back in time, before this scene on the flyover, I could see that a storm was brewing inside of me. For months I had been plagued with suicidal thoughts that began to accompany my lifelong battle with depression.

I was taking prescription drugs for depression. I was also seeing a therapist. If it hadn’t been, I’m sure even my ex-wife wouldn’t have been able to convince me not to rush to my death. But, thank God, I had that help, because now I see that this terrible situation was absolutely unworthy of my meaningless sacrifice of my life. The betrayal of my girlfriend and the hiding of her children were not worth it; and my daughter’s life now mattered more to me than my own life.

I miss how screwed up my thinking was. Here, I was in a crisis ready to throw away my own life, but I guess I was still worried about something bigger than myself, my daughter.

My own biological father had abandoned me along with my mother and my younger brother. My suicide would have been the ultimate abandonment of my daughter, something I swore I would never do when I had a child. I would not continue the family tradition and abandon my own flesh and blood.

Once I hung up with my ex-wife, I no longer felt like jumping. But, I still felt like dying, and I found myself alone and emotionally destroyed. It hurt and I wanted it to stop. Do you know the expression about how “I felt like I had been stabbed in the heart”? This is how I felt.

So how did I deal with this pain?

Well, a few months before this incident, I had attended a seminar where I was presented with energy therapy to help release negative thought patterns. It’s called the Emotional Freedom Technique, also known as EFT or tapping.

Gary Craig invented EFT in the early 1990s. He was a student of Dr. Roger Callahan, the father of TFT, or Thought Field Therapy, which he discovered in the late 1980s.

Carol Look, a well-known EFT practitioner and expert, describes EFT as a form of psychological acupressure. The way EFT works is first, you find your target – the issue of the problem you are having (suicide for me) and imagine a scale of zero to ten where zero is the least degree of emotional pain or distress than you are. whatever it is. feeling about the problem, and ten is the highest grade. Identify where you are on that pain or suffering scale, then begin the process.

The process is a series of taps with your fingers at certain places known as meridian points on your body. As you tap, you say out loud what is known as a preparatory statement, followed by a tapping progression called a negative reminder phrase, ending the process with a round of tapping using the positive statement or phrase.

At first, this whole tapping thing sounded really ridiculous to me, but I did it anyway and saw how it helped. It was the solution to my problem. I kept going and even though I didn’t feel like living, not even doing rounds of tapping, it helped me get over the feelings of suicide. I thought I’d try to fake it until you got it close, and it worked!

Little by little, something inside me began to change. I started to feel better. My suicidal thoughts became less and less frequent. It took a while, but this tapping material really worked.

I have struggled with depression my entire life, and although I haven’t completely gotten rid of it, my suicidal thoughts are gone! In fact, I can imagine a future for myself. Every day that I live I give thanks for what I have, and I can see what a terrible mistake it would have been for me to end my life.

Not every day is perfect. I still take medication for depression and see a therapist, although less often, I can now better cope with my depression thanks to EFT. Now I can enjoy life and look to the future.

I am not advocating replacing professional help with EFT. But EFT is yet another tool that I have to use in my defense arsenal against feeling depressed, depressed, and hopeless.

The reason I am writing this article is to help anyone in a similar situation. I want everyone to know that no matter how bad things seem, even to the point that it hurts so much that you are thinking about hurting yourself (or killing yourself) that there is hope.

Suicide is not a solution. It’s the worst thing you can do, not just for yourself, but for anyone you leave behind who has to live with your suicide for the rest of their lives.

Do you really want that? Of course not.

I think EFT helped me and may possibly help you. If you feel depressed and / or have suicidal tendencies, give it a try. There is a ton of free literature on the subject of EFT (a free guide can be downloaded from my website). You can also go to YouTube; type “EFT” in the search box and several videos will appear showing you how to do it.

You are important and worth living, even if you don’t believe it or feel it. Try EFT. It is free and easy to do. You are definitely worth it! The phrase pretend until you do was never truer than it was for me using EFT. And i did it! You also can!