Suicidal Ideation Map
Absolutely. And I think a mind map is particularly useful here because your story isn't one cause → one crisis → one solution. It's more like a network: multiple forms of vulnerability and invalidation accumulated, certain events pushed the system beyond capacity, and then different kinds of community, safety, understanding and meaning gradually created alternative pathways.
I’d structure it like this:
Mind map: What has contributed to suicidality — and what has helped me stay
┌──────────────────────┐
│ SUICIDALITY / │
│ "I DON'T WANT TO │
│ DO THIS │
│ ANYMORE" │
└──────────┬───────────┘
│
┌───────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┐
│ │ │
▼ ▼ ▼
WHY LIFE BECAME THINGS THAT WHAT WAS MISSING
UNBEARABLE TRIGGERED IT / SYSTEM GAPS
│ │ │
┌────────┴────────┐ ┌────────┴────────┐ ┌────────┴─────────┐
│ │ │ │ │ │
▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼
TRAUMA SHAME / LIFE CRISES INVALIDATION LACK OF LACK OF
COMPARISON APPROPRIATE PEER SUPPORT
RESOURCES
But I'd make it more detailed for your actual story:
1. TRAUMA & THE BASIC BELIEF THAT THE WORLD IS UNSAFE
TRAUMA
│
├── Experiences of abuse / being hurt
│
├── Family relationships as a source of pain
│ └── rather than a secure base
│
├── Family not believing / validating what was happening
│ └── "Maybe what I'm experiencing isn't real"
│
├── Chronic feeling of being unsafe
│
├── Feeling like the world is fundamentally hostile
│
├── Fear that living simply means being hurt again
│
└── Belief:
"If life is going to keep hurting me,
why would I want to continue?"
And this is where your idea of death as an exit fits.
The thought isn't necessarily:
“I want death.”
It can become:
“At least there is a way out if this ever becomes completely unbearable.”
That can paradoxically create a tiny feeling of control when everything else feels uncontrollable.
2. NEURODIVERGENCE + NOT HAVING THE ENVIRONMENTAL SUPPORT YOU NEEDED
NEURODIVERGENCE
│
├── Being "the weird one"
│
├── Not being understood
│
├── Being mistrusted / misunderstood
│
├── Masking
│
├── Sensory / social demands
│
├── Executive-function difficulties
│
├── Expectations designed around neurotypical functioning
│
└── Repeated message:
"You should be able to do this."
│
▼
"Why can't I?"
│
▼
shame / self-blame
Particularly important: school
HIGH SCHOOL
│
├── Bullying
│
├── Lack of understanding
│
├── Lack of adaptations
│
├── Lack of stability
│
├── Having to function in an environment
│ that didn't accommodate you
│
└── No adequate explanation for why
things were so difficult
So instead of:
“This environment isn't meeting my needs.”
the internalised explanation can become:
“There is something wrong with me.”
And that is a very dangerous place for shame to grow.
3. SHAME + SOCIAL COMPARISON
I think this is one of the biggest branches in your particular map.
SOCIAL COMPARISON
│
├── Former classmates
│ ├── university
│ ├── degrees
│ ├── jobs
│ ├── relationships
│ ├── houses
│ └── children
│
├── Social media
│ └── everyone else's apparent success
│
├── "Normal life" expectations
│
├── Productivity expectations
│
└── Capitalist success narrative
│
▼
"I'm behind."
│
▼
"I have nothing to show for my life."
│
▼
"Everyone else can do this."
│
▼
"Why can't I?"
│
▼
SHAME
│
▼
"Maybe I'm the problem."
│
▼
hopelessness
And there's an especially painful mismatch:
Other people's milestones
Degree Career Partner Children House Success
versus your survival milestones:
Got out of bed. Did the dishes. Stayed in contact with someone. Got through the day. Made it through another crisis.
The second category is invisible to society.
4. CRISES THAT THEN CONFIRM THE STORY
This is another important branch.
CHRONIC VULNERABILITY
│
▼
CRISIS
│
├── Relationship breaks down
│
├── Relationship ends
│
├── Job loss / being fired
│
├── Conflict
│
├── Housing / financial instability
│
├── Loss of important relationships
│
└── Overwhelm / burnout
│
▼
"Everything keeps falling apart."
│
▼
"I can't build a stable life."
│
▼
despair
And this is where stability itself becomes a protective factor.
Not having to constantly rebuild your life after each crisis matters.
5. PROFESSIONAL INVALIDATION / RETRAUMATISATION
This deserves its own branch because it's a particularly painful paradox:
NEED HELP
│
▼
SEEK PROFESSIONAL SUPPORT
│
├── Not believed
├── Invalidated
├── Misunderstood
├── Neurodivergence overlooked
├── Trauma misunderstood
├── Experiences reframed incorrectly
└── Interactions feel controlling / frightening
│
▼
retraumatisation
│
▼
"Even professionals don't understand me."
│
▼
"There is nowhere to go."
│
▼
hopelessness
Which makes your later experiences with good professionals particularly significant.
Because they don't merely “provide therapy.”
They provide a corrective experience:
“Oh. Someone can actually listen to me and understand what I'm saying.”
6. THE OTHER SIDE: WHAT HAS HELPED
And here the map becomes much more interesting, because there isn't one intervention.
There is an ecosystem of protection.
THINGS THAT HELPED
│
┌────────────────────────┼────────────────────────┐
│ │ │
▼ ▼ ▼
COMMUNITY MEANING UNDERSTANDING
│ │ │
├── 12 Step ├── Activism ├── Trauma education
├── Complex trauma ├── Mutual aid ├── Autism education
│ community ├── Advocacy ├── Content creators
├── Autistic GAMs ├── Helping others ├── First-person stories
├── Humanamente └── "I want to stay └── New frameworks
├── FEAFES so others don't
└── Other communities have to suffer alone"
7. 12-STEP COMMUNITIES
One thing they seem to have given you wasn't necessarily the solution to everything, but a first experience of:
“Other people understand things I thought nobody could understand.”
And there's an important principle here:
"I have a problem"
↓
"I am not the only one"
↓
"Other people have survived this"
↓
"I can talk about it"
↓
"I don't have to hide"
↓
"I can belong"
That directly attacks isolation and shame.
8. TIM FLETCHER / COMPLEX TRAUMA COMMUNITY
This seems to have given you something slightly different:
A framework for understanding yourself.
Instead of:
“What's wrong with me?”
you can ask:
“What happened to me?”
And then:
“What adaptations did I develop to survive it?”
That shift is enormous.
It transforms behaviours that previously looked like evidence of defectiveness into understandable adaptations.
9. AUTISTIC GAMs + HUMANAMENTE + MUTUAL AID
This is perhaps where everything starts coming together.
PEER COMMUNITY
│
├── "You understand me."
│
├── "I don't have to explain everything."
│
├── "I'm not the only one."
│
├── "My experiences make sense."
│
├── "Other people care about what happens to me."
│
├── "I can help other people too."
│
└── "I belong somewhere."
│
▼
LESS ISOLATION
│
▼
LESS SHAME
│
▼
MORE SELF-COMPASSION
│
▼
MORE HOPE
And mutual aid is especially powerful because it reverses the burden narrative.
You're not merely:
“Nuria, the person who needs help.”
You're also:
“Nuria, the person who has something to give.”
That can be profoundly reparative.
10. PSYCHOLOGISTS / PSYCHOLOGISTS IN TRAINING
These seem to occupy another place in the ecosystem:
PROFESSIONAL RELATIONSHIPS
│
├── Someone listens
├── Someone takes you seriously
├── Someone provides psychological frameworks
├── Someone helps you make sense of yourself
└── Someone helps you develop new ways
of relating to difficult internal states
And particularly your IFS insight:
SUICIDAL PART
│
▼
"What are you trying to protect me from?"
│
▼
Recognition of suffering
│
▼
Unblending / creating distance
│
▼
"I can listen to this part
without obeying it."
│
▼
SELF-COMPASSION
That's very different from fighting yourself.
11. ASSOCIATIONS + CONTENT CREATORS
I wouldn't underestimate this branch.
Sometimes learning that another reality exists is itself protective.
CONTENT / ACTIVISM / ASSOCIATIONS
│
├── "Other people live differently."
├── "This isn't just me."
├── "There are explanations for this."
├── "There are alternatives."
├── "I can question what I was taught."
└── "My experience has a name."
│
▼
POSSIBILITY
│
▼
HOPE
Sometimes you don't need someone to solve your life.
You need someone to show you that another kind of life is possible.
12. MATERIAL SAFETY
This is an important part of your story because it can easily disappear from a psychological account.
MATERIAL SECURITY
│
├── Housing
├── Food
├── Minimum income
├── Ability to be independent
├── Less dependence on unsafe relationships
├── A place to retreat
└── Reduced financial pressure
│
▼
LESS CHRONIC THREAT
│
▼
MORE CAPACITY TO HEAL
In other words:
Sometimes suicide prevention is not another coping skill. Sometimes it is a roof, enough money to eat, a tolerable environment and the ability to leave a relationship that is harming you.
13. AND THEN: MEANING
This is the new branch you added today.
SURVIVING SUFFERING
│
▼
"What can I do with what I've lived?"
│
├── Activism
├── Mutual aid
├── Sharing lived experience
├── Helping other neurodivergent people
├── Challenging stigma
├── Educating others
└── Making someone else feel less alone
│
▼
"I don't want someone else
to go through this alone."
│
▼
PURPOSE
│
▼
REASON TO STAY
And this is where your Nana Bunilda metaphor belongs:
The nightmare cannot be undone, but perhaps something can be transformed from it.
Not:
“My suffering was good.”
But:
“My suffering happened. I wish it hadn't. But I can choose what I do with what remains.”
14. And finally: THE GAP — ESPECIALLY FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
This deserves to be visually separated because it's not just part of your personal story.
It's a systemic question you want the article to investigate.
YOUNG PERSON EXPERIENCES
SUICIDAL THOUGHTS FOR THE FIRST TIME
│
▼
"What is happening to me?"
│
▼
Possible shame / fear
│
├───────────────┐
│ │
▼ ▼
PROFESSIONAL HELP PEER SUPPORT
│ │
│ │
May feel frightening Few dedicated
/ inaccessible / spaces
controlling │
│ │
│ Many GAMs are
│ adult-only
│ │
└───────┬───────┘
▼
THE GAP
│
▼
"Where can I talk to people
who actually understand?"
And your proposed solution isn't:
“Let teenagers wander around the internet talking about suicide unsupervised.”
It's much more nuanced.
What you're imagining is something closer to an Alateen model:
YOUNG PEOPLE
│
┌───────┴───────┐
│ │
▼ ▼
AGENCY PEER CONNECTION
│ │
└───────┬───────┘
│
▼
TRAINED ADULT / MODERATOR
│
┌────────┴────────┐
│ │
▼ ▼
SAFEGUARDING CRISIS SUPPORT
│ │
└────────┬────────┘
▼
SAFE COMMUNITY
The adult isn't there to run the children's emotional lives.
They're there to provide the safety infrastructure.
The young people still have:
- agency
- peer connection
- shared experience
- privacy within appropriate safeguarding boundaries
- the ability to talk in their own language
- a sense of belonging.
And potentially this could exist online as well as in person, which matters enormously for young people who:
- live rurally
- can't travel
- don't have supportive parents
- are afraid of being recognised locally
- are neurodivergent
- don't have an appropriate local group.
The whole thing, condensed
If I had to put your entire story onto one page for you to glance at before talking to Marc, I'd make it this:
SUICIDALITY
│
┌─────────────────────┼─────────────────────┐
│ │ │
▼ ▼ ▼
TRAUMA SHAME INSTABILITY
│ │ │
├─ abuse ├─ comparison ├─ relationships
├─ invalidation ├─ "behind" ├─ job loss
├─ unsafe family ├─ productivity ├─ crises
├─ not believed ├─ "normal life" └─ financial/housing
└─ world unsafe └─ burden
│ │
└──────────────┬──────┘
▼
ISOLATION + HOPELESSNESS
│
▼
"I CAN'T DO THIS ANYMORE"
│
══════════════════════╪════════════════════════════════
│
▼
WHAT HELPED
│
┌──────────────┼─────────────────┐
│ │ │
▼ ▼ ▼
COMMUNITY UNDERSTANDING SAFETY
│ │ │
12 Step Trauma framework Housing
Tim Fletcher IFS Income
Autistic GAMs Autism knowledge Autonomy
Humanamente Good professionals Environment
Mutual aid First-person Reduced demands
stories
│ │
└──────────────┼─────────────────┘
▼
SELF-COMPASSION
│
▼
BELONGING
│
▼
PURPOSE
│
├── activism
├── mutual aid
├── helping others
└── "I don't want others
to suffer alone."
│
▼
REASONS TO STAY
│
══════════════════════╪════════════════════════════════
│
▼
THE GAP
│
Young people with
suicidal thoughts
│
▼
Few accessible peer spaces
│
┌───────────┴────────────┐
▼ ▼
Adult services Online spaces
can feel scary can be unsafe
/ controlling / unmoderated
│ │
└──────────┬─────────────┘
▼
NEED FOR A MIDDLE WAY
│
▼
YOUTH PEER SUPPORT
+
TRAINED SAFEGUARDING
+
AGENCY
And honestly, this is now much more than preparation for an interview. You have the beginnings of a very coherent thesis about suicide prevention:
People don't only need to be prevented from dying. They need reasons to belong to life.
And those reasons can come from remarkably ordinary things: being believed, having a safe home, having enough money, not being forced to mask, having someone who understands, being allowed to lower the demands, finding your people, being useful to someone else, and discovering that the future doesn't have to look like the life you were told you were supposed to have.
That's a very different — and much richer — prevention narrative.