I can't speak to your own experience. But I can advance another explanation for what those words may connote. Sometimes our body does something, and our brain tries to "make sense of it" by inventing a casual relationship where none existed.

For example, if we are cranky, we sometimes mistakenly explain our mood by saying that people around us are rude, or that drivers in traffic are selfishly blocking us. It is sometimes difficult to think that we're cranky "just because."

Some people have a biochemical explanation for their depression and their biochemistry changes over time. It could be that their brains fix themselves, and as they get better, their reason improves. But if you ask them, "what happened?" They say it was their reason.

In my own case, I have often claimed that I can improve my mood with endorphins through exercise and adrenaline sports like rock climbing. But others around me say that I have cause and effect backwards, that when I'm depressed I avoid exercise and when I get better, I start exercising again!

That's a good point. I was told that you first have to get better enough to decide to get better completely, or something like that.

Depression is a tricky thing. The most valuable skill I ever learned is being able to mentally catch it early and reverse the thought processes before they become a problem.

I think everything you're saying is right, and in fact you may have gotten yourself better through your mental habits. I have learned some "interventions" through practice, I think of them as habits like hand washing. You can't wash away a cold infection, but you can get it off your hands before you touch your face, so hand washing is an incredibly important way to fight the common cold.

All the little things help, from teaching yourself to intervene when a mood starts to swing negative, to challenging negative explanations and beliefs, to working on core beliefs, to drugs, endorphins, everything.

For me, reason has been a wonderful tool in continually circling me back to suicidal ideations. The worst part is when people who are not as strong as I am in logic and philosophy try to reason with me; usually they end up reluctantly agreeing, or worse, refusing to concede but obstinately arguing because they can't own up to it.

As of now, the most effective preventative measure for me has been focus. If I apply myself to thinking about something else, the problem goes away.

Based on the other article it sounds like you're not coping at all, but rather at step 5 of 6:

"What this cognitive shift to concrete thinking reflects, suggests Baumeister, is the brain’s attempt to slip into idle mental labor, thereby avoiding the suffocating feelings that we’ve been describing. Many suicidal college students, for example, exhibit a behavioral pattern of burying themselves in dull, routine academic busywork in the weeks beforehand, presumably to enter a sort of 'emotional deadness' which is 'an end in itself.' When I was a suicidal adolescent, I remember reading voraciously during this time; it didn’t matter what it was that I read—mostly junk novels, in fact—since it was only to replace my own thoughts with those of the writer’s. For the suicidal, other people’s words can be pulled over one’s exhausting ruminations like a seamless glove being stretched over a distractingly scarred hand."

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/bering-in-mind/2010/10/2...

Yes, I am. Whether or not I'm at step 6 is open for debate. Amongst people outside of my metaphorical earshot, preferably.

Yes you are… coping or suicidal?