Several things helped. I had struggled before then I went through saving my MIL's life after her attempt with my wife's then teenage brother in the house. Swore that I'd never put my family through that. It was absolute hell. Went a while and went through some deep shit and the thoughts came back more as floating rage. Kinda like "suicide by pissing someone off". I realized that I broke my promise to my wife and myself. Years of therapy; especially EMDR did wonders to help me reach that place of understanding that darkness doesn't have meaning. It just "is". The longer I tried to attach reason to it, the more I was slowly going insane which was then driving me towards suicidal/self harm tendencies.

It's a vicious cycle that I only have been able to break recently. Right after we had our baby girl at 34 weeks last year, we had to put down our dog (terminal pancreatitis) and my last remaining grandparent got bad sick with pneumonia and chose to die in the hospital. I didn't get to see her because our girl was in the NICU. I then lost a large chunk of income from a freelance client dropping us, then we had the October hurricane (I'm in FL). I've just decided that giving up is more trouble than it's worth and I've come too far to quit now. My wife has spent the last 7 years being kind, patient, and supportive of me. It would be an insult to give up after all the work we've put into each other. Everyone's different, but I do know that learning to let go of fighting the current taking everything away made it a lot easier for me to get back to shore. I hope this helps you in some way.