I wish you the best. I don't believe there is any psychological condition worse than wanting to die. Even excruciating physical pain at worst can drive you to that point.

I hope you can learn from these experiences, that your will to live or at least your survival instinct has not gone away, even during such episodes, but was merely drowned out by an irrational mechanism.

I agree, except perhaps for self-harming behavior in borderline personality disorder. Those contain an aspect of seeking self-experience.

But it get's very complicated to distinguish self-harm and suicidal attempts.

I'd also admit that some patients need to come to the edge to see that they also don't want to die, maybe as much as they want to.

Probably parent means something like creating a much more realistic and believable experience of imminent demise, like jumping off a tall building. The idea being if you can make enough of the brain believe it is about to die it might trigger whatever it is that changes its opinion on whether or not it should commit suicide.