Suicide: Read This First
 

For those who are hurting, please read this.

http://www.metanoia.org/suicide/

I wish we could make this a stickie ...

Seems like it was written by someone who has never felt suicidal. The main problem is that when you are feeling depressed is that it isn't a feeling, it's reality and truth. (Obviously that's how it seems, not an objective truth) The truly awful thing about depression is that your reality is truly colored by it, everything you see, feel, and think affirms that reality.

While well meaning, the bullet points don't do much for me and I'm only mildly depressed right now and far from suicidal.

Point 3 contradicts itself. If you need to be alive in order to feel pain then logically if you were dead you'd feel no pain. To feel relief (or pain) you need to be alive, yes, but to not feel pain you do not have to be alive.

While well intentioned, advice is not what depressed (and I presume suicidal) people want. They want the awful feelings to stop. Short of that a person could affirm the pain the depressed person is feeling, absolutely not try to talk them out of it or explain it away. That may work with someone who's having a bad acid trip.

Maybe the best thing you could do is ask them to please wait a day or a minute longer or another minute.

You have to acknowledge their pain, not tell them they have so much to live for and so on when living = pain.

Acknowledge their pain and offer hope of not only relief but joy. Certainly don't try to reason with them.

I understand what you're saying foot, but as a currently suicidal person reading this advice the first thing that meant something to me was this:

Suicide is not chosen; it happens
when pain exceeds
resources for coping with pain.

It seems as if you are saying that since what you might say to help such a person might not be helpful, then say nothing at all. I'd rather be offended by someone presuming they know how I feel than to feel like a leper watching people slowly backing away from you and keeping quiet. I'd rather someone dares presume to know how it feels than to be ignored and discounted.

Different things help different people. I think that is a nice article. It's a start, anyway. Maybe it helped someone today.

No, I'm not saying don't say anything, I'm saying Id' start out with affirming their pain and go from there and not try to talk them out of how they are feeling. I'd acknowledge their pain.

I am sorry that you are feeling suicidal. You are a very sensitive person and empathetic, that makes you feel pain perhaps more keenly than other people. Suicide may stop your pain, it may not. Few reliable witnesses have returned from death to tell us how it all worked out. A lot of unsuccessful suicides have reported instant regret during their plummets from bridges, etc.

Your feelings of despair are real, there are ways to make those feelings retreat, you are taking steps.

Consider that what you are enduring at work is really a form of torture, your response is natural.

When you are free of that environment I bet you will begin to feel much better.

Thank you.

Speaking as a person who has had friends/loved ones commit this atrocity, and speaking as a person who has had a pistol in his mouth more than once, I would like to put in my two cents worth and hope no one kills themselves over it.

(ahem)

BULLSHIT!

Suicide is the single most selfish act you can commit. And you can't undo it.

I could understand it if there is a pain/suffering issue, maybe.

Understand it, yes. Forgive it? Haven't been able to manage that one yet.

I think suicide is contagious to a certain degree. We have to be mindful of that right now here in the Cellar. I know I don't want to be losing anyone else.

I am sorry for your anger and for your lost loved one. I hope you will someday find the ability to forgive.

I want to clarify on my earlier statement, and then I will shut up on the subject.

Do I 'feel' suicidal? Much of the time. It floors me the things that run through my head. But I won't be committing the act. Because I got help, and I got support. I was afraid to tell my family when I was in the 'place' because I felt so ashamed. And yet they still loved me. And they supported me. The trick is to realize that these aren't magic tricks they're performing, and their love isn't something they'll just pull out from under me. That is what sustains me. I am not sending off alarms: most of you know what I've been doing to help myself (including posting my embarrassing and shaming thoughts of self-worth, and posting my anger, and posting my often annoying coping skill of making stupid jokes about stuff) and I will continue to do so.

But what I feel and what I do are, currently, two separate things. I'm going to keep them separate until such a time that what I do and what I feel are both tending towards positive behaviors.

This seems to be an excellent plan Infi. Here's wishing you strength to continue with this in the face of adversity.

I'm sorry you're going through this infi, but I'm glad you're getting help.

There are three factors that lead to a successful sucide:
1) learned fearlessness of the act of suicide
2) perceived burdensomeness
3) low belongingness

The act is NOT selfish in fact it is selfless. You are not running away your making the world a better place by getting rid of a stain of human, your relaving a burden from everyone you know. Dettachment can renforce that view by not letting the prober sense of persepice.
Now Leared fearlessness it a bit a of a trick; everything that we have been taught and every instit tells us not to harm to not relase our mortal coil. Facing death is scary and it takes a lot to go though with it. This is not somthing that happens all of a suddent it is a slow process that takes one down in to the depths of never ending disspar. One of the major risk is having a plan for doing the act, by planing you make that emotional distaces, which is why mental health proffestions ask if you have a plan.


I had some solated, burdensomeness a plenty hell I still feel like a burden most days. But leared fearlessness I never got, I had a plan. I have a plan. Self emilation like the monks. Self emilation on a live web cam if I was going to go thur with it that is how I would want to do it. In a final act of protest for what cause will be detrimed by curiumstance I sure there is a war that needs to be railed agaist.
However, I digress.

The artical gives some good information about resoreces but it is written by someone who has never been there. I have been on both sides of that call and rational is the last thing a sucidal person is.
This artical gives a bit more on the subject:
http://thementalhealthreview.blogspo...n-suicide.html

I don't think blanket statements of selfishness or cowardice are particularly useful. Everyone is different. Every experience of the world is different. Even if you have experienced what it is like to be suicidal, you only know what it is like to be suicidal in your own head.

I do have to say that what tora is saying rings true with my own attempt. I felt like a burden, that I didn't belong, I wasn't afraid of death, and I had a plan.
It may not ring true for every suicidal person, but it does for me.
Obviously it didn't work, but that is a good thing.