Suicide

Should have put this in earlier post:

Many people who do die by suicide have had the ' It would be better for everyone that I was gone '

It doesn't get anymore selfless than that.

However, it really would be much better for everyone, if you stayed.:)

I think it's important to point out that for some there might be embarrassment in looking for help, but for many it's just sheer exhaustion. They just feel that they can not keep fighting, that no matter what help they get it doesn't matter, they are in a rut and genuinely believe there is no other way out.

Transcendental meditation is all very well and good for what it is for (a mind generally at peace that can heal itself). Similarly mantra meditation, mindfulness meditation, visualisation, and prana breathing are all good for people who are in distress but not in suicidal distress.

The technique that I learned that stopped my panic attacks dead in their tracks, and brought me back from the brink several times during a time when I was undergoing overwhelming stress, is EFT (also known as "tapping"). It is easy and free to learn, and there are many practitioners who have YouTube sessions to guide the self-taught. I was fortunate enough to be able to go to a therapist in the US who used a combination of tapping and similar techniques to break the circle of anxiety and help me process the "bad stuff". I don't have any affiliation with these people, but I have their book and it is good. http://www.thetappingsolution.com/what-is-eft-tapping/

Here's an article showing how mainstream and effective tapping is, too: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/resolution-not-conflict/201110/energy-therapy-acupoint-tapping-the-best-ptsd-treatment I don't buy into the mystical "energy meridians" approach personally, but tapping is a very effective way to distract the body from attempting to drive you doolally by making stress biochemicals, and switches it to processing out the "bad" biochemicals instead. Know that it does take time for the body to metabolise and eliminate the distress chemicals... ten minutes should be enough.

Because mental pain is just as painful as physical pain, and it is "read" by the body as just plain pain, and involves some very complex biochemistry, don't be ashamed to seek help from your GP, who can prescribe or refer you for medication that will eventually help. It may be a crutch, but when your leg is broken, it's perfectly proper and appropriate to use crutches.

WARNING: triggering language below (although if you are reading this thread you are probably plenty triggered by now)

In the US, we are more open about suicide. I've been the intervenor in at least three cases of suicide in which someone came online and said "I can't do this anymore and I've just taken a lot of pills/I bought a gun/I'm ready to slash my wrists". One of the cases was a very depressed woman in England, and when I called her local police to report her desperate situation (her husband was away and she was alone), it was a huge struggle to get them to believe me and take me seriously. But they got to her before the pills took full effect, and her husband was so grateful (and later, so was she).

My younger brother shot himself. He'd been ill for a long time, and our father (with whom he lived and upon whom he depended) had recently died, and he had just broken up with his girlfriend and felt as though he'd never have another because of his illness. He'd been talking for years about taking his own life. Our middle brother, who lived in the same city (I lived hours away) would no longer visit our younger brother at his house because he knew our brother had a gun and was suicidal, and our middle brother was frightened that "something would happen" and he'd leave his own kids fatherless. Our brother refused flatly to go to therapy or to do anything else for self-help. He was on methadone for prescription opiate addiction due to his many hospitalisations, and so it was troublesome for him to take psychiatric medications. We didn't call the authorities or put our brother in the hospital because we'd talked with him about his suicidal threats and he was adamant that he considered that sort of intervention worse than his day-to-day suffering. In the end there was not very much we could do, and I'm torn about whether we should have done it over his objections.

The idea that suicide is cowardly absolutely does enter your head when you are suicidal, but you tell yourself that people will understand, or would understand if they knew how bad things were for you. The self-talk is deafening. You just pray for everything to stop and be quiet and not hurt anymore. It's important to know that depression and suicide are very strongly associated, but not every depressed person becomes suicidal and not every suicidal person is depressed (anxiety plays a huge role, and so does loneliness, and so does the idea that the suicidal person is a burden on their friends/relatives).

There have been days when I wished an angel would hand me a pill that would let me "go away" quietly and peacefully and permanently. Unfortunately there are no such pills. Suicide is literally hurting yourself to death, so it is usually incredibly painful, and human bodies are very good at trying to keep living, so it is also incredibly difficult and often done badly. The risk of doing it wrong and living with a ruined body and/or mind, so ruined that it might be impossible to try again, and worse than the situation from which the suicide was trying to escape in the first place, is very real.

Most people aren't suicidal. Suicidal thoughts and feelings are not a normal way to respond to stress and pain; they are as indicative of stress illness as physical pain is indicative of physical damage. If you are suicidal, don't let the bad thoughts of pain and fear win. Tomorrow could be the day things change for the better, because things have a way of changing quickly in life, and you want to be around when they get better (they could scarcely get much worse). The next person you talk to could be someone who knows how to help. People are mostly caring and want to help if you just tell them how. Sleep is also a great mental healer... there are some who say that all healing, physical and mental, is done during sleep. If you can sleep, do sleep. If you can't sleep, see your GP for safe ways to help you sleep.

Aurum wrote:

I think that by the time a person has reached a point where they actively try to kill themselves, their thought processes are so distorted that adjectives like brave or cowardly aren't really applicable any more. It seems, from on outside perspective, to be pure desperation to not feel anything anymore.

Exactly so. From my experience, at the point where suicide starts becoming a viable solution for problems is also the same time as the hopelessness & despair is all consuming. There is no hope for the future, the light has gone out.

celligraphy wrote:

Lost so many family members to this, it is selfish, has destroyed the entire family and kids have lost parents , and parents have lost children , it's a horrible thing , sometimes I feel sad for what they went through to commit suicide and then most of the time I'm angry for how they have just left us

It is not a selfish thing. Definitely a long term solution to a short term problem.
Selfish implies decision making, or self interest: I'm doing this for me, or justification of doing it for me.
They don't see any hope, they see no end to the pain, they are exhausted from fighting their thinking... As I said above the hopelessness and despair is utterly debilitating.

Deleted User wrote:

Something often said by people that attempted suicide is how they had a moment of realization and regret just at that moment of past the point of no return.

I think this is complete BS. I only ever felt relief that there was an end to the pain. I knew pain would be caused afterwards but it wasn't totally real as couldn't get past my own pain, the despair was all-consuming.

Really not sure what to say generally on this. I won't give figures on the amount of people I know who committed suicide.

Personally I think awareness is the only thing that works. Keep attempting to get the word out to as many as possible: there is always someone at the other end of a phone who will give a helping hand; no problem is completely insurmountable, things WILL get better if you give it time.

And my mini rant, I hate the term suicide ideation with a vengeance. I find it so offensive and I think it minimises/simplifies the suicidal headspace. when I hear the term and this is my interpretation, doesn't mean I'm right, it implies suicide ideation is the problem, rather than suicide ideation being the result of whatever the problem is. I absolutely hate that term.

georgiecasey wrote: »

fair depressing the numbers killing themselves these days and everyone clamouring for more funding as a solution. playing devil's advocate here, but how can you really stop someone who has decided that's what they want to do? more funding for mental health support and all that but what if the person never contacts them?

You do what you can when you are the person on the spot. You stop the person from hurting themselves because turning on yourself in a time of great distress is no more normal or desirable than an animal chewing its leg off in a trap. You trust that intervening will help the person recover; after all, they can hardly get better if they're dead.

tomofson wrote: »

Well thats the catch 22 isn't it? I suppose it really is impossible to tell if someone has suicide on their mind unless of course they tell you directly that they do.

No, it's absolutely not impossible to tell when someone is in that sort of terrible and desperate distress. Very often you cannot do anything, you cannot be there when they make the attempt, but very often you can. At least everyone has the ability to help make things generally easier on people when they are in trouble and prevent that kind of desperation, whether the individual is actively suicidal at that moment or not. An ounce of prevention is worth tons of trying to bring back the dead.

georgiecasey wrote: »

fair depressing the numbers killing themselves these days and everyone clamouring for more funding as a solution. playing devil's advocate here, but how can you really stop someone who has decided that's what they want to do? more funding for mental health support and all that but what if the person never contacts them?

Problem is when they are contacted the services are inadequate to deal with the issue as it can often be a long drawn out expensive process.