This is also why some of us (often unconsciously) sabotage our own attempts. It’s not that we aren’t conflicted, so much as the suicidal thoughts are so incredibly loud. This quote helps capture this inner conflict: “We are not our thoughts - we’re the people listening to them.” Suicidal thoughts, once they snowball, can become an avalanche that drowns out the part of us that would otherwise choose differently. That back-and-forth is exhausting, and it muddles our judgment. Imagine a scale being tipped back and forth until one side is finally outweighed by the other - a trigger, a moment of impulsivity, a window of opportunity that disrupts the precarious balance that allowed us to survive. It’s much more likely that they were conflicted, which is why being suicidal is such a confusing state to be in. Which is all to say, suicide is a tragic outcome of extraordinary circumstances that, in reality, few of us have a lot of control over.Ī lot of loss survivors look at their loved one’s suicide and ask me, “What if they didn’t want this?”īut it’s rarely that simple. In other words? The time when someone in crisis has to expend the most energy in order to keep themselves alive - to ignore the intrusive thoughts, the impulses, and the outright despair - is often the time when they have the very least energy available to do so. Our system almost always requires long periods of waiting (bringing people much closer to that acute state) and stigmatizes care that leads people holding out until the very last minute to get help, if ever, at a time when they really can’t afford to wait. The very fact that someone can progress that far is a much stronger reflection of the state of mental health in our country. The thing I often tell loss survivors is that a suicide attempt isn’t unlike a “freak accident” - because a lot of little things have to align (in a really terrible way, yes) for suicide to happen. At that point, it’s an acute state - not totally unlike a heart attack or other medical crisis.Ī person has to have reached a point when they feel their capacity for emotional pain has outweighed the amount of time they’re able to wait for relief, at the same moment when they have access to the means to end their life. In order to attempt suicide, a person has to be in the neurological state where they can override their own survival instincts. That state of burnout doesn’t happen overnight, either. It is, in many ways, the ultimate state of burnout. It’s more often that they have exhausted their emotional reserves to continue pursuing those options. People who attempt suicide aren’t always convinced it’s the only option. Suicide is more complex than a ‘decision’ I’d like to think that, if your loved one could reach you now, these are some of the things they would want you to know.ġ. I want to share what those commonalities are in the hopes that if you’ve survived a loss like this, you might be able to find some comfort in hearing from someone who’s been there. While I can’t speak for every person who has struggled with suicidal thoughts, I’ve spoken to enough survivors to know there are commonalities in how we’ve felt about the experience. And as I fielded their questions, I saw something beautiful happen: We both could heal and empathize with our friend just a little bit more. When my loved ones asked me how a suicide attempt could happen, I was able to answer. But it wasn’t as incomprehensible as it was to everyone else, because it was a struggle I knew too well.īut my experience on “both sides” became a blessing in disguise. I still had countless moments of self-blame, confusion, and despair. It didn’t make the grief any less painful, of course. Because nearly a decade ago, I, too, had attempted suicide. That was a question I didn’t need to ask, though. And as loved ones struggled to understand what had happened, everyone around me kept asking the question: How could something like this happen? That night, my gorgeous friend, whose laughter could light up the darkest room, died in a hospital bed after attempting to take their own life.Ī shock wave went through our entire community. That marked the beginning of my endless free fall through grief. There on the screen, I saw a text message from my best friend’s mom: “Call 911.” Drifting in and out of a painkiller haze, I leaned over to check my phone. It was a late January afternoon in 2018, just two days after I had major surgery.
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