Suicide: Learn to listen to and support yourself and others

I have seen far too many people in the care of social services and standard mental health care grossly retraumatized rather than helped when feeling their most vulnerable because people do not understand these loving, accepting and healing approaches. They are based in deep trust for the process of the individual who presents themselves in front of you. Listen. Love.

People who are suicidal are all too often met with terror and control. Most people who feel suicidal need to talk about it. Approaching people with love and openness means NOT being terrified of that persons dark places. And not reacting in a knee-jerk and controlling manner. That has never allowed anyone to feel safe to open up about the painful vulnerability they are most assuredly experiencing when feeling suicidal.

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I’ve compiled a few posts that consider suicide in various ways and especially consider ways to deeply support people dealing with such inner pain.

Below are a few links to posts with excerpts from the page. I will continue to update this page as a resource and you will be able to find it in the drop-down navigation menu under the ABOUT section. The post you’re viewing now is a cut and pasted copy so as to appear on the home-page today.

Thanks to Laura Delano whose post at Mad in America allowed me to remember that today is suicide prevention day. She said in her post:

I am alive today in the most intense, sometimes painful, always beautiful of ways, and one of the many reasons I credit for my life is this: I am a failed product of ‘Suicide Prevention.’

For this, I am eternally grateful. While this statement may sound like a confusing paradox, I’d like to explain what I mean. (read the rest here: On the Urge to Take My Life, and My Decision to Take It Back From the “Mental Health” System Instead)

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Below the initial interview from On Being, there is a list of posts on different ways to consider suicide.

I like this idea which Jennifer Michael Hecht paraphrases at one point: “Have respect for your future being.” I say, yes to that.

From On Being: is a lovely and nuanced discussion about suicide.

Listen here:

“Your staying alive means so much more than you really know or that anyone is aware of at this moment.”

Philosopher, historian, and poet Jennifer Michael Hecht has traced how western civilization has at times demonized those who commit suicide, at times celebrated it as a moral freedom. She proposes a reframed cultural conversation, based not on morality or rights but on our essential need for each other.

By Jennifer Hecht: Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It

More on this topic from Beyond Meds:

●  DIVINE SUICIDE: Depressive Breakdown as a Call to Awakening – “I have seen far too many people in the care of social services and standard mental health care grossly retraumatized rather than helped when feeling their most vulnerable because people do not understand this loving, accepting and healing approach. It’s based in deep trust for the process of the individual who presents themselves in front of you. Listen. Love.”

●  A conversation about suicide – “This conversation in the below video with Adyashanti is so refreshing. It’s absolutely true that those who are suicidal are all too often met with terror and control. Most people who feel suicidal need to talk about it. Approaching people with love and openness means NOT being terrified of that persons dark places. And not reacting in a knee-jerk and controlling manner. That has never allowed anyone to feel safe to open up about the painful vulnerability they are most assuredly experiencing when feeling suicidal.”

●  Six Ways You Can Really Help Prevent Suicide – by Leah Harris “I tried to kill myself when I was 14. It wasn’t the first time. My psychiatrist had just upped my Prozac, a whole lot of unresolved early childhood trauma had flared up at puberty, and the baseline sadness and confusion I felt mushroomed into an overwhelming desire to die. The thoughts wouldn’t leave me alone: Everything I could think of circled back only to suicide. I wrote out a suicide note and made an attempt.  I won’t go into the horrors of waking up alive in an emergency room where the staff was clearly annoyed they had to deal with me and my “attention seeking” behavior.”

●  Suicide Prevention for All: Making the World a Safer Place to Be Human  – Leah Harris

●  Living with suicidal feelings  — By Will Hall “It’s time for a new understanding of suicidal feelings. Is it really best to force someone into the hospital when they are suicidal? Do suicidal feelings plus “risk factors” really mean professionals can predict whether someone might try to kill themselves? And are suicidal feelings the symptom of a treatable illness that should include medication prescription?”

●  A suicide prevention poster from the Icarus Project – “Most of the suicide-prevention posters I’ve seen (admittedly not that many – the topic is still pretty taboo in our society), are aimed solely at the loved ones and close friends of the person in danger.  How to recognize the signs of suicidality, who to call, etc.  Somewhat helpful, I guess, but shouldn’t we be addressing, in some way, the person who is actually considering this extreme action?  It’s as if the assumption is that person is beyond reason, beyond understanding (if you want to get explicit about it, not really human anymore), so there’s no point talking to him.”

●  Many psychiatric symptoms remit upon drug withdrawal – including suicidal impulses –  ”Something that comes up quite often in discussions with my friends and readers who have been on meds and have come off of them is how many of the “psychiatric” symptoms they were being “treated” for disappear upon discontinuation of the medications. This is widely known and experienced among those of us who have decided to stop medicating ourselves.” (**warning – rapid or cold-turkey withdrawal can often inflame psychiatric symptoms (including feelings of hurting oneself) for some time. For safer withdrawal practices see here.)

●  Psychiatric Drugs as Agents of Trauma — “Drug Stress Trauma Syndrome” –  ”This article is written by Charles Whitfield, MD, a psychiatrist, who has recognized the trauma these drugs can create for a very long time. It’s clearly an important read.”

●  A video with Will Hall on this subject: On suicidal thoughts