Posts on healing methods of engaging with suicidal thoughts and feelings: such thoughts and feelings are normal and need to be engaged safely if we hope to work with them. Locking people up and drugging them for feeling despair isn't the way to go. GO HERE for ideas to consider when facing the dark emotions. Let... Continue Reading →
We need places where people can openly talk about suicide so they can stare it in the face, hold it and feel it and come to their own conclusion. I've done that and am still not always able to be available for everyone in pain. (I also reserve the right to change my mind for myself). Everyone should have a safe place for this deep work and thus not make the choice prematurely in despair. ...
"Exactly. My sister told her GP she felt suicidal. The police took her away in hand cuffs.” so REALLY?? they tell us to be sure to ask for help. What do we do when there is no help available? Until we are, as a society, willing to answer that question people will continue to die without being offered a chance to share and thus process their pain. ...
By Leah Harris Like millions, I am sitting with the fact that one of the funniest people to grace the planet has died by his own hand. Robin Williams’ death has hit people of my generation, Generation X, especially hard. After all, his face flashed often across our childhood screens. Mork and Mindy episodes were a source of solace for me as a little girl, as I bounced around between foster homes and family members’ homes, while my single mother cycled in and out of the state mental hospital, fighting to survive. I could laugh and say “nanu, nanu – shazbot” and “KO” and do the silly hand sign and forget for just a little while about living a life I didn’t ask for. “You’re only given one little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it,” may become one of Robin Williams’ most famous quotes. I was always struck by how he moved so seamlessly between wacky comedy and the most intense dramas. He was so magnificently able to capture the human experience in all its extremes. He threw all that intensity right into our faces, undeniable, raw, frenetic. He showed us our own naked vulnerability and sparks of madness and gave us permission to laugh in the face of all that is wrong in this world. … [click on title to read and view more]
"Your staying alive means so much more than you really know or that anyone is aware of at this moment." … [click on title for the rest of the post]
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. … [click on title to read the rest]
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? … [click on title for the rest of the post]
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. … [click on title to read the rest]
Everything matters 
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