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People who have attempted suicide, what prevented you from going through with it?
Its been on my mind lately, and i feel like i could use some hope and some perspectives from other people who have experienced this before. Apologies if this has been posted before.
It's like, the act of planning a suicide attempt, getting the supplies you need, putting your affairs in order, that's really easy. But actually doing the act is so physical and frightening and... Just hard, I guess. One attempt I failed because I couldn't bring myself to jump, just couldn't make my muscles do it. Another, because I vomited up the stuff I'd taken. Another, because I waited too long to do it and got caught by a wellness check. Another, because I checked myself into the hospital in time. And that's not really a satisfying answer because all of these are kind of mechanical, not reasons to live so much as reasons I didn't die.
I think when you're that deep in the suicidal headspace: an explicit plan, the means procured, a timetable set -- there's not much that can help in terms of, IDK, philosophy or joy or being heard or whatever. So staving off that awful mindset is something you have to be proactive about. For some, that's where CBT can come in, arresting the thoughts before they start. For me it's meant identifying the worst material things in my life and doing my best to change them. But you know, that said, life is still hard as hell and it's hard to keep going. That's where the search for meaning comes in: can I find something that motivates me or comforts me even when everything seems bleak and pointless? For some it's religion. Hedonism. Something as simple as taking care of the pet. I've personally embraced a philosophy called absurdism, which challenges you to accept that life is meaningless and full of pain, and then find joy and connection in the midst of the chaos anyway. But what works for you might be something different. I don't know.
Suicide (and talking about it) is messy as hell because, like any decision, there are so many things that factor into the decision to try it. Hopelessness, loneliness, poverty, poor mental health, etc, etc. Focusing on one factor won't necessarily fix the others. Finding joy and contentment in one area might not fix the underlying problem, especially when mental illness is involved. That's ok. Try to get treatment, find a meaning or purpose that resonates with you, change what you can and accept what you can't. And in general, try to be a kind person and live a life you can be proud of. It might not work. I do all of that as best I can and I still have really awful nights where I find myself back in the dark place. Tonight is one of them; this morning I was so energized and optimistic and now I'm thinking that I really just don't want to wake up in the morning; I wouldn't be missed if I didn't. But what the hell. There's value in trying anyway. Not because it's easy, or because it's hard, but because it's kind; kind to yourself, and to the world which, if you can, you should try to give back to, to improve, however marginally.
Sorry to ramble. It's late and I'm very tired and very sad.
Can I ask a question about your experiences? How has time shaped your relationship with depression? Only recently have I been able to truly grasp just how young I am. I don't know how old you are, but I'm very curious about what you've noticed. Do certain things get easier with time? Do certain things get harder?
First I should say I'm pretty goddamn young too; only mid-twenties. But I was first screened for clinical depression at 13 so it's been a good bit more than a decade wrangling this thing. And you know, in general, how bad depression gets, and how it affects you, really varies more depending on circumstance than it does time. For example, I spiralled a lot more in college than I have before or since -- i.e. a minor bout of depression turning into weeks of staying in bed and not taking care of myself -- because there was no one to hold me accountable or help me out and so the consequences for failure felt so much bigger and nearer. And I'm not 100% sure whether that was college itself, just being alone for the first time, not being on the right medicine.
One thing that kind of relates to your question is that depression just... Ages you faster, physically and psychologically. This phenomenon is pretty well documented, but I constantly have thoughts of "my memories should not be going like this," "I can't believe I get so tired so easily." It takes a huge physical toll, especially if you're not managing it well. And that compounds with depression and my PTSD and body image problems in pretty frustrating ways.
One way it was harder, when I was younger, was that I was just so fucking stupid. I was so sure that I understood the world and philosophy and life and that it was all worthless and meaninglesss. And then having that bubble burst was also pretty distressing, because becoming aware of how much you don't know is obviously pretty disorienting. As you become more emotionally mature you get better at understanding yourself and your place in the world and, among other things, that gives you a way better foundation for therapy. I guess self-assesment can happen at any age but it's an important project to work on.
I'm curious about this bit about memories. It sounds like our experiences have been pretty similar, at least in terms of timing (depression circa early teens a decade-ish ago) - I've long assumed that the reason so many of my childhood memories are a total blank was because I'd repressed them out of trauma, but that's never really explained why I have so much trouble with new memories, too. I just can't seem to recall anything short-term, and when I try to recall something, more often than not, it's pretty fuzzy and indistinct. It's more than a bit upsetting.
Apologies for the slight derail here, but this caught my attention. While I've had my own experiences with suicidal thoughts over the years, the thing that stopped me from going through with it was, well... I was too depressed to work up the energy to even try it. In recent years, it's mostly just been the occasional nasty intrusive thought - "what would it be like if I did this" rather than an actual desire to die - and periods where I don't want to die so much as I just want life to stop for a bit so I can catch my breath. I'm not sure if any of my experiences can be of much help here, I'm afraid. :(
I have the same thing with memories. They are very fleeting, and most of them are inaccessible or lost. I honestly can say that I don't mind it all that much. Or perhaps it would be better to say that it's so far down my list of problems that its not even a concern.
Regardless of my memories, I can still be present. I can enjoy creating art right now. I can enjoy spending time with my family right now. I do feel like im missing out when I'm at a family event, and everyone's talking about occasions, and I have no idea whats going on. It's like im a stranger in the history of this family, who's learning about stuff someone else did.
Other than that, it doesn't ruin my idea of a good life. When I was a kid, I didn't imagine growing up, and having an awesome memory. I wanted to live by the ocean, and be a teacher, and be able to name all the trees and berries in the woods, and to be a super fast knitter.
Sorry if this is over the top. I'm not trying to say that you shouldn't feel upset about not having memories. I just wanted to share a perspective that (hopefully) helps.
Sorry to hear what you're going through. I have experience with absurdism/optimistic nihilism, and it still influences my life today even though i am now religious (in fact i have a Albert camus book still chilling on my book shelf. Never finished it lol). I watched a video by the youtuber Jreg earlier which i cant remember the name of at the moment, which talked about how people need "frameworks" (like religion or politics, or any other type of worldview) in order to deal with being depressed, which resonated with me. He is a satire channel, so it kinda devolves torward the end, but i think it had a good point.
For me, i know whats causing my problems (its a whole complicated thing, i already made a comment earlier that explained it so i wont bother talking about it now), and it gives me a bit more hope, even though i cant do much about it now. I sincerely hope that you find whats causing you to be unhappy, and/or solve the problem. At least for now, i hope you get good sleep.
This is what I've worked toward, but it's lead me to quitting my job and moving across an ocean without a plan because I don't know what's left to try...
A mantra on repeat in my head is "suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem". I hate that phrase because I associate it with all the worst aspects of living. It does change my perception everytime though.
To be honest, i never got that phrase. Dont get me wrong im not saying suicide is good, but wouldn't you want to have a permanent solution to a problem?
Its like scraping your car because the clutch burned out. It helps me frame the problems in my life, they have multiple solutions.
I used to be a mod of /r/SuicideWatch, so I feel obligated to point people towards the Suicide Hotlines wiki entries there in case anyone here is feeling suicidal or struggling with suicidal ideation:
https://old.reddit.com/r/SuicideWatch/wiki/hotlines
https://old.reddit.com/r/SuicideWatch/wiki/hotline_faqs
At some point I really should copy the SWResources over here to the Tildes wiki somewhere.
Saw the look on the face of the guy driving the train when he realized what I was about to do, and realized that I couldn't do that to another person.
This was years ago, and since then I got help (and meds!) and am a lot better. Life is still hard, and I'm not sure I'll ever be "normal", but here I am.
Sometime 2 or 3 years ago, I decided to try and get on anti-depressants. It took a long time to get access to them, well over a year. Countless phone calls and appointments, endless referrals, it was exhausting. I had to drop out of school while all of this was happening, both because of depression and because I also didn't have ADHD meds. At one point, a couple of days before one of my dr appointments, I decided that if I met with my doctor, and I still couldn't get any medication, I would just kill myself that night. Thankfully, that one Dr appointment was the one where, finally, I got a prescription. Over a year later, I'm still tinkering with dosages and such, but it's been a steep improvement overall.
Generally speaking, of late, I haven't had any bad suicidal thoughts. I still get them, but they just feel like intrusive thoughts. Like I don't really want to kill myself, my brain is just being obnoxious. What has been troubling me lately is thoughts of self-harm. Sometimes things get lodged in my brain, and I have had this specific vision of self-harm playing on loop for the last 2 months. This is one where, when the thought pops into my head, its associated with a deep desire; I actually feel compelled to do it. Contrast that with the suicidal intrusive thoughts, which is a much more mechanical concept.
I don't know if any of this is helpful. I know that with mental health, even slight differences in experiences can fragment the notion of relatability. I definitely know that when I was passively or actively suicidal, i felt very alone. I also know that, right now, I'm in a similar boat of seeking guidance.
"I don't know if any of this is helpful. I know that with mental health, even slight differences in experiences can fragment the notion of relatability."
TBH, my problems with mental illness may stay with me forever, at least it might get better overtime. On a deeper level, i think one of the main reasons i am even posting about this is because i want to hear about other peoples struggles, and distract myself from my own. And maybe even to know that someone out there cares and knows when im feeling like shit.
And also, your story is relatable, i have ADHD (i think? i was never diagnosed and those symptoms might be a result of CPTSD) and because of that and other stuff the school system was a huge net negative and i have since started homeschool.
I totally get that. I hope this post and it's comments has helped. Let me know if you have any questions about homeschooling. My whole family was homeschooled, since way before the pandemic, so I have plenty of experience lol.
I hope this gets better, for you and me both. Having these thoughts, the lack of energy, the despair, im just over it. Like, it's boring, I want to move on. I would love to find that I wake up when I turn thirty, and all of sudden, I've "outgrown" my depression. That's what I'm hoping for anyway.
I didn't attempt suicide so to speak, but I did think about it. I recall looking out of my window and wanting to jump, but the thing that kept me going was imagining the grief I'd leave behind. My family is already unstable and if something happened to one of us it probably wouldn't survive.
It is alarming how much joking about suicide is normalized. Our school councilor was aware of how much we were all joking but didn't take us seriously. When I was conscripted, I eventually had a gun with me 24/7 without any psychological checks. If a serious enough doctor spoke with me I would have broken down, but everyone takes teenagers at their word when they say they're fine. I wanted nothing more than to tell someone about it, I just didn't want to bring it up. All it took was one bad enough day to make an impulsive decision.
Honestly, I don't think I'll ever grow out of it. I've spoken about this with a friend of mine, and we theorized that people who sink down to that degree of hopelessness have something changed about them; they "get" something that others just don't. I've found that I generally connect better to people who have gone through it - if I had to tally it up I'd say most of my serious friends were suicidal at one point. I wonder if it's an actual phenomenon.
That is horrible, and im glad you're better now. Its common, especially in times and places where we did not focus as much on mental health, for those issues to be passed down for generations in a family. You can even see this in different cultures/ethnicities which have experienced atrocities (for example, american indeginous people are two times more likely to have ptsd). Congrats for breaking the cycle.
Makes me glad to hear that CPTSD can be ended, and that you really can return to a normal life. Due to my mental illness, and a bunch of other issues, i dont think i'll ever have a 'normal' life, but maybe i can make it a life worth fighting for :)
every time I think of offing myself (not often..) I think, I should just take a very stupid life threatening risk with a chance at an extremely high reward, because why the fuck not. As depressed as I get, gambling will always be fun. I don't even care about money being involved, I simply enjoy the chance. I always end up giving up on the suicide because I get disinterested in the planning, but the plan does slowly get made. Soon enough I get not-depressed enough for my eyes to shift towards the value of my life. For a while it was piss off as many extremely rich people as I can, for the lulz. But again I end up stabilizing. Lately though I've got much more clever ideas. Should I hear the bells I'm faking my death and doing at least one of them.
Fear, I want to stop the pain but even at my worst I've been afraid to fully call it quits. I've had multiple attempts but I think they would be classified as cries for help more than serious.
Family impact is a huge one for me that has held me back from getting that far. I know it would destroy my mum's life (and probably my dad's too). This sounds truly awful but there were times I resented them still being alive because I felt like they were trapping me in the pain. I resented that I was unable to get free because other people didn't understand it was my only escape from the pain. I used to draw pictures of myself drowning and my family pulling me down because they wouldn't let me escape.
Also family, but very different feelings - my niece. Her birth mother died by suicide when she was a baby. Her experience is clearly very different to mine, but as a teenager I struggled with feeling that I was destined to die by suicide and it was pointless to fight it, which were heavily added to when I learnt one of my grandparents struggled with depression. I fully appreciate the death of the mother she never knew carriers far more weight than an aunt, but I couldn't bear the thought of contributing to those feelings if this little girl I loved so much went through something similar as she grew up. And, corny as it sounds, I wanted to see her grow up.
Sometimes just thinking of other people who had committed suicide. Once I walked to a bridge at night, and was overwhelmed with thoughts of a 13 year old who'd committed suicide at the bridge a few years earlier. It was enough to make me dwell again on the inevitability and tragedy of her case, and while me doing the same wouldn't be as tragic, to call the suicide hotline advertised on the bridge and cry to them for an hour instead until I felt OK to walk home.
I am actually OK now though. I battled this for over 15 years before I even experienced what it was like to not feel suicidal (it was always there, even when I was "happy" part of my brain would say "You might be enjoying this moment, but you know you've still got to die" like it was a chore I was putting off) and a few more years before it was consistently gone. I no longer have that feeling. I know anyone going through it now won't believe me, but there honestly is light at the end of the tunnel and it is worth hanging on for it. Even when the tunnel is so long and you can't believe that there even is an end to it right now.
Not strictly speaking someone who's "attempted," but I have done the equivalent of sitting at the table with the loaded shotgun and weighing my options.
At the end of the day, the math was simple - sure life is hard and sucks, but it's not like you're going to be somehow more dead if you opt out now than if you stick it out for a couple more decades to see how your dice fall. What's another 60-80 years compared to the eternity of not existing you'll get either way? About as close to zero as it gets. There's a chance things will turn around - people with a lot more years under their belt than me almost all tell me that life is more unpredictable than not. Might as well ride it out and see if things get interesting. At least you'll be able to tell yourself you gave it your best shot.
Maybe more importantly, there are much better ways to throw your life away than simply killing yourself. In some ways having nothing to lose is a unique opportunity - you have options available to you that 'normal' people would never consider. You can do whatever you want. If you're going to kill yourself, kill yourself doing something nobody else has the guts to even attempt.
I haven't gone through with attempting suicide but I think about dying all the time. I have had symptoms consistent with depression as far as I could remember, I've gone through treatment but it will never be completely cured. Having talked to to different people who have thoughts about dying, different people have different reasons for why they have these thoughts, so I can only speak for myself. But here's what comes to mind.
I realized that what is underneath my suicidal thoughts was grief. By this, I meant that I had some sort of idea about what life "should" be like for it to be worth living, and that expectation was falling short of that. Then the question that follows would have to do with the degree to which I accept the present imperfect reality while appreciating the parts of which where I can see goodness rather than to only see all the bad. Part of the reason I was hurting so much from grief was actually because I care so much about the world, and that in itself is love. From there the question then became how to respond to that yearning for love.
One major milestone to change how critical I was about the world and myself by looking into how much I bought into ableism and meritocracy, and examining what the meaning of life was for me if I didn't buy into those ideas.
And a tool I've found personally helpful is to finish the free version of the VIA character survey, which helps identify what you find valuable in life. These are things no one or no failure can completely take away from you.
2 times.
1st time - My iPod had shuffled to one of my favorite songs a few seconds before
2nd time - Panicked, passed out due to hyperventilation, then I fell asleep.
Talking to my wife in the phase between planning and doing. She caught me in a moment of crisis that I couldn’t get myself out of and wanted to listen to me - and I confessed.
If I didn’t have that moment, who knows how it would have finished.
I couldn't go through with it because I have family and friends who loves me, and I know how much pain and confusion it would bring them. I think it would be easier if I had found a reason or will to live rather then just not being able to go through with it.. still struggling with thoughts, but I just tell myself I can't do it anyways so there's no point in thinking about it.
I just wanted to tell you that that is very brave of you. I know it doesnt mean much, but i pray that you get better soon.