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Being Suicidal: What it feels like to want to kill yourself

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Re: Being Suicidal: What it feels like to want to kill yourself

#21

Post by darius42 »

alanctgardner2 wrote: post #11
darius42 wrote: post #6

Speaking as someone who has been suicidal, I think that that article is a lot of hot air. This is what it felt like to be suicidal: Imagine the worst heartbreak you have ever felt, and multiply this by ten. Imagine the worst anxiety you have ever suffered and multiply this by ten. Imagine that every second feels like a minute, in each of those minute-long-seconds, you feel like a lion is just about to jump out from a…

It sounds like you're dealing with severe depression. I hope you're seeing someone you can talk to about these feelings. My email is alanctgardner@gmail.com if you do need someone to talk to. I think he touches on a lot of the points you mentioned: > every second feels like a minute > you constantly obsess on what it was you did so wrong > they felt you were a terrible disgrace That sounds like deconstruction, negati…

P.S. What I didn't like about the original article is it made it sound as if the feelings that lead to suicide are some sort of effete existential angst, and therefore rather mysterious, while in reality -- at least for me -- the feelings were just HELL ON EARTH.

Anyone who has any inkling of how much real tangible pain your own brain can put you in, would never question why someone might commit suicide. There are times when not doing so requires incredible strength and perseverance. Either that, or not even having the wherewithal anymore to take your own life.

Re: Being Suicidal: What it feels like to want to kill yourself

#22

Post by hkmurakami »

drostie wrote: post #15
hkmurakami wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Speaking as someone who __has been__ suicidal I've battled depression in the past, but I don't think I ever quite reached a suicidal state. The way I got out of my depression state, was to finally admit that I can't keep suffering in my current life situation anymore, and to get away from the things that were causing my anguish, anxiety, stress, and despair. I spent the next two months doing utterly nothing (well at…

I am not the person you replied to, just another sufferer. So, for me, depression feels very similar to what both darius and the original article were saying. It's like an erupting storm. It starts with something small -- some tiny failure which a normal person might say "okay, no biggie, I can deal with that." My problem was the multiplication. We have associative memories, and I as a depressed person immediately as…

>There was often a growing sense of paranoia -- that they would all find out. What they would all find out was not terribly clear, but it was something as simple as "I am useless" or "I'll never live up to any of their expectations." (If you've never suffered from depression you might even wonder why this is a bad thing -- but that sort of metanarrative doesn't happen when you're depressed because it's just obviously bad, it's rejection, and rejection is painful emotionally, and there is no reflection.)

This is ... strikingly and surprisingly similar to what I recall going through (so similar in fact that reading it made my chest feel hotter): a feeling of uselessness, of under-performing, of feeling "stuck" in a situation where I was doomed to continue to fail.

> I live a much less stressful life now, and that helps. I try not to commit myself to any futures -- I tell people that I don't make plans per se but only resolves, so that I am sure of the direction that I'm sailing, but not what I will find.

Even your current outlook reminds me of that of my own.

Though my time in this state was the most painful time in my life. These days I can look back at it as a blessing. I feel that my failures and struggles have instilled a stronger sense of 'balance' in my life and forward outlook. Most importantly, I feel that I can sense others having a difficult time much more acutely than before. It's really made helping myself and others avoid this kind of stress/suffering a priority and cause in my life -- in fact, the only cause I feel deeply passionate about.

Re: Being Suicidal: What it feels like to want to kill yourself

#23

Post by gesman »

Article describes classes of thoughts that causes suicidal tendencies. Which is good recreational read but practically useless. Then article self-derails in disfunctional, impractical advises (for the lack of having anything better), such as: "this information helps you to meta-cognitively puncture suicidal ideation" or: "scientific knowledge changes perspective. And perspective changes everything".

This works all great in theory but absolutely fails in real life with real people.

It reality it's the deep and sharp inner pain that causes people to be driven to suicide. In suicide prevention - the cause of pain absolutely does not matter. What matters - is to teach people to transcend that inner pain. People only know how to suppress, express, or escape pain. Mostly via distractions, entertainment, chemicals and sex.

Suicide is an ultimate act of taking the strongest pain killer.

When other painkillers no longer works - and pain grows too sharp, and person does not know anything better - that seems to be the best way out.

The ultimate suicide guidance teaches people how, instead of running away from inner emotional and physical pain, turn toward it, observe, see it for what it really is and let it dissolve in irreversible manner.

When person transcends pain in this way - by facing it, observing it, feeling it - not only it causes the pain itself to dissolve - the situation or painful past that caused the pain to be in the first place - fails to re-ignite and fails to cause pain any longer.

That's it the ultimate healing direction.

That's the real way up from puny, harmless "positivive thinking" toward any thinking. When any thought, any memory, any recollection, no matter how "negative" fails to cause you to feel inner pain.

Re: Being Suicidal: What it feels like to want to kill yourself

#24

Post by kstenerud »

darius42 wrote: post #6

Speaking as someone who has been suicidal, I think that that article is a lot of hot air. This is what it felt like to be suicidal: Imagine the worst heartbreak you have ever felt, and multiply this by ten. Imagine the worst anxiety you have ever suffered and multiply this by ten. Imagine that every second feels like a minute, in each of those minute-long-seconds, you feel like a lion is just about to jump out from a…

Speaking as someone who has been suicidal and very nearly succeeded had someone not pulled me down, this article pretty much nails it.

The strange part is, I can kind of get into my past self's head and replay all of my reasons, but from my current perspective they seem corrupted and perverse. I know that I was trying to escape from my own twisted feelings of guilt, but the whole episode seems almost surreal now; me yet not me.

Another interesting thing that I'd never considered before is that I have a very high pain tolerance and fearlessness. I've always suspected that my grandfather, whom I take after quite a bit in this respect, decided to stop taking his medication after my grandmother died.

Re: Being Suicidal: What it feels like to want to kill yourself

#25

Post by darius42 »

hkmurakami wrote: post #10
darius42 wrote: post #6

Speaking as someone who has been suicidal, I think that that article is a lot of hot air. This is what it felt like to be suicidal: Imagine the worst heartbreak you have ever felt, and multiply this by ten. Imagine the worst anxiety you have ever suffered and multiply this by ten. Imagine that every second feels like a minute, in each of those minute-long-seconds, you feel like a lion is just about to jump out from a…

>Speaking as someone who __has been__ suicidal I've battled depression in the past, but I don't think I ever quite reached a suicidal state. The way I got out of my depression state, was to finally admit that I can't keep suffering in my current life situation anymore, and to get away from the things that were causing my anguish, anxiety, stress, and despair. I spent the next two months doing utterly nothing (well at…

>You definitely had it much worse than me, and so I want to ask sincerely, what if anything, got you out of your depression/suicidal state of mind?

Only one thing helped: Remeron. I was better in a day and only needed to be on it for a month.

I had previously tried many different anti-depressants, but I am very sensitive to such things and I could not tolerate any of them. The only one that I could tolerate was Trazedone, which didn't work all that well, and was giving me priapisms, so I had to stop.

As it was, I could not tolerate Remeron on its own; it would give me vivid dreams all night long, as do many antidepressants. This is the last thing you want when you are depressed as the dreams are usually vivid hells.

In order to sleep well while on Remeron, I had to take Klonopin, which is like Valium. As it turns out, I only had to take Remeron for a month, but by then I had a residual dependency on Klonpin. I didn't really need the Klonopin anymore as I was no longer anxious, but if I tried to taper off of it, I'd have terrible withdrawal symptoms.

I did eventually get off of the Klonopin, but it took my five years of slowly tapering. And trust me, even going that slowly, tapering off of a benzo is no fun at all!

Re: Being Suicidal: What it feels like to want to kill yourself

#26

Post by orionblastar »

I have attempted suicide 13 times, and decided I would not go for a 14th time.

This article is not accurate. When you are suicidal it is very hard to explain. You are miserable and in a lot of pain, you have negative racing thoughts about how terrible you are and what a horrible person you are etc and that the world would be better off without you, and you never really fit in, people just took advantage of you and abused and bullied you so you don't feel like you are connected to this world anymore, that the only way to end your suffering is to kill yourself. Logic, reason, and anything else no longer works for you, you can't think straight anymore and any thought just hurts you like a hot knife slicing into your brain. Every bad moment in your life plays out in your head, and each one just kills you inside a bit. You cannot even remember the good moments, you cannot recall that you have friends and family members who love you. You feel like nobody cares about you and everyone hates you and wants you to die.

I really don't know how I got out of it, except my attempts failed because I didn't do massive things like gunshot to the head or whatever, I did things that could be undone like overdose, etc. It was the only control I had at the time to survive, pick my way to die, and pick one that others can undo when they find me.

I got so sick working, that I developed schizoaffective disorder from the stress, and workplace bullies who abused me daily. I was a top-notch programmer, but now I am on disability trying to get my act together. Not being surrounded by sociopaths is helping me to heal up.

Re: Being Suicidal: What it feels like to want to kill yourself

#27

Post by thebrokencube »

darius42 wrote: post #6

Speaking as someone who has been suicidal, I think that that article is a lot of hot air. This is what it felt like to be suicidal: Imagine the worst heartbreak you have ever felt, and multiply this by ten. Imagine the worst anxiety you have ever suffered and multiply this by ten. Imagine that every second feels like a minute, in each of those minute-long-seconds, you feel like a lion is just about to jump out from a…

> Imagine that the only reason that you didn't kill yourself in order to end this interminable torment is because you figured you'd fuck even that up and just end up a quadriplegic, and then be truly screwed, since you'd never be able to end your eternal misery then.

Oh man. This struck way too close to home, as it is was the biggest reason I didn't actually go through with suicide when I was at the darkest point in life. That feeling that you can't do anything right, even ending your already frail and delicate life: I don't know of many things more disheartening than that.

Your description of how it feels to be suicidal is very well written and probably the most accurate summary I have read in this regards.

Re: Being Suicidal: What it feels like to want to kill yourself

#28

Post by hkmurakami »

darius42 wrote: post #25
hkmurakami wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Speaking as someone who __has been__ suicidal I've battled depression in the past, but I don't think I ever quite reached a suicidal state. The way I got out of my depression state, was to finally admit that I can't keep suffering in my current life situation anymore, and to get away from the things that were causing my anguish, anxiety, stress, and despair. I spent the next two months doing utterly nothing (well at…

>You definitely had it much worse than me, and so I want to ask sincerely, what if anything, got you out of your depression/suicidal state of mind? Only one thing helped: Remeron. I was better in a day and only needed to be on it for a month. I had previously tried many different anti-depressants, but I am very sensitive to such things and I could not tolerate any of them. The only one that I could tolerate was Traze…

I am not sure how to appropriately respond to your generous post, but at the very least I want to thank you for being willing to share such sensitive information with us.

Re: Being Suicidal: What it feels like to want to kill yourself

#29

Post by hudell »

I've tried to kill myself twice when I was a teenage. It was really silly. The first time I was in my bed, trying to sleep, when I tought : "Why don't I kill myself?" I don't remember what kind of problems I had at the time. I was 15 and that was the best year of my life up to that point (ages 10 to 14 really sucked and I would understand if it had happened at that time). I didn't do anything special, just covered my head with my pillow cover. After a few seconds I realised that wouldn't work, dropped it and went on to sleep. I don't remember when or how the second time happened, all I remember is that I tried a second time that same year. Many times I caught myself thinking about using gas to end it all, but I would not do anything that would cause trouble to my family (even though I had no reason to like them at the time).

A few years later, I got really depressed after a party and, on my way home, I stopped in a bridge, looking to the river and thinking. I knew I would never have the courage to jump, but I stood there. Then, from the other side of the bridge, came an old crazy friend, he was really drunk and hugged me real hard, leaving me with the stench of cachaça (brazilian rum). He kept going and I went home.

I never had any suicidal thought after that. On contrary, sometimes I feel that I now am "immune" to that kind of thing. Even if I feel depressed, it all goes away after a good night sleep. And I even became a person that is really good at talking to people with suicidal thoughts. I'm 24 now and, in the last five years, I've had a few friends come to me saying they were thinking about killing themselves and I somehow made them feel better.

I think that the most important thing when talking to people about this is: never say "don't to it". I usually say: "it's up to you, but.. have you considered this and that?" If you just tell them no to do it, they will ignore you, because they will think you don't understand their problems. And they are probably right about that.

Re: Being Suicidal: What it feels like to want to kill yourself

#30

Post by hudell »

hudell wrote: post #29

I've tried to kill myself twice when I was a teenage. It was really silly. The first time I was in my bed, trying to sleep, when I tought : "Why don't I kill myself?" I don't remember what kind of problems I had at the time. I was 15 and that was the best year of my life up to that point (ages 10 to 14 really sucked and I would understand if it had happened at that time). I didn't do anything special, just covered my…

Just to be clear: neither I nor any of these friends I talked about had real cases of depression, we would just feel depressed sometimes and it would sometimes makes us think our life wasn't worth it or something like that.
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