Suicide is a big topic. Where are we supposed to start?

*If you are having suicidal thoughts and/or have the intention of hurting yourself, please call 9-8-8 for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline or 9-1-1 for emergency responders close to you.*

I cried a lot this September. And avoided writing about it until October. 

I didn’t want to be upset, especially since I already tend to get upset about a lot of things related to loss, sadness, and pain. I didn’t want to focus on it. I didn’t want to give it any more power than I had at previous points in my life.

But 11 days into September I was reminded of a sadness I couldn’t ignore. I drove to work that day and saw a firetruck with a giant American flag soaring at the top of its outstretched ladder. It took me that many days to consciously recognize that that horrific anniversary was upon us. Oh, it’s 9/11. How could I forget? I remembered.

Then I remembered my own losses: Car crashes. Suicide. Cancer. Life support and ambiguous death. More car crashes. Suicide. Drug overdose. Another suicide. More cancer. More death.

Then I remembered it was Suicide Awareness Month.

It’s been a sad month as I reflect on all the loss. Loss is heavy. And I defined myself by my losses for a very large chunk of my life. They played a significant part in what maintained my depression and suicidal ideation. For me, depression has been a difficult experience to explain. I know that it often comes with a heaviness that feels nearly impossible to lift. Loss, disconnection, and sadness can conspire to create a tight focus on pain and suffering. Pain and suffering are natural parts of life, but after too long it can feel gut-wrenchingly unnatural and traumatic.

I had a professor in graduate school who viewed suicide as an attempt to escape overwhelming emotions, pain, and suffering when we feel we don’t have any other options for accessing relief. When I first heard his perspective, I agreed. And I still do. Once we reach the point of suffering, our brains become foggy and we don’t necessarily know what to do all by ourselves. It can get scary, confusing, and dangerous.

I feel so grateful to know that my lack of violent tendencies is what ultimately saved me from hurting myself physically in the past. Much of my suicidal ideation was the passive type; I daydreamed about how nice it would be to not wake up in the mornings or to have some freak accident take me out. Passive ideation turns to active ideation when we start planning in detail how we can exit this life, and I have been there before, too. Neither are good. Both are painful and can lead to suicide.

The emotional pain I’ve experienced in my life was so overwhelming that I had little desire to write about suicide or even think about my past. I wasn’t scared of it creating suicidal ideation or sending me into a deeply depressed state. I know what the research says: Talking about it doesn’t increase suicidality. It decreases it.

With all that being said, here are some major points I think we need to talk about and apply more in order to increase our abilities to be supportive and mentally healthy people in this world, especially as it relates to suicide:

1. Connect: It’s natural to want to isolate when we don’t feel like ourselves, but this is often when we need to reach out the most. Suffering alone can create more distress. Identify trustworthy and emotionally-safe people to speak to. Sometimes these aren’t necessarily the people closest to us in our lives, so that is part of why resources like the suicide hotline exist. Crisis counselors are available 24/7 and are some of the most well-trained and impactful individuals I have ever come into contact with. Just pick up the phone and dial 9-8-8. In general, growing and strengthening your support system to make room for genuine connection and support is a valuable move. The bigger the support system, the more stable you will feel during overwhelming times.

2. Listen & Seek to Understand: Listening can be incredibly difficult, even for someone like me who has been professionally trained to listen. There can be so much we want to react to. But I’ve learned from my personal and professional experiences with suicide that compassionate listening is crucial, whether we are listening to someone else’s suffering or to our own emotions. If someone comes to you and needs to talk, ensure you have time and capacity to listen, doing your best to not insert your own opinions or shift into problem-solving mode. Just be there to listen to the struggle; adding anything else to the conversation can complicate mental processes for someone already struggling. In a sense, the same goes for how we react to our own emotional turmoil. I’ve had past clients in deep distress because they were fearful of their own emotions when experiencing suicidal ideation or even mild feelings of sadness or anxiety. We don’t need to fear our own emotions; they are a guide for us, albeit sometimes a bit complex to unpack. They can tell us a lot about what we need or what we are reacting to. Adding emotion on top of emotion – or even criticizing our natural emotional reactions – only intensifies the suffering.

3. Make a Plan: Safety plans are a routine part of treatment for clients who are actively suicidal or who have a history of self-harm or suicidal tendencies. Therapist and client work together to compile a list of people to reach out to for help, activities to engage in to distract from suicidal actions, ways to make the environment safe, etc. It’s imperative to have something written down and easily accessible for you when you need it. No one can predict when any one person could become overwhelmed with life and not know what to do. We are all at risk, so I see value in anyone developing a safety plan of sorts.

4. Pay Attention: In my first article for MindPower I mentioned that we can get sucked into a negative pattern without realizing it at the time. For this reason, I think it’s worth mentioning the benefits of paying attention to your own mental health patterns, especially if you experience or have experienced suicidal ideation. For me, ceasing to care for myself well is always a reliable warning sign. I might stop washing my hair for a few days or “forget” to eat, which tells me I’m not okay and something needs to be addressed. One of the most empowering ways to start the self-healing process is to become more self-aware so you can catch yourself before intense thoughts and emotions arise and become a negative pattern.

So much has changed about how I view life – all parts. I’ve taken time to heal my suffering parts enough to now see that it’s worth living. There are good parts…we just need help focusing on them.

I am finally so grateful to be here. Are you?