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I think it's a selfish act. If you have any consideration for the people you love you won't do it. If "Suicide Shame" sessions were held publicly in which friends and family spoke about how hurt they were by the loss maybe that would deter suicide.
Anyone who chooses to commit suicide has got to be in a unbelievable amount of pain & anguish. I really find it hard to believe its some self indulgent whim committed by selfish people.
I've been in pain and anguish before from past perspectives I've held including emotional pain including emotional pain that later upon introspection I realized I had made up to myself. I had to figure that one out for myself because it's a possibility counselors never look at.
How did I do this? By realizing that our emotions, any terminology about the mind are just narratives, just stories although ones which have consequences as far as our direction in the real world. I figured out I wasn't really depressed because I came to realize that the optimal narrative to follow to lead myself to success involved a narrative where I had made up a great of my feelings in the past without realizing it.
Could I be making up feelings to myself right now? From the moment's perspective no. From the future's perspective possibly, if it serves me to reframe my life's narrative that way in the future but that's not to worry about now.
Me too. My brother tried suicide before, and I don't know what was going through his head. He never talked to me about it and we were always able to talk about anything. I always knew he had a lot of problems but I didn't know it was that serious.
Consider this.
Most people have people who love them and love those people back. If someone is willing to kill themselves, even though it would hurt all of those people, imagine how much pain they must be in. Imagine how much pain you would have to be in to kill yourself, even though you knew it would hurt other people too, people you love.
You probably can't imagine it; it would take an unimaginable amount of pain for you to do that. THAT level of pain is the pain suicidal people have to deal with. Now do you have any sympathy for them?
Suicidal people don't think rationally. A rational person would never be suicidal. The internal pain they're going through stops them from perceiving their situation clearly for what it is. Maybe they don't think anyone does love them, or that they don't deserved to be loved. Often depression or something else is a factor in making them feel that way.
Yep. It's like saying "I hate it when schizophrenics act weird."
Also, consider this: some people don't have "loved ones".
I know, dude. My brother tried suicide before, and he's not willing to talk about it, and he's never been afraid to talk to me about anything. We've always been really close.When I bring it up, he just shuns me like I never said anything. It worries me.
So since they don't think rationally does that mean they're a little bit mental? Just wonderin'
I've been clinically depressed before(just not suicidal), it makes you feel terrible but feeling terrible is not an excuse for committing suicide.
Like in the song "I rather have pain than nothing at all". After you die you have exactly that, nothing. How can anyone ever want that? I accept the fact that I will die someday but I would jump on the chance for immortality and believed that even when I was depressed.
And this wasn't mild depression. I was not only depressed but perceived myself to have been depressed my whole life while I was depressed(even though I was not always depressed). I would sometimes lie in bed for days. I would spend hours thinking furiously to try and find out how to fix "my lifelong problem of unhappiness". I nearly flunked out of college because of this. Still I never wanted to kill myself. Nothingness isn't happiness and I desperately wanted to be happy. Even though I often thought it would never happen I still saw no point in throwing away my only chance at happiness(continuing to live).
I did entertain another crazy idea to "escape" my depression. I thought of trying to structure my thoughts in a way that would yield a euphoric and absolute psychosis so I could have the happy reality I wanted and ignore the real world. But the logistics were too much. I didn't want to half-ass it. I literally wanted to forget the entirety of reality and live in my head, not live mostly in reality with a couple of delusions. I wanted to be able to experience a world of joy and bliss as I lay in a hospital bed in a psych ward, completely unaware of the hospital, the bed, the walls in the room, only aware of the pretend reality in my head. Regardless I no longer desire this since reality is nice now. Or maybe I succeeded and this is my fantasyworld. Oh well. Either way I win.
As crazy as that idea was it makes loads more sense trying to escape from life's problems that way than death. Death=experience nothing forever. Fake reality=Still get an experience.
You know what's selfish? Thinking it's alright for someone to live every moment of their lives in such unbearable pain, and expect them to keep living with it just because you want them to be here. Honestly, don't talk unless you've been there. You obviously have no idea what it's like to be in that position.
Well, there are different ways of looking at this depending on the circumstances.
On the one hand, I'm remembering a pretty bad occurance in my town last year. A 14 year old girl in the local high school killed herself because her boyfriend broke up with her. I have a hard time feeling any sympathy to someone who would throw their life away just like that.
But for someone who's honestly suffering from depression or has other issues going on, things become much more convoluted. Since there are so many potential circumstances I'll go with general terms. Depression in many ways is a trap of circular logic. You feel bad, then you feel guilty about feeling bad so you feel worse. You want to kill yourself, but you feel bad about doing so, which stresses you out more which makes the urge stronger. And a lot of times suicidal people don't feel they're being selfish (assuming you have friends/family), but rather think that they're only burdening the people that they care about, and that everyone would be secretly happy once you're gone.
Obviously this won't apply to every circumstance, but one must consider that a suicidal person is not going to be thinking rationally.
Yes, if someone is wishing to kill oneself it's their choice and you can't judge them until you walk in their shoe and as for what you mentioned about the sessions I will tell you that most of the time the family or the friends is the main problem.
To be honest, what you said sounds somewhat cold. I agree that it's not right to choose the permanent solution to a temporary problem, but it's hard telling what goes through their heads. Maybe they honestly feel like there's nowhere else to turn. It still saddens me that a girl I knew committed suicide back in April. It's comforting knowing that she's happy in heaven, it just would have been nice if she found happiness here. I definitely feel for her family, and anyone who has lost a loved one for that reason, because what they're going through can't be easy.
I think some people just take depression differently. Like somebody before me said, killing yourself over something like a break-up is selfish and stupid, but some people go through some serious depression and they feel like there's no way out. Now, I can't imagaine myself taking my own life (and quite frankly, I don't want to) but some people, I guess, feel like they have no other choice in life but to get rid of life. It's sad, but unfortunatly true.
I think its everybody's choice. A person never asks to be brought into this world, and sometimes they want out. I think the worst reason to stay alive is to please others.
I'm not normally one to side with the person harming themselves here, but you're assuming that all people who commit suicide have families that care for them while they are alive, and/or access to or mental/physically capable to access resources that will make solving their problems possible. And you assume that they are not in a situation in which we all are everyday in which implicit norms and regulations (such as the honor/love/dependence on their family) dictate the decisions that they can or can not make.
Yeah, some people are selfish when they commit suicide, just like some people who are overweight are physically fit. Not really any widely available statistics to measure how much of which group is either.
Thats only cause you are selfish. Youll need to feel like them to maybe understand..
How dare you!
You don't know what that person was going through. Someone would have to be in huge amounts of torment to commit suicide. Clearly, you've never been in a situation like that or have known someone who committed suicide! You have absolutely no right to judge them. Ultimately, it's their choice not yours.
You walk a day in the shoes of a severely depressed or bipolar person, and THEN tell me suicide is selfish.
I hate using this term, but it's a pretty good one. "Pro-choice" and I don't refer to teenage trash aborting their bastards. I mean by this that everyone has a right to end his/her own life for whatever the fuck is the reason. There's a bad karma hurting your family and friends, but if you're willing to take that on yourself -it's your right to off yourself.
When you have your own little dictatorship somewhere in africa, you can try "suicide shame" session for lab rats and guinea pigs.
It really depends. I'm sure a lot of people that do it are very selfish to begin with. I knew a few people that have killed themselves and they were not selfish people. Sad cases, they were.
As someone who has just experienced a close family member committing suicide I agree 1,000 percent! This person offed herself with absolutely no consideration for the havoc and heartache her actions have caused. Her own children, how could a mother do that to her own kids??? The entire family is falling apart now, you can argue that people who commit suicide have "tunnel vision" and don't see the consequences of their actions, blah blah blah. I say bullshit. They know, they just don't care. They care more about getting themselves out of pain, they don't care that they are simply passing that pain on to countless others. So you have one person who is miserable who REFUSES offers of help, who LIES when people ask her if she's okay, not once, but repeatedly, who won't help herself, who won't take help from anyone. You take that one bundle of pain and you send it out to everyone else in the circle. So now we are miserable. I hope she's happy now, wherever she is. The rest of us aren't. I will never forgive her.
Youre forgetting something important a lot of suicides are the result of prescription drugs. Do you know how many drugs can cause suicidal thoughts in otherwise healthy people? Regardless of how you feel about "selfish" suicides youre kind of leaving this out.
A lot of meds including antidepressants, anti psychotics even anti-smoking drugs can and have caused sudden suicide in people.
To the poster of this lets look at it from a reverse. What if that person has no one who loves them. What if that person was abused by family as a child. What if all that person knows is suffering and everyone treats them like garbage? So I guess taking a life no one seems to want seems selfish. Looking at it from this angle it seems more like a gift to the world. At least in the suicide victims eyes.
My life is my property. It's selfish of those who say it's selfish to kill oneself to want to keep someone who suffers alive in his/her misery.
A family friend committed suicide yesterday. He was bipolar and unmedicated, abusing drugs and alcohol. He leaves behind a seven year old son.
That kid was all he lived for. His ex was restricting access. I can't imagine how much pain he must have been in to do what he did. I also can't imagine the pain that poor little boy is going to be going through.
I feel more sorry for the little one, but, even though I didn't like this man at all, I still do feel sympathy for his situation.
I also had a very dear friend who committed suicide years ago. Also mental health issues, some stemming from early childhood abuse. I still love him dearly and miss him deeply, but he was in SO much pain. I can't even begin to fathom it.
people who comit suicide do it so they won't be a burden on others, they believe that they're helping the world if they leave, sad state to be in. they feel world hates them in life!!! so please don't hate them in death also
I have a morbid fascination with people who are locked up in those supermax prisons and with the attitude of the prisons. Apparently the prisons go to great lengths to keep these people from committing suicide but have no problem with, for example, prisoners who go so mad that they make chess pieces out of their own poo and play chess against themselves. People seem to commit suicide when they have no feeling of hope. Someone locked up with no human contact for the rest of their life would almost have to go mad. Maybe in the madness there is some kind of feeling of hope, however weird and disturbing that would be.
I can understand what your saying, but to have no sympathy isn't right. Sure these people might have loved ones but honestly when someone is suicidal they feel like they're doing more harm than good to the people they love. They feel very alone and the depression and stress make the suicidal thoughts even stronger. Overall it is their choice to live or die. Sometimes people are in horrible situations and it's there only way out. For them it would be finding peace after struggling with all these feelings. Like someone said already. No one asks to be born, so if they want out it's their choice. Really you don't know what they're going through.
No, shaming people for considering suicide would not help. When I was suicidal, I had friends who tried to help by telling me how hurt everybody would be and how selfish it would be to commit suicide, and it just made me feel much, much worse, which made me want to kill myself more. When people consider suicide, they're not trying to hurt people, and they're not necessarily unaware of how hurt people might be. They're just in too much pain to make that their first priority.
Depression is an illness. It makes it difficult to do anything, and when it got really bad for me, I forgot what it was like to be happy. Occasionally I'd feel a bit better for a short time, but often, every emotion that I should've been feeling was replaced by pain and guilt. I didn't decide to start considering suicide, it just happened. To me, my suicidal thoughts felt involuntary, like an obsession that came out of nowhere. When people commit suicide, it does hurt people, but I don't think it's selfish, exactly. People commit suicide because they don't know what else to do, and because they've run out of energy to try to get better anymore. Sometimes they've been depressed for years, with no reason to believe it will ever get better. The most important thing to understand, I think, is that suicide is the result of mental illness, which can affect people's judgement.
It's worth noting, also, that people who commit suicide sometimes have mental (and sometimes physical) illnesses other than depression. People with schizophrenia are at particularly high risk for suicide, as are people with anorexia or bulimia. Chronic pain, which can trigger or worsen depression, is also sometimes a factor.
I hope that helps explain depression and suicide.
"suicidal thoughts felt involuntary"
Thoughts are just words in your head (although some people speak of "visual thoughts" I think that's splitting hairs and we should stick to calling that "imagination"). You have a choice about whether or not to follow them. I see you've made the right choice.
You have a choice whether or not to follow them, yes, but depression can cloud your judgement in ways you can't really control. I'm not saying that it's impossible for some people not to commit suicide, I'm saying that it can be very difficult. Not everybody is always in a position where they can do very difficult things.
I experienced depression that was probably worse than some people who kill themselves. But I was also very afraid of death, of nothingness. I preferred misery to nothingness. At least misery is an experience, at least it's something.
And even if there's something after death it's a complete unknown, why would I want such a major change and throw my life or rather my experience of things into total chaos?
It's their choice. A poor choice. Everybody is not supposed to be so strong as you. Just step into their shoes and think what infinite amounts of pain made them to take that decision. Obviously people who love them will be heartbroken but pal sometimes you can't escape this freakin life. its damn complicated and confusing all the time. Some people could face it and some give up. Btw I'm not recommending suicide. It's a poor choice like I said. Very very poor.
I'm some where between yes and no. I get mad at some people who throw their lives away over stupid shit. But I kinda understand if your in a terrible situation. If that were me I'd rather have someone else murder me. In a way I think suicide is cowardly. I think if someone were to get over suicide attempts and being depressed I would consider them brave and strong.
I see where you're coming from, but I don't think you should have absolutely no sympathy. I have thought about it myself but will never do it because I don't want to cause that pain for those who love me. Being suicidal doesn't mean someone is selfish, it just means they have problems and could really use someone who cares and has a little sympathy for whatever they are going through.
I used to be like you. Until I read statistics on how the majority of people who attempt suicide in a way such as taking sleeping pills, realize they actually want to live and try to get help and save them self but end up dying anyway. Now that, is fucking sad.
They think that everyone hates them and that everyone is better off without them. If they knew that everyone loved them, they wouldn't commit suicide in the first place.
Well, I don't actually agree. My brother tried suicide once before and it was probably the scariest moment of my life. I knew he was depressed but I didn't know he was that depressed and if I hadn't gone into the bathroom that night, he probably wouldn't be here with us, so I can't agree with you. I think that you have to be in the suicidal position to know what goes on in their head otherwise you can't really say you have no sympathy.
I agree with you. I don't get suicide. I have battled with depression my hole life and have been threw a hell of alot more than most people ever have. But you only live once, thats it. When your dead your dead and I want something to show for my life when I die. The only thing you can do is fight your battles and keep fighting no matter how hard they are. Some you may fight your hole life. I believe if you dont like the way your life is and people are wronging you, change it, morph it into what you want it to be. Get rid of everything and everyone who wrongs you. And like I said just keep fighting... I believe those who give up are weak and selfish cause no matter who you are someone always has it worst and there is someone in this world who loves you.
The person who commits suicide doesnt have any obligation to anyone in this world that is ABOVE AND BEYOND the obligation they have to themselves first and foremost. You can make an argument that someone who chooses to have children loses that priviledge, and I would entertain it, but otherwise that is the only exception I see.
If someone doesnt find joy in life anymore, doesnt find meaning, doesnt see anything worth getting up for day after day after day, they have every right to do what they want with their OWN life, provided it doesnt put other lives in danger. Taking this final control over themselves and their life is the only real control we have in this world. I havent even included those people who are in tremendous amounts of physical pain or suffering as well.
Those people who consider suicides as selfish are selfish themselves, just because you wanted that person to continue living, what to them was a painful existence is selfish. Just because they had YOU in their lives doesnt mean they had an obligation to you to continue forward with their own life.
I also do not condone suicide as an acceptable choice either, but I dont condemn those that choose it.
yes it's a very bad thing but you get the odd few people who don't have friends and lost all of there family. there clearly not hurting anyone as they don't have anyone to hurt. I'm not saying it's right to kill yourself because it's not. but know one cares about them so they don't have to worry about hurting someone. you can't say you care about them because you don't know anything about them and you don't know who they are. life is life we are all born to die and some people make that day soon then later. just accept some people don't want to be a part of this world. even if they have family you don't know what there family was like growing up for them. there family might have abused them and not really cared about them. you may never know what people go though in there life to get to the point of suicide. sorry for sounding like i agree with it. i don't agree with it.
It all depends on your views. Do other people have a right on your life? Do you own yourself or if not who does? Your parents? God?
You might think suicide hurts those that care about him. But then they are just living for someone else which can't be right.
It's all different shades of grey.