Suicidal Thoughts

For anyone who is befriending someone who speaks of ending life, it is absolutely essential that they understand and can feel compassion for those who may be feeling on a downward spiral of life or an increasing desire to end their lives. As a child growing up I could never think of doing anything to myself that would hurt or make me die. It was something I feared for one reason or another. Then, as I was taught the gospel I learned that prematurely ending one’s life was a sin and would come with consequences across the veil which might not only disqualify one for blessings but would lead to pain and suffering in regret and realization. No matter how sad or uncomfortable life got I could not consider such an alternative.

Before 1984 all that was true and a guidepost of my life. That year was when my life was not only turned upside down but was made meaningless. Things began to change. Things happened in my life that led me to such a downward spiral as I described above.

I was so devastated that God could let all this happen to me and I felt that God had failed me and everyone had abandoned me. My life was over and everything I believed about the gospel and how things worked was destroyed. As I spiraled down in emotions and self esteem a blackness came over my soul and mind. I did not want anything but to die and I had the prescriptions in my medicine box to do the job. I was not trying to get someone to help me, I did not want to hurt anyone by my death, I was not trying to make a social or other statement. I just wanted to end it all and I was going to do it. I had friends that supported me who were critical instruments in helping me. As the months continued to pass on and my tolerance for what was going on in my life increased I learned to live with it and kept putting off my death until I didn’t need to do it.

Some people choose to end their life as a unsuccessful or successful plea for someone to take an interest in them and be by their side and help them deal with their pain or lonliness, or just be there for moral support. You deal with that plan by letting them understand that you WILL be there and you DO understand, and you value them and their life. You will help them to stand it, and to live.

Some people feel that they have been wounded by someone or someones. Their death will hurt those people back and make them feel wounded as they have wounded that person. This is a counseling situation where interpersonal relations and help in working out the bad thoughts, feelings, and perceptions does the trick.

Some people are going to show this person or that, or prove a point to the world or some people in it by their death. They need someone to understand and to hear their complaint and help them deal with the source of their pain. Friendship and talk can do the job if it is careful and intelligently monitored.

Mine and others is a blackness that needed spiritual counseling and fellowship. I needed and I think others like me needed to not only have feelings identified and interpreted but also I needed help in feeling not so alone, not so abandoned, and not so wronged. I needed to be helped to see that with the help of my friends (I had no help from family) I could not only survive but also progress beyond it. I felt like the church abandoned me. I thought I was in the right and they should have been on my side instead of helping the evil guy persecute me….but they weren’t. It was a very dark and bad time for me.

Some "friends" tend to take the attitude that this is just being stupid and the person should snap out of it. Other friends try to shame the person into realizing what a wrong thing they are doing and that they will be damned to hell forever. Still others talk about what it will do to those they leave behind (a variation on the shame tactic). None of these is a valid support for someone in trouble. We need to feel that we have someone there who will stand by us and help us to be strong. OR we need to have someone to show us reality in that we are making a mountain out of a mole hill that together we can handle. Anyway...it stems from a feeling of being alone, of being threatened or being valued so little or being of so little worth that the world would be better off without us.

As a great psychologist told me....all these reasons sound like twisted thinking. That is true! But you can't solve these kinds of problems by yourself. You need to have someone who can see reality more accurately than you can and be someone whom you trust, respect, and believe more than anyone else in your world.

Something to think about.