by Roedy Green ©1996-2009 Canadian Mind Products
Overview
I am not a psychiatrist or a psychologist, but I have been suicidally depressed. Various well-meaning friends have tried
a variety of techniques to help me snap out of it. I want to explain what these feel like from the point of view of the
depressed person.
There are four components to feeling depressed:
- Life circumstances are intolerable and you can see no way they could improve.
- You feel inadequate, useless, unlovable, lazy, an outcast. You are a parasite on society.
- You believe you are absolutely obligated to do something utterly impossible, e.g. pay bills, care for someone disabled
or finish some project by a deadline. Others may have great trouble seeing why the obligation is so absolute or the task
so impossible.
- You feel ashamed and embarrassed about being depressed and how it affects your work and relationships.
Just Snap Out of It
Talking to a depressed person can be very frustrating. They are so negative. They see everything through a negative
filter, seeing only the bad in the world, blind to the good. They are deluded and have silly fears. In frustration you
want to shout at them and smack them to just snap out of it.
In the movie The Best Years of Our Lives this is the approach Fred’s wife uses. Fred withdrew from
her because she had so little understanding of how it looked from his point of view.
You Should Feel Grateful
The intent is to show the depressed person all the pleasant things they are overlooking, but it often comes across as
just more condemnation. This ingratitude is one more reason they have no right to live.
Couldn’t You At Least Smile?
This just piles on guilt. The depressed person does not want to bring anyone else down so deepens the withdrawal.
You Have No Right To Feel That Way
Different people get upset over different things. Logic has little to do with it. If you tell the depressed person they
have no right to feel upset over something, they will just see you as insensitive and will withdraw from you. They are
not about to share with you only to have their feelings condemned. They have enough self-condemnation going already.
False Promises
Eat this pill, say this prayer, read this book and all your problems will disappear!!! You know perfectly well
that is a lie. It is especially important not to lie or exaggerate. To gain rapport and credibility, you will do better
with a pessimistic viewpoint. The depressed person is not demanding perfection, just relief from enough of the pain that
is making life intolerable.
You Are Selfish
One very commonly used tactic is to say in an angry voice All people who commit suicide are selfish cowards and
whining complainers. Since the depressed person has obsessed about suicide, he is in your eyes, a selfish coward —
all the more reason to bump himself off.
In a similar way it is probably not the best policy to point out how immature, illogical, self centered and demanding he
is being. He will feel a pariah and abandoned — all the more reason to die. If you can’t deal with him, back
off and allow others with more patience to.
Think of All The People Worse Off Than You Are
This is a real winner. Contemplating all the suffering in Africa, and all the suffering going on around him just makes
him want to check out of the entire universe. It is totally overwhelming. Further, it adds to his shame about be unable
to cope with his lot, all the more reason to bump himself off.
How Would You Do It?
This helps you gauge how close the person is to actually committing suicide. If they have a precise plan for killing
themselves they are closer. It is a great relief for the depressed person to talk about this taboo topic. They may be
unwilling to share details fearing you might interfere with their only escape route.
What Are Your Reasons For Staying Alive?
Suicide basically comes down to a balance between reasons for staying alive and reasons for dying. Try to gently get the
depressed person to elaborate and come up with more reasons for staying alive. Non judgementally get them to think about
other people’s expected reactions to their suicide. Don’t put them on the spot and make them feel stupid for
being unable to think of reasons to live. Gently suggest some possible reasons, but don’t demand that they accept
them as sufficient or even important. You may have much more effect than you realise when the depressed person goes off
later to ruminate on what you said.
The reasons may be rather mundane. He will get to see how some political situation works out, he will get to see some
sporting event, he will get to see some invention rumoured in the pipe, he will get to see next year’s model car
or computer, he will get to visit some pleasant place, he can visit some friend or relative, he can read some book, he
can see some new blockbuster movie coming out. He can look back over the past year and see what he would have missed had
he died a year earlier. These can be as minor as freakish news stories. You have to tune your suggestions based on what
you know this person has enjoyed in past. Be prepared for them to say that nothing has any interest any more. You
still can have a beneficial effect. Don’t demand they agree these activities would be pleasant.
He may miss out on future love. Think of how many times is past it looked as though love would never come his way again.
He may want to stay alive just to support some cause or charity, to speak out for those whose voice is not being heard.
What Are Your Reasons For Dying?
“Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.”
~ Joyce Cousins
You can’t ask these right off the bat. If the depressed person thinks you are going to trivialise these, or
condemn him for feeling them, he is not going to tell you. He will tell you some more respectable secondary reasons
instead. Just listen. Don’t leap in with an immediate fix. Don’t try to argue him out of his reasons before
he has even stated them. Show some respect. Don’t treat him like a child who afraid of monsters under the bed,
even if you think his reasons are that foolish. Encourage the person to have a good cry, nature’s way of learning
to accept the unacceptable parts of life.
If you find out the insoluble problem that the person feels so obligated to solve, you can suggest getting help with it
from someone who knows how to deal with those sorts of problem. Here is where you can really help — offer to set
up the appointment. To the depressed person, asking for help is extremely difficult, shameful and embarrassing.
He would sooner die. Please just trust me on this, even if to you there is nothing whatsoever difficult, shameful or
embarrassing, it is to the depressed person.
It is quite ok to suggest practical things you might to do better the situation if you were in his shoes. Keep in mind,
his emotional energy is almost zero, so things you might consider fairly easy to do, he will consider very difficult.
Don’t demand he do them, but encourage him to take one simple action to better his predicament. You have put in
the back of his mind he really has to at least try these ideas before he gives up and uses suicide. Suicide is
the last resort.
Look on the Bright Side
Often the person contemplating suicide is facing some major life change, e.g. a divorce, a loss of job, an illness, or a
move. They are focussing on all the negative aspects of that change. You can point out some of the positive aspects as
well to help counterbalance the negative ones.
Emotional Distance
To help him gain some emotional distance, ask questions like this: What percentage of people would recommend suicide in
a situation such as yours? If you knew someone in a similar predicament as you, what would you recommend? You want him
to see it is his reaction to the situation, not just the situation that is the root of the problem.
Big Picture
To help him see the bigger picture, ask questions like this: How do you think other people would react to your suicide?
Who will be negatively effected by your suicide?
Why Suicide?
In primitive times, suicide was thing you might do in tough times to help your group survive. The intent was to conserve
food. In modern times people can feel useless and hence feel a duty to die. Just having a big meal can sometimes defeat
that ancient unconscious logic.
Avoiding Being Conned
It has been said that suicide is a cry for help. The person may consciously or unconsciously be trying to blackmail you
into offering help. To deflect demands for help you are not prepared to give say something along these lines.
"Only you know all the facts. You are the one who has to bear the pain. You are the one who has to make the
decision. You are the one who has to go through this ordeal. I can help you by…, but I can’t solve it for
you. "
How Big A Miracle Would It Take To Make Your Life Tolerable Again?
Here you can help gently dispel some of the blacker delusions of hopelessness by showing how only some fairly small "miracles"
would be needed. Get him to review his life to see that, even for him, such "miracles" have happened before,
and so could happen again.
Hugs
Depressed people isolate themselves. They are starved for warmth. It may be available but they won’t take it. A
hug reaches way down inside and says I love you; you are fine with me far better than any words. Reassurance with
your hugs that somehow things will muddle through, even if painfully, is probably the most useful thing you can do.
Knowing he does not have to face the unfaceable totally alone gives courage. Anything that gets the person interacting
with others will help.
The Inner Dialog
Inside a suicidally depressed person will be an exhausting inner conflict between five voices. It can help to let each
one speak in turn:
- The part that is too discouraged to keep on living.
- The part that is afraid to die. The part that does not want to upset others with a suicide.
- The part that wants to live, to accomplish at least one more task.
- The part that is eager to die to see what happens.
- The cellular part. The body that keeps you alive even when you are unconscious. The thing that makes you dizzy looking
from a great height.
You can also ask the voices to go off and negotiate unconsciously. You can suggest that the parts of you that want to
die, can die, without having to kill your body in the process.
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