What to do when suicide feels inevitable?
You're in a tough situation, but don't give up. Most likely you are someone with a low self esteem and you don't feel like your life is even worth living, but you are wrong. Your life is important to at least someone, probably more. You can't see now how important your life is, and maybe you never will, but your life is valued. Every time you get those suicidal feelings, just stop and think about all the people in your life who love you and care about you. Realize that the rest of each of their lives would never be quite the same because of what they'd go through if you did commit suicide. If that doesn't work think about your future. There are a million possibilities of what you can do with your life. Don't give up on that. One day you will be happy. These thoughts won't last forever even though I'm sure you're convinced they will. Give it a chance. Some day you will be happy again. I dare you to try. If not, then I dare you to prove me wrong. Try to live the rest of your life without ever being happy. If after all the contemplating you're still convinced that suicide is inevitable, then start doing something you like. Pick up new hobbies, make new friends, explore new places. Whatever you do, don't give up on yourself.
Is suicide inevitable for some people?
I wouldn't say inevitable, per se. To be really blunt, those who are going to kill themselves, are already dead. So in that sense, then yes, you could say their desperation to find help - and not succeeding - plays a large part in taking their own lives. Imo, it's not selfishness at all; they already know what it will be like when they are gone and how that impacts on friends and family, but cannot see any other way out - it's almost a Catch-22 predicament. If you read the book, The Afterlife of Billy Fingers, he talks about coming to this planet to experience certain extremes of life - and being a drug addict, would surely qualify - and how he wanted to know what it was like. So from the perspective of the Universe/God/Source, etc. it's all possible and allowed. Because underneath the costume, it's only divinity experiencing it. My master Pranananda had a similar experience with his son, who took his own life several years ago. Fully realised master, and yet he couldn't prevent it from occurring because it was ultimately, what his son wanted to experience on earth. Of course, at an intellectual level, this would seem crazy, BS, etc. but at the level of soul, it's very real.
Is suicide unnatural? Or inevitable?
Suicide is a permanent solution for a temporary problem. My Mother killed herself, and I do not believe anything or anybody is worth taking your life over. There are so many people less fortunate that a person ought to focus on that. Get help if necessary to get you through the bad times.
Do you feel suicide is inevitable for some people?
My own thoughts on the matter…So there's a Benjamin Sadock M. D. that six years ago wrote an article suggesting that yes, for some people suicide is an inevitability and all the drugs and therapy in the world isn't going to change this. He uses Earnest Hemingway as an example.I am not only inclined to agree, but wholeheartedly believe I am one of those people. Since the age of 15 I have known that I would eventually die at my own hands. I'm trans and used to think that transitioning would magically fix all my problems, spoiler alert it hasn't.I turn 40 towards the end of this year and no closer to finding happiness. I stopped going to therapy and stopped taking my antidepressants a long time ago, as I felt neither were doing a bit of good. I have had four suicide attempts in the last five or six years, each more brazen than the one before.I know that eventually I will succeed, I know this will hurt family and what few friends I have and yes it's excruciatingly painful to hurt to the point that you want to die and simultaneously not wanting to hurt them, but in the end I know this will occur.It may simply be the way my brain was wired, but it's readily obvious that I will never be happy, will never find love, have children and experience what so many others take for grantedand, yes it's equally as obvious that for me suicide isn't so much an option, but an eventual concrete reality.
How can I break free of thinking suicide is inevitable? I'm trying to get the right depression meds, I have a good therapist. I feel I won't be able to stop it.
You’ve got to learn how to take the fear out of it. There isn’t a therapist in the world who can stop you from killing yourself. You can even do it in a straight jacket — again, not a therapist in the world can stop you. They say straight jackets are for your protection but honestly, if you wanted to hurt yourself in one of those, it’d be pretty easy and there isn’t a thing in the world anyone could do about it. Killing yourself on meds while doped up — if my human anatomy lessons are worth two cents — would be just as easy. In fact, you could start the process just before being sedated, bleed out, and the doctor wouldn’t even know about it until you were dead. I say all this because the only one who can stop YOU from killing YOURSELF is YOU. YOU’RE THE ONE IN CONTROL OF YOUR LIFE. And you don��t need anyone’s permission to be in control. As horrifying as that sounds, it’s the truth. And when you can accept that, you’ll be free of that fear. A lot of people want to give up control because they think it frees them from responsibility. The truth is, it doesn’t. It just makes you an ignorant sheep who’ll follow someone until they get you killed or will have you doing bad things to other people. Whether you participate in life or not, it still passes for you and you still contribute. You either sit back and do nothing or step forward and do something. Doing nothing? It’s technically the same as doing something — ignoring everything — which is still contributing. You still have an effect on the world, even when you check out of it. So. . . What to do? Stop fearing your suicidal thoughts. With your therapist’s help, start listening to them. Listen to every detail they say to you. If they give you reasons, take note of said reasons and if you agree with them, change them to something you like. If you don’t agree with their assessment, stay the way you are and stop letting a bunch of ideas push you around. You’re in control not your ideas and fears. Listening to them shows you and them that you’re no longer afraid of them. It’s like standing up to the bully on the playground. Only, the bully is you and what you’re afraid of — is being fed to you, by you. Realize you’re in control and listen.
Why does suicide seem like an inevitable and even sensible decision during a depressive episode?
Oh this is an excellent question.In my individual and admittedly subjective experience, it's because a depressed person tends to gain a sort of 'tunnel vision' due to how hopeless they feel. They are in so much pain and see no way out that suicide seems not just reasonable, but welcomed and like sweet relief. There can also be a voice in the back of your head whispering about how much better your friends, family, and the world in general will be without you. How they don't care about you, and none loves you. It tells you how worthless and weak you are, and how you lack the courage to even do this one simple thing that will make everyone's life better. It's desperation and wanting nothing more than to escape and for the pain to stop, and not really seeing anywhere else to turn. It's being ground and beaten down at all areas of life, and it seems like nothing will get better. It can driven by profound isolation and loneliness, and a burning rage at the world and yourself. It can also be triggered by deep self loathing and a feeling that you don't deserve to exist. You just want to sleep forever, and you want oblivion from a life that's hell to live every single day.This sort of suicide isn't about courage, or cowardace, but someone who is an irrational and unstable state of mind. They are not thinking straight, nor are they seeing reality as it is. This is the true curse of depression. It can and does shatter lives every single day. Many people think it is sadness, It is not. It is an all consuming state of being that takes over your entire life. Sadness, grief, guilt, shame, rage, hopelessness, no energy, and so much more. It takes a lot of determination and sheer force of will to drag yourself out of it to a point where you can get to the doctor, and that's with outside intervention by family members and friends. Going it alone is much much harder.
Is death inevitable?
Even supposing that you could somehow attain a kind of physical immortality such that your body continually repaired itself, never reaching a specific point where your heart stopped beating or your brain stopped working, there is still a kind of philosophical objection to the idea that death has been defeated.Consider what an eighty year old might say if you asked them if their 18 year old self were still alive. Well, yes? Maybe? They never died in the intervening six decades, after all! But in another sense, no. However much they might have in common with their younger self and however many memories they might have, the person that they were no longer exists - too much has changed, too much has been learned, too many years have passed. In that sense, the 18 year old is dead.So even if we achieve a kind of immortality that allows us to live a thousand years or more, we will still experience a kind of death - either the centuries will change us enough that we are no longer the same people as before, or else and perhaps worse yet, we will gradually become fossils that no longer change with the passing years, even as we continue to maintain a kind of life.Death is part of a changing universe.