Is there any other species than ours in which suicidal behavoirs are evidenced?
Is it a form of altruism? How can genes conveying suicidal tendencies be propagated in a species?
What does it mean as a spiritual phenomenon? Did Christ have a deathwish, that he would pick up that dude's ear and place it back on his head?
Is it always an expression only of despair? Or is it actually hope for surcease of agony? Or can it be hope for something better on the other side of death?
Is everyone who commits suicide crazy? Or can it be in certain circumstances the sane and rational thing to do?
Can any good ever come from it? Can there be a positive reason for time spent floating in the uncharted region between life and death?
[ August 26, 2003, 08:16 AM: Message edited by: ak ]
Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
::makes mental note to respond to thread when not at work::
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
Interesting question ak! The only possible example of members of another species committing suicide that I can think of would be cetacians beaching themselves. It's entirely possible that that isn't actually a suicide attempt though.
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
As for the rest of it, I think that suicide, like any other action, can have any of a variety of meanings, depending on the cultural context in which it's performed. In our cultural context, it's either an act of desperation or defiance--someone who is terminally ill and seeks to escape the pain of a lingering death, or someone recognizing the beginning stages of Altzheimers and refusing to allow themselves to go down that road--or one of depression.
While I'm not particularly familiar with Japanese culture, it's my understanding that suicide can be a tool employed to either prevent the loss of face for one's family, or to recover face, or something like that. Maybe someone with a better understanding of the culture could fill in the details/dispel the myth for me?
Posted by ClaudiaTherese (Member # 923) on :
There are some birds (I think) that will act injured in order to draw the attention of a predator away from the young.
ak, everything okay? Is this just hypothetical?
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
If a group believed that in order to ensure X, whether X was the fecundity of the land, the success of the group in battle, the continuation of material existence, or whatever, a member of the group had to willingly submit to being sacrifice, that would be a culture in which suicide--or at least a particular form of it--would have a cultural significance much different from that of our society. In that case, the individual's willingness to submit to sacrifice could be seen as altruistic.
I've read that the Innuit have/had a custom in which the elderly would voluntarily stay behind to freeze to death when they could no longer function as a productive member of the community. If this is truly something that is/was practiced, it would be (or could be) an altruistic form of suicide.
In general, though, I tend to think of examples of these types of suicide (as opposed to suicide for reasons of depression) not as something that is selected for genetically, but as an example of how cultural conditioning can trump genetic programming.
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
That's true, CT, but do the adults actually sacrifice themselves, or do they fly away at the last minute?
Good question though--why do you ask ak? Are you doing okay?
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
CT, that's true, a killdeer will do that. I think that comes under the heading of a calculated risk, though. The parent bird plans to fly up into a tree and escape safely once the predator is drawn away from the nest. I think this ruse actually works often enough that the strategy can be counted as a successful one. Obviously if the parent dies the young almost certainly die as well.
As for beached cetaceans, I know I've read that many dolphins who beached were infected with a bad virus. But there's no real way of knowing if they understand what's happening and are seeking death. I would be interested to hear from someone who knew a number of dolphins personally for a great many years, and what their thoughts would be. As for other species' mental states in general, there's no possible scientific way to prove them. (Actually this is true for other humans as well, but we don't tend to doubt that, at least scientifically, though in practice we tend to act as though we do an awful lot, particularly for humans of different --- genders, nationalities, languages, ethnic groups, cultures, whatever --- than us.) I was going to say there's no possible scientific way to prove what it's like to be anyone else, particularly a member of another species, what they are actually experiencing and what their motives are. However, knowing them as people for a number of years can give you instincts about such things that I believe are usually more or less correct.
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
And of course I'm not okay. Am I ever okay? Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
Ak, you know what I'm asking. Seriously, how are you doing? What is prompting you to ask the questions about suicide? Is it something that you're contemplating doing?
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
I'm fine. Not to worry.
"What but design of darkness to appall, If design govern in a thing so small?"
[ August 26, 2003, 08:45 AM: Message edited by: ak ]
Posted by Jacare Sorridente (Member # 1906) on :
Is there any other species than ours in which suicidal behavoirs are evidenced? Lemmings come quickly to mind. Is it a form of altruism? How can genes conveying suicidal tendencies be propagated in a species? A very good question. Possibly the same way that genes which code for things like cystic fibrosis can propagate.
What does it mean as a spiritual phenomenon? Did Christ have a deathwish, that he would pick up that dude's ear and place it back on his head? I'm not sure why healing one of his assailants would translate as a deathwish, but at any rate Christ definitely knew that his work would require his life. This doesn't apply directly to us, however, since we cannot ever be in the same situation as he was.
Is it always an expression only of despair? Or is it actually hope for surcease of agony? Or can it be hope for something better on the other side of death?
I think that all of these are interconnected: the agony (be it mental or physical) leads to despair and the hope that killing oneself will be better than continued living.
Is everyone who commits suicide crazy? Or can it be in certain circumstances the sane and rational thing to do?
I think that it can be rational in certain situations such as a wasting illness with no hope of recovery. However, I think that by far those who commit suicide are not in their right minds.
Can any good ever come from it? Can there be a positive reason for time spent floating in the uncharted region between life and death? I think that in general suicide provokes only greater despair. Imagine the pain of having a loved one take their own life.
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
Actually, though, the idea that lemmings intentionally throw themselves off cliffs is actually a myth.
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
Glad to hear it ak. Between your initial post here, your post in ginette's thread, and your sidestepping of the question, I was feeling pretty concerned.
Posted by zgator (Member # 3833) on :
Would kamikaze pilots in WWII be considered to be in their right mind? They believed their sacrifice was for the good of Japan, something greater than themselves.
What about the hijackers on 9/11?
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
That's why I suspect it could possibly be an altruism thing. Like a continuation of the same trait that causes one to fall on a grenade to save one's buddies. They say that's able to persist due to kin selection, due to the fact that if such a trait causes one to save 2 sibs or 4 first cousins or whomever (a situation which would perhaps have been typical for our ancestors who usually hung out in close-kin groups), that the gene for this tendency would tend to increase in frequency, and not be weeded out of the population.
I actually think if such a gene were part of a suite of genes that made for "civilization" in a person, that it could propogate because of that alone. Civilization is a huge survival factor, and genes that make it possible or more likely would certainly be favored, would they not? The Prisoner's Paradox puts this into some doubt, of course.
[ August 26, 2003, 09:35 AM: Message edited by: ak ]
Posted by T. Analog Kid (Member # 381) on :
By all means read the whole chapter, but if you want the part about Martyrs (altruistic suicides) vs. suicides, search that page for the word "Ibsen". I've found it a very enlightening discussion of your current topic.
You can probably stop wiht the words "but why was it so fierce?" though, again, I would never discuourage anyone from reading more GKC.
Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
quote: Or can it be in certain circumstances the sane and rational thing to do?
The Romans considered suicide to be a noble way to die, much better than being caught by the opposite side and ritually strangled.
There are three types of suicide, when the person believes that their death is worth more than their lives, including wars, suicide bombers etc.
The second kind is the kind when the person believes themselves to be of no worth and the third is when the person is in too sticky a situation to get out of by any other means.
In the first too cases, it is a belief of the person that they are, as a single person, not really necessary to the continuation of mankind, and therefore are better off dead. In warfare, propaganda causes this, although nowadays, joining the army is often advertised as being better for yourself, instead of being good for the country, or other people who are not in the army.
I think a complete belief that you, personally, are useful, can solve many of the cases of suicide which fall into this catagories. In warfare, this is given the name cowardice. In other situations, this is given the word courage. Is saving your own personal genes really such a selfish act?
The third type of suicide happens when there is no way to turn, and the person considers suicide to be the pleasantist way to go. In many ways, this is true, and believable, but sometimes simple things get coupled with the second type of disbelief-suicide and suddenly seem much worse, this is when nobody can quite believe when someone kills themselves for something simple and apparantly, not terribly life-changing.
If everything you know about is riding on one particular thing, and that thing fails, or you are fairly sure it will fail, it probably seems like the world has ended. Perhaps it is best to have more than one life, more than one main goal, so if something goes wrong you can always hang on to the other thing(s). Unfortunately, this means maybe that you cannot concentrate totally on one subject to the exclusion of everything else, something very dedicated (and often very clever or talented) people do.
I think this is why, often, particular types of people are drawn to suicide...
People who are easily convinced that they are useless, and it is only the larger body that is useful.
People who perhaps have balanced everything on a small pinpoint of success, or people who believe in one cause to the exclusion of everything else.
People who are like the above, and who get caught in a bad situation where everything is on the brink of destruction.
These are often the most focused people, so there is a particular type of person who may committ suicide. Those who don't ask for so much, don't work so hard, and allow their ideas to change easily, are perhaps less susceptible to suicide.
I don't know though, I've never been there.
Posted by monteverdi (Member # 2896) on :
I think there is a qualitative difference between suicide when practiced by an individual and by a larger group (i.e. species, 'culture' etc.) - that what may be characterized as pathologicial at the level of an individual may be in fact 'ecological' in a larger context.
Answers to your questions will vary in light of the 'subject' addressed etc.
Many argue that signs of a larger 'cultural' suicide are evident in the behaviour of the cultural complex called 'western' - individuals 'living well' by 'Western' standards being positive feedback into the larger system which is in fact choking itself etc.
I will not suggest what might constitute negative feedback....
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
TAK, that Chesterton piece was so wonderful I have to quote some of it here.
quote: Not only is suicide a sin, it is the sin. It is the ultimate and absolute evil, the refusal to take an interest in existence; the refusal to take the oath of loyalty to life. The man who kills a man, kills a man. The man who kills himself, kills all men; as far as he is concerned he wipes out the world. His act is worse (symbolically considered) than any rape or dynamite outrage. For it destroys all buildings: it insults all women. The thief is satisfied with diamonds; but the suicide is not: that is his crime. He cannot be bribed, even by the blazing stones of the Celestial City. The thief compliments the things he steals, if not the owner of them. But the suicide insults everything on earth by not stealing it. He defiles every flower by refusing to live for its sake. There is not a tiny creature in the cosmos at whom his death is not a sneer. When a man hangs himself on a tree, the leaves might fall off in anger and the birds fly away in fury: for each has received a personal affront. Of course there may be pathetic emotional excuses for the act. There often are for rape, and there almost always are for dynamite. But if it comes to clear ideas and the intelligent meaning of things, then there is much more rational and philosophic truth in the burial at the cross-roads and the stake driven through the body, than in Mr. Archer's suicidal automatic machines. There is a meaning in burying the suicide apart. The man's crime is different from other crimes -- for it makes even crimes impossible.
About the same time I read a solemn flippancy by some free thinker: he said that a suicide was only the same as a martyr. The open fallacy of this helped to clear the question. Obviously a suicide is the opposite of a martyr. A martyr is a man who cares so much for something outside him, that he forgets his own personal life. A suicide is a man who cares so little for anything outside him, that he wants to see the last of everything. One wants something to begin: the other wants everything to end. In other words, the martyr is noble, exactly because (however he renounces the world or execrates all humanity) he confesses this ultimate link with life; he sets his heart outside himself: he dies that something may live. The suicide is ignoble because he has not this link with being: he is a mere destroyer; spiritually, he destroys the universe. And then I remembered the stake and the cross-roads, and the queer fact that Christianity had shown this weird harshness to the suicide. For Christianity had shown a wild encouragement of the martyr. Historic Christianity was accused, not entirely without reason, of carrying martyrdom and asceticism to a point, desolate and pessimistic. The early Christian martyrs talked of death with a horrible happiness. They blasphemed the beautiful duties of the body: they smelt the grave afar off like a field of flowers. All this has seemed to many the very poetry of pessimism. Yet there is the stake at the crossroads to show what Christianity thought of the pessimist.
Thanks for that one!
Posted by T. Analog Kid (Member # 381) on :
<bows> happy to pass it along Posted by Pod (Member # 941) on :
I think Suicide requires a level of intentionality which isn't necessarily ascribed to other animals.
Thats not to say that they don't have such intentionality, its simply that first, we have no insight into what animals think (as opposed to what the gift of languge gives us), and second what a definition of suicide is.
Is simply taking actions which lead to your own death concidered suicide? Or does one have to have the intention of dying when taking an action? Cause firefighters, soldiers and other sorts of emergency response agencies are all suicidal in the first case. If it's the latter case, things suddenly become alot fuzzier.
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
I don't know, Pod. G.K. Chesterton aside, it's been my experience that those things blend one into another. For instance, I've seen examples of great personal courage which I know have sprung in part from the fearlessness engendered by a strong suicidal bent. Also one good friend who later died of suicide was always completely selfless in putting himself at any risk for the sake of those he loved.
Posted by eslaine (Member # 5433) on :
I don't have an answer for this question, however I have stopped several people from this act in the past. For some reason, I'm the guy they look for to announce this decision, or I happen to be in the wrong place at the right time.
Yes, most of these situations were a cry for help. But a couple really intrigued me for their reasoning.
They just wanted their suffering to end.
Unfortunatly for them, I could not sit by and let them do it. I have called loved ones and the police in the past for this, and will again if the problem arises. It is usually a rash decision. But that last reasoning still haunts me.
Posted by Ryuko (Member # 5125) on :
quote: "What but design of darkness to appall, If design govern in a thing so small?"
(Hearts AK for quoting Robert Frost)
As for Japan and suicide, as I've discovered suicide was a way of taking responsibility for some kind of mistake in the olden days, and the practice just continued. It was a way of 'saving face', if you will. If something dishonorable happened within a family, one of the family members (usually the father) would take the blame upon themselves and commit suicide, which spared their families some embarrassment. Famous author Yukio Mishima committed ritual suicide in the 1970s, I believe, (seppuku, the 'victim' uses a sword to slice their own belly open and then an assistant cuts off their head with another, also called crudely 'hara-kiri', literally 'belly-slitting') and it wasn't at all pretty. There are countless stories about forbidden loves which end in lover's suicides. Suicide is a part of the Japanese culture, even to this day.
Posted by dannyXcore (Member # 5332) on :
quote:Is there any other species than ours in which suicidal behavoirs are evidenced? --ak
Lemmings.
Posted by Pod (Member # 941) on :
once again mr. core, Lemmings aren't suicidal. They're just stupid.
Posted by Ryuko (Member # 5125) on :
And actually, lemmings don't usually display the tendency to suicide as far as I know... The special that showed them doing so was a result of the cameramen herding them off the cliff...
Posted by Ryuko (Member # 5125) on :
There is this small problem that other species than humans do not have the means to commit suicide. There is only a fall or a collision, but no pills or weapons to do it. If an animal dies (for example a bird that hits a window very hard or a deer that's overridden by a car) it might be on purpose, how will we ever know?
Maybe another way to commit suicide for an animal is to fight till death.
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
Ryuko, if only someone had posted that link earlier...
You know, it's worth noting that there are parasites that can cause a creature to exhibit suicidal behaviors. I read about both of these in reputable science magazines, but unfortunately I don't have links handy. One, which effects ants, causes them to climb up to the tops of grass blades and wait to be eaten by birds (the parasite has to pass through a bird's digestive tract as part of its life cycle). The other, which effects mice (and maybe rats, I can't remember) causes them to loose all fear of cats (in this case the parasite has to pass through a cat's digestive system as part of its life cycle).
Posted by Ryuko (Member # 5125) on :
Noemon: O_O?
And also, as evil as it sounds that parasite thing is REALLY COOL!!! Who knew?
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
I know, isn't that fascinating! My jaw just dropped when I first read about this kind of thing. It immediately made me wonder if maybe the sexual revolution of the late 60s was actually caused by some STD that didn't have any other symptoms. I don't really think that it was, but it was fun to think about.
I mean ants--that's one thing; I assume that their brains are relatively simple. But changing a mammal so that it exhibited such a radical behavioral change? That's just amazing!
David Brin has a really interesting short story called The Giving Plague on his website that talks about this kind of thing.
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
I've been looking around online for the article I read, and haven't had much luck. It was probably in either New Scientist, Scientific American, or Discover, since those are the three I'm most likely to read (in order from most to least likely), but
The only reference I was able to find was on this site, which references a 1999 article on the New York Academy of Sciences website. I wasn't able to find the article itself, unfortunately, but the link does contain at least a good chunk of the article, it would seem.
Kayla, if you get bored and decide to dig into this one, let me know what you find out.
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
I'm about to head home for the day, but I just found a link that looks like it probably has links to information about this sort of thing, so I thought I'd post it really quickly:
quote:Is there any other species than ours in which suicidal behavoirs are evidenced?
There are some insects and spiders that offer themselves as food to their young immediately upon birth, but I'm not sure that counts as suicide. I think to commit suicide you have to have a sense of the future.
quote:Is it a form of altruism? How can genes conveying suicidal tendencies be propagated in a species?
It is not anything. Like any other human action, suicide has a wide range of reasons and sources. Trying to pin it down as always one or the other wont work. The second question presupposes that suicidal tendencies are genetic. Are they? Or are they learned? In the case of the spiders mentioned above, the survival rate of any one spider is so low that it makes more sense for the species for the mother to feed her young than it does for her to breed again.
quote:What does it mean as a spiritual phenomenon? Did Christ have a deathwish, that he would pick up that dude's ear and place it back on his head?
How in the world is that suicidal? Christ healed the man because that was who and what he was, and he was true to himself to the end.
quote:Is it always an expression only of despair? Or is it actually hope for surcease of agony? Or can it be hope for something better on the other side of death?
See above answer for "always." If I had to pick a definition, I'd say the purpose of suicide is to avoid an intolerable situation. That situation may be unceasing pain, or it may be bottomless despair, or it may be unbearable shame for oneself and one's family, or it may be a tribe weakened from lack of resources, or it may be a threat to your homeland or loved ones, and the motivations differ from person to person. But the end result is always: this was the only path to take.
quote:Is everyone who commits suicide crazy? Or can it be in certain circumstances the sane and rational thing to do?
Depends on the reasons, and what other options the person had available.
quote:Can any good ever come from it? Can there be a positive reason for time spent floating in the uncharted region between life and death?
Can't answer the second question, sorry. For the first one, sure, depending on why the suicide occurred, and you judge that exactly as you would any other activity. Did someone else benefit from it? Was someone else hurt by it? Figure those two questions out (different for every case) and maybe you can tell whether any given suicide was, on balance, sane and beneficial.
Edited to add: Did it creep anyone else out when they posted here and got a message that read "We are taking you back to: Suicide"?
[ August 26, 2003, 05:27 PM: Message edited by: Chris Bridges ]
Posted by Ryan Hart (Member # 5513) on :
Lemmings. Lemmings love suicide. It's a social event.
Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
I guess I don't actually have so much to add to this after all, other than to compliment Chris for his thoughtful and comprehensive post.
I guess this discussion is abstract and detached and I'm not quite able to sort out my opinions or gain that level of detachment. When I think about my own suicidal period and suicide attempt, I look back and see how stupid I was then. I thought that I was evil and worthless, and my life seemed to me to be nothing but pain, and I wanted to end it. Now I have such a full and rich life, and I can only think of how close I came to throwing it all away. So when I hear that someone is thinking about suicide, my reaction is a knee-jerk one. Suicide was a stupid and short-sighted choice for me, and I instinctively view it in that light for anyone else. Thing is, though, in our culture, and for the suicidal people I have known, I think my knee-jerk reaction also happens to be correct. It's only when you start bringing in other cultures, and suicides for reasons other than depression, that the water muddies for me.
And yet, as good as most of my life is right now, I know I am not immune from depression, and while it's been 18 years since I attempted suicide, I know (in a detached, clinical sense) that I am not terribly strong. If enough things went wrong, I can imagine myself going down that route again.
And I don't have one of the major crutches that I had back then: religion. I now believe many of my views from that point in my life to have been simplistic. I used to believe that suicides went automatically to hell. I later came to believe that most suicides were ill, and that God was probably more forgiving than to condemn them for their illness. Since then, I have stopped identifying as a Christian altogether. And yet that fearful view of religion, immature as it may have been, almost certainly kept me from making more attempts, and may have also made my one attempt more half-hearted, allowing me to survive it. I didn't like being alive, but I was pretty sure I wasn't going to like Hell any better, and I knew that was where I was headed. (Of course, while I no longer have that crutch, I also no longer have the raging inferiority complex I had back then, so maybe it more than balances out . . .)
Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
Oh, and, don't lemmings commit suicide?
Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :
The only thing I know about Lemmings is that it starred John Belushi, Chris Guest and Chevy Chase and has a hilarious song about winter in Colorado in it.
Posted by Ralphie (Member # 1565) on :
Though this may not exactly address anything raised in this thread, I think one thing that scares me the most about suicide is how people tend to romanticize it, feeling that somehow those with suicidal tendencies are more introspective, in-tune with themselves and beautifully tragic.
Suicide is ugly, horrific and absolutely not to be romanticized.
And that's all I have to say 'bout that.
(Oh, and hey - has anyone mentioned lemmings yet?)
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
Lemmings? o_O
Posted by Ryuko (Member # 5125) on :
I like it when you give the lemming a rocket pack. I really like it when you make him explode!! (^_^
Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
Actually, I think I heard somewhere that lemmings don't really commit mass suicide . . . if only I could find a link . . . .
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
Ok, the next person to say "lemmings" gets . . . um, gets . . . I know! Gets HUGGED! Posted by Erik Slaine (Member # 5583) on :
:cough:
Lemmings.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
See? Suicidal behavior in a (theoretically) sane human.
Oh, and Erik . . . (((((((((((((((eslaine)))))))))))))))
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
There is a very distinct difference in thought patterns and emotions between suicidal and non-suicidal people. Even in the same person, the thought/emotion differences between the two can be striking.
Often, the suicidal patterns are labeled as crazy or unbalanced or irrational. However, when stuck in that particular mode, suicide apparently makes the most sense. Really, it seems an escape from intense psychological pain. It isn't weakness--it's desperation and frustration seeking an outlet that doesn't involve hitting a head against a wall.
Once passed and not "unbalanced" though patterns can return to normal and the vestiges of carrying on a full and productive life, the blackness of suicidality having retreated to cobwebbed corners of the mind.
Suicidality has its own voice that is insidious, harsh, whispering, and dark. It tells the suicidal person that they are burdening those around them, that they are scum, crap, and worse. Continued existence is stupid and will only cause more trouble. A sly voice whispering that other people secretly can't stand you. Strong hands pressing down on head and shoulders and bowing over the body. It steals away sleep, the last escape from the psychological pain.
Then the contemplation becomes deep. It would seem to be a correct, altruistic act, to relieve the world of the suicidal person's presence, says the whispering voice and now the pained voice of the suicidal person.
As a mental health professional, we don't believe that suicidal people are "crazy." (We save that moniker for folks with a formal thought disorder ). It is a reaction commonly seen in crisis, commonly seen when a person is overwhelmed by life's events outside of the realm of ordinary and has lost all escape hatches save one from the psychological pain.
Because we are professionals, we must step in and control the suicidal person's life until they can control their own again--keep them safe until they can keep themselves safe. Then the suicidal mood passes and the non-suicidal mood takes hold. The voice disappears and they are safe.
For the time being.
*frown*
As a person with bipolar disorder, I struggle with mood swings and suicidal ideation more than I'd like. Well, it seems more than people in my LIFE would like. I think for me, it comes from the pain and frustration of having this illness and seeing it as a fault of my own, that I can't seem to control it. Bit by bit, it is taking apart the life I've struggled to construct. So I think: why continue to struggle? why would it continue to hurt? why does anyone care about me when my family couldn't give two craps?
I was startled when anne kate posted this thread. I think because my mood has started to shift again and I can feel the trickling of symptoms turning into a flood after only a two-week respite. My entire month of July was shot. I hold down my job and just started my MSW program. I have to work and go to school. If my illness continues to win this fight, I'll lose everything I've gained. In the past few days, my mood has swung a great deal, turning from a pleasant hypomanic to depressed to now shifting into what I fear is mixed.
The symptoms stack up: paranoia, anger, irritability, not sleeping, energetic, heightened senses, nightmares, talking fast, thinking fast, jumbled thoughts.
And I think...not AGAIN. Not again to tear up what I've frantically been trying to fix in the past two weeks from the last episode in July. I try to hide it, but the physical aspects are present: psychomotor agitation, dark circles under eyes, there's a look in my eye, apparently. I talk more softly because my hearing is so heightened.
So I realize that I really don't think I can deal with this again. and again. and again as my life continues.
Does this make sense? Maybe in my mind. Then again, I could be crazy. Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
I'm so sorry, mac! <<<<<<mac>>>>>>
I know that I always think I'm past that, I've explored that avenue to the end, and I'm not ever going down that path again, then something happens and I find myself in the battle again.
It sneaks up on you. I can console myself with the fact that the worst times for me have basically been one year each decade, in my early 20s, my mid 30s, and now mid 40s. In between have been long stable times for me. The worst time was the first one, in my 20s, which really lasted for several years. All you have to do is find that sweet spot, that stability, and then it gets easier and easier to hang there. Look for the sweet spot, mac. You can find it. You are so much better now than you were, even just a few months ago. I can tell that you are.
Me too, it's been a bad time for me the last few months, and it seems like it's never going to stop. It keeps being one thing after another. Yet I'm determined to hold on to the rope and see what else life has to teach me. I would not have missed these last few years for anything. There have been so many good things in them, good friends and great things I've learned and known that were far better than I ever imagined possible. I'm going to hold fast and find the sweet spot again.
When mid 50s comes, we'll talk again. Posted by Zotto! (Member # 4689) on :
Lemming jokes aside, I want to thank all who have posted here for their insightful comments on suicide. I have a LOT of friends who are suicidal, and what I've read so far has helped me to understand a little of what they might be going through.
(((Hatrack)))
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
It's really hard when your own thoughts lie to you. How does one know what to believe, when one's own brain is a traitor? It will tell you that nobody wants to talk to you, that you are the foulest, most corrupt person that ever existed. Or that you are endlessly tiresome and mopey and dull. That you are contaminating everyone with whom you come into contact. Ashes and death, that you kill everything you touch.
Somehow you have to figure out what parts to ignore and disbelieve, and which to credit. Somehow you have to keep all that from turning into a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Thy portion esteem I highest Who wast not ever begot Thine next, being born, who diest And straightway again art not. With follies light as the feather Doth youth to man befall Then sorrows gather together There wants not one of them all: Wrath, envy, discord, strife, And the sword that seeketh life, Then sealing the sum of trouble Doth tottering age draw nigh, Whom friend and kinfolk fly, Age, upon whom redouble All sorrows under the sky.
[ August 27, 2003, 10:43 AM: Message edited by: ak ]
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
I think there's no question that there are genes that convey the tendency. My great grandfather committed suicide, for instance. And when I was 40 and had been battling mine already for 20 years, my mother told me that she too had always been suicidal our whole lives. I don't know why she never said before. It might have been a big help to me if she had, maybe. But maybe she just thought it was too personal, or maybe that it would be too frightening a thing to find out about your mother.
That word "estrago" from Speaker, a ruin or desolation, isn't it? It runs through my head at times like that.
In Dr. Kay Jamison's book Touched with Fire she showed lineages in families of people with major depressive illness, manic depression, and cyclothymia. These were artists and writers, poets and musicians. She showed that there is some connection between those madnesses and those gifts. Even if only that one has to develop the latter to have any possibility of surviving the former.
[ August 27, 2003, 01:31 PM: Message edited by: ak ]
Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :
I don't think suicidal tendencies can be passed genetically, but I do believe that genetic predispositions towards depression can be, which is almost the same thing but not quite.
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
The stars have not dealt me the worst they could do My pleasures are plenty, my troubles are two, But oh, my two troubles, they reave me of rest: The brain in my head and the heart in my breast.
Oh grant me the ease that is granted so free, The birthright of multitudes, give it to me, Who relish their victuals and rest on their beds, With rocks in the bosom and guts in the head.
Housman has a lot of great things to say about being this way. I really love him. He's been such a friend and a comfort all my life.
This quote is to introduce the new question: would you change? Would you give it up and be as other folk?
I want to make clear that I don't think it is a choice. I think we are like this because we are made this way. We didn't choose to be this way and we can't choose to stop. The question I think I'm asking, though, is "Is it worth it to you?" "If it were possible for you to choose, would you choose not to be this way?"
I think the poem perfectly expresses it. And my answer, even in the depths of the worst of it, my answer is no I wouldn't. I would still choose to be me.
[ August 27, 2003, 04:18 PM: Message edited by: ak ]
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
Another one from dear Alfred Edward:
Think no more, lad, laugh, be jolly. Why should men make haste to die? Empty heads and tongues a talking Make the rough road easy walking And the feather pate of folly Bears the falling sky.
Oh, 'tis jesting, dancing, drinking, Spins the heavy world around. If young hearts were not so clever Oh, they would be young forever, Think no more, 'tis only thinking Lays lads underground.
[ August 27, 2003, 04:18 PM: Message edited by: ak ]
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
<<<<<katharina>>>>>
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
It's possible to choose to stop?
Well, that will make treating this much easier.
I choose not to have this illness. I chose to stop this ridiculous behavior.
There, done.
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
Come on, mack. Chemicals change everything.
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
Meaning?
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
I mean illnesses and brain chemicals and things like that do change everything. That's different.
((((mack)))
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
Why do people keep hugging me?!
Posted by Ryuko (Member # 5125) on :
(((((((((Mack))))))))
(braces self for the double-deuce... )
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
Suck it up, mack. We like you, and we're gonna keep hugging you.
(((((mack)))))
It's just a cross you'll have to bear. Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
Mac, don't be angry with her. She's well-meaning but knows not of what she speaks. Of course we can't just choose. She just doesn't know that. Don't be upset with her about it. She is mistaken.
<<<<<katharina>>>>>
<<<<<mac>>>>>
[ August 27, 2003, 07:48 PM: Message edited by: ak ]
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
Baloney, anne kate. Your post shows a distinct lack of imagination.
And was incredibly rude.
anne kate, was your question all a pose then? A tragic draping across the couch, hoping someone was watching? Why bother asking if you are going to blow off the answer?
I feel set up.
[ August 27, 2003, 08:00 PM: Message edited by: katharina ]
Posted by Ryuko (Member # 5125) on :
Let's clarify, is kat saying that the idea that suicidal tendencies are an illness is baloney?
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
I wasn't setting you up. It was a valid question. WHY do people keep feeling the need to hug me? Is it pity? 'Cause I don't want that.
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
No - what anne kate said. She just dismissed me with a wave.
[ August 27, 2003, 08:04 PM: Message edited by: katharina ]
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
quote:WHY do people keep feeling the need to hug me?
Okay.
I hugged you because from your post and from other recent ones, it is obvious that something hurts. It isn't pity. It's... heck, it's probably some sort of maternal hormones.
Posted by Ryuko (Member # 5125) on :
If it makes you feel any better, I wouldn't have hugged you IRL. I'm uncomfortable hugging people I haven't known for very long.
Internet hugs are right out, though. ^_^
Reason for hug: Just wanted to show you you're valued.
[ August 27, 2003, 08:08 PM: Message edited by: Ryuko ]
Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
(((mack)))
Is it at all possible that she is not mistaken, but either 1) you are, or 2) she is mistaken about you but not about everyone?
You know how shrinks are always saying that you have to will yourself to change before you can? Well, a year or so after my suicide attempt I made a conscious effort to change my life and change my outlook. I didn't really believe it was possible before, but I was desperate and just giving it another shot. I wanted to mentally at least make a clean start even if I couldn't in other aspects of my life. It didn't work right away. There were days I slid back. And I was still depressed. But eventually, I climbed out. After a couple of years, I started being able to notice every once in a long while that my life wasn't really as dark as I had been perceiving it, that my perceptions were selective. If my perceptions were selective anyway, why couldn't I consciously direct what I chose to perceive instead of letting my subconscious do it for me? It took four or five years for me to climb out of my depression. And I am still insecure, and depression is still a pattern I know well, and skate close to from time to time. But I have changed. I am able now to tell that insidious voice mack talked about to shut the hell up, and it does.
Here is the point where we insult each other: you perceive my post as implying that you must not be as strong as I am because you have not been able to do this (though I am not implying this), and you get mad. You post back minimizing and making light of what I went through, saying if I was able to heal it couldn't have been that bad, and I was just a whiny teenager, and I get mad.
Let's not and say we did.
The thing is, I still remember what it was like to be on the wrong side of my depression. I remember how cynical I was, how absolutely certain I was that things could not get better in my own mind, that there was no way I would ever be anything other than unhappy. I remember reading a Sylvia Plath quote (I used to really be into her, of course) where she said that what suicidal people needed was not to hear that the birds still chirp and the breeze still blows and there is plenty of light in the world. And after I came out of my depression, I realized that she was exactly wrong. That's what I needed to know, but I was refusing to believe the message.
Can you make a choice to not be depressed/suicidal? Ultimately, I did.
I'm willing to concede that perhaps your depression was different from mine. Perhaps depression caused by chemical imbalances is different from depression caused by traumatic events. On the other hand, though, I know that depression, like an evil demon, is unwilling to let go of people in it's grasp, and doesn't allow them to listen to healthy messages, so who can say for sure?
But maybe what Katharina said wasn't a sign that she doesn't know what the hell she's talking about, but that this is what she has observed.
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
kat, the question was "IF you could choose, would you choose to be not like this." To me that's a very interesting question because the answer is no for me. I mean most sorts of illness, like the flu, if I could choose not to have it of course I would. But this is both more and less than illness. It's about who you are.
I am sorry for blowing you off, but your thought that we can just choose is mistaken. It truly is. We can't choose not to be this way any more than we could choose not to have the flu if we caught it. We can do our best to make it get well quickly. But biochemistry is not a choice any more than viruses are.
I wasn't setting you up, though. I didn't mean CAN we choose, I meant IF we could choose then WOULD we choose.
[ August 27, 2003, 08:21 PM: Message edited by: ak ]
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
Yeah. (to Icarus)
[ August 27, 2003, 08:12 PM: Message edited by: mackillian ]
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
I can only speak for myself, but it's not pity, mack. You seemed to need a hug, so I gave you one. As kat said, maybe it's a maternal thing?
I think lots of people need hugs. I usually hug them, especially online. (Offline I don't hug unrelated adults of the male persuasion.)
I'm actually a reformed non-hugger, and you know those are the worst! Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
I would choose in an instant not to have bipolar disorder.
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
<--is not male
Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
We hug people we care about when they tell us they are having difficulties. Not because we pity them, but because we want to show we care and hope for the best for them.
I'm struggling right now with one of my kids in kindergarten, because she's not adjusting well, and it's making it hard for us at our jobs. I'm also still unhappy that Bob is moving away. Wanna pity me? Bug off. Wanna hug me? I won't bite.
Then again, I guess there's a thread for that . . .
When I hugged you, it was not an insult. If you choose to perceive it that way, that is not something I can control. But I think maybe you can control whether or not you react to it as an insult.
Posted by Ryuko (Member # 5125) on :
It's an interesting idea to me, ak. Does this mean that at your essence, you're a little bittersweet? Or if you saw yourself in colors, there'd be a stripe of darkness?
How is it that the depression is uniquely part of you?
(Sincere curiousity, please don't get angry. Depression fascinates me in a perverse way, because I'm so optimistic)
Posted by Ryuko (Member # 5125) on :
Rivka: I think I'm a reforming non-hugger. It scares me!! Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
quote:But biochemistry is not a choice any more than viruses are.
But I personally don't believe that all depression is biochemical in origin.
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
Icarus, you are brilliant. You said it so, so much better than I did/ever could have, and that is EXACTLY what I meant.
*points up* Exactly what he said.
Added: Both posts. I don't think all depression is biochemical in origin, but I know much is. That which is is much, much harder to deal with.
----
I know this is a touchy subject. I HATED it when I first moved to Dallas. I was miserable. I still don't like it, but I have plans to change. Feeling horribly out-of-place, lonely, and faintly hopeless, I called my older brother who gave me the "I'm happier because I'm stronger, and you're CHOOSING to be unhappy there." I was furious.
It's like you're in a hole, and there's someone standing on the edge with hands on hips saying "It's your fault you're there." Of course the response is going to be to tell them to go to hell.
[ August 27, 2003, 08:21 PM: Message edited by: katharina ]
Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
Oh, and what I forgot to add: getting better hasn't made me less artistic. In fact, I've had improved follow through. Now, I don't just get the brilliant ideas, I have (more) drive and motivation to get somewhere with them.
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
Ah, that's interesting, Icky, because I would certainly choose not to have desperate sorrow, nor to spend days and nights in agony wishing myself dead. What I mean when I say I wouldn't choose to be otherwise is that part of the whole thing, inseparably, is the sensitivity, the strong feelings, the empathy with others, appreciation for books and music and art and the glory of spring and the beauty of nature and junk. Just the transcendant joy! It's part of the same thing!
I think there's a way for us to learn to be in such a way that we can hold fast to the joy and give away the agony. I just believe there is. It may involve medications that we discover along with other things, and there may always be a certain amount of just having to tough through some bad stuff. And maybe that's what you and kat mean by choosing to change. But if I ever learn that it will be from having experienced both, I think.
Oh, and mac, do not scorn the sympathy that is the product of a kind heart. I don't mind sympathy. I don't think one needs to give or take any messages about who is better or stronger or more powerful along with kindness and sympathy. I try to think of every person as being my superior in some ways and my inferior in others. Otherwise we would have nothing to learn from each other, no gifts to give one another.
[ August 27, 2003, 08:35 PM: Message edited by: ak ]
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
quote:I try to think of every person as being my superior in some ways and my inferior in others.
anne kate, didn't you gently chastise me for even listening to what the women I was talking to thought?
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
About your purse? Yes. One of the qualities I try to excel at is ignoring things that are beneath our notice.
One that I suck at is letting discussions about philosophical points hurt my friends' feelings when what I really mean first of all and forever is that I love them, they are my dear friends.
[ August 27, 2003, 08:39 PM: Message edited by: ak ]
Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
quote:What I mean when I say I wouldn't choose to be otherwise is that part of the whole thing, inseparably, is the sensitivity, the strong feelings, the empathy with others, appreciation for books and music and art and the glory of spring and the beauty of nature and junk. Just the transcendant joy! It's part of the same thing!
I think the joy quite likely has its roots in the same place as the sorrow. *nod* I think that root is a person's sensitivity. I think sensitive people are much more likely to be pushed into depression by things that less sensitive people would blow off. (And yes, I do believe that some people really are more sensitive than others.) But I still have the sensitivity (for better and for worse), "the strong feelings, the empathy with others, appreciation for books and music and art and the glory of spring and the beauty of nature and junk." I just don't want to kill myself anymore.
quote:I think there's a way for us to learn to be in such a way that we can hold fast to the joy and give away the agony. I just believe there is. It may involve medications that we discover along with other things, and there may always be a certain amount of just having to tough through some bad stuff. And maybe that's what you and kat mean by choosing to change. But if I ever learn that it will be from having experienced both, I think.
*nod* That sounds about right. Heh, common ground after all!
And I would say that, now that the worst is past, I reap some advantages from what I've been through. I'd say it's made me stronger. And maybe even more sensitive than I was before.
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
*hugs anne kate fiercely* I love you, dear.
I think Icky gets the Wisdom hat for the day.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
mackillian said
quote: <--is not male
LOL! I know that, mack! I clarified (about offline hugs) because I knew I was going to get hassled by Pop or saxon if I didn't.
quote: Rivka: I think I'm a reforming non-hugger. It scares me!!
Ryuko, go with it! It's very freeing.
[ August 27, 2003, 09:04 PM: Message edited by: rivka ]
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
<<<<hugs>>>> You too!
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Is there any other species than ours in which suicidal behavoirs are evidenced?
I have been contemplating this question. I have heard that many animals, particularly those that live with and bond with humans, can die of a "broken heart". That is, when they are separated from a loved one (either animal or human), they may simply stop eating and drinking and allow themselves to die. Animals will also do this sometimes when they are very ill.
Is this the same as suicide? Is it any less suicide because the animal does not have the choice to shot or poison himself?
If I were terminally ill and took poison to speed my death, our society would label this suicide. If however, I simply refused to accept an IV so that I would quickly die of dehydration, it is completely acceptable. Is the difference just an imaginary construct, or is there a clear difference between the two?
Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
Don't forget lemmings, Rabbit.
Lemmings.
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
I think it's an imaginary construct. One big reason I have had in the past for contemplating suicide is the combination of the terrible mental agony with the feeling that it was never going to get any better. This is pretty similar to what a stage 4 cancer patient might feel, I imagine, when being asked if they want to accept an IV. or like Richard Feynman felt when he decided to forego dialysis after his kidneys failed. If your quality of life sucks and there's no hope of it improving, isn't it just a choice you make whether to go on or not? I see a total continuum here, with the proviso that when your brain is messed up it lies to you about your chances of feeling better.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
It really does all revolve around hope. Perhaps that is why suicide is considered such a serious sin by most Christian faiths because we believe that because we believe that the atonement of Christ brings a sure hope for a better world. Suicide then appears, in most cases, to be the abandonment of faith in God.
Posted by graywolfe (Member # 3852) on :
Just want to let you know that I appreciate the thread, and the ideas popping up in it and the content in general.
Coming from a family where everyone suffers from depression (my brother, father, and mother as well as myself), it's particularly relevent, and even moreso considering a close family friend committed suicide in June, and my great uncle committed suicide over the weekend (ridiculous summer, two relatives and two closes friends have died this summer).
As for my own basic personal take on the issue, I can't explain it, other than to say that I could never figure out how to extricate the disorder from myself without risking my personality and identity in the process. This is why as a teenager I rejected counseling repeatedly, and again as a college student. How can I remain me, without this ugly dark fog that seems to have permanantly surrounded me since i entered Middle School? I don't know how much is chemical/genetic, and how much isn't, though I figure at least some of it must be chemical considering the genetic ties (seems to have afflicted family on both sides for at least three generations).
I'm better today than I was five years, just as I was better five years ago, than I was in the late eighties, but I don't know if I'll ever beat this particular enemy. I guess the best you can do sometimes is just keep fighting the good fight. As much as a cliche as it is, and as appealing as Dana Gould's classic line is ("If life's a gift you should be able to return it."), I find strength in those around me, in keepin' on keepin' on as the Dylan tune went, and in finding the little humor and the little bits of love in everything I do and in everything I see. It can never fully assuage what this disorder does to me, and to many of you, but it's the best I can do these days.
Anyway I hope all of us suffering from it can find a way to retain our identities while fighting off, or at least keeping depression at bay for the forseeable future.
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
Aren't there species of animals that mate for life that have been known to beach themselves or stop eating or whatever if their lover dies?
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
((((graywolfe))))
(Btw, I feel totally inadequate whever I try to offer comfort to people in cases like yours where I would imagine the grief must be quite immense. Suffice to say that if I had any inkling of what I could say to make you feel better, I would say it. All I can do is offer you a hug.)
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
<<<graywolfe>>> I'm glad I made this thread. It seems like several people have felt like it was a good thing for them.
quote: It's an interesting idea to me, ak. Does this mean that at your essence, you're a little bittersweet? Or if you saw yourself in colors, there'd be a stripe of darkness?
How is it that the depression is uniquely part of you?
(Sincere curiousity, please don't get angry. Depression fascinates me in a perverse way, because I'm so optimistic)
Abby, I just saw this question. Let me try and answer it. It's not depression that's uniquely part of me, it's a quality I call flameyness. It means having very strong feelings, being sensitive, empathetic, feeling responsible for the world, being very tender hearted, noticing beauty everywhere, feeling awe at things, and stuff like that. It's a volatility. Flameyness is inseparable from who I am, and it also causes me to feel extreme anguish fairly often. The suicidal episodes are connected with the anguish. Just pure mental agony for hours and days on end. When I picked the color I was, I picked a royal purple. There's no dark stripe there.
Depression is more a feeling of not existing at all. Of everything being mopwater gray. Of having no feelings whatsoever and being unable to bring myself to move, almost. I had a month of depression a few months back, and for most of it I was just an empty shell with no person inside who leaked fluid continually at the eye sockets. I wasn't in any danger of dying then unless from not caring enough to eat or drink or breathe. That's not really part of me, it's what is left behind when I leave this plane, this physical existence, altogether.
[ August 27, 2003, 10:55 PM: Message edited by: ak ]
Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
quote:Depression is more a feeling of not existing at all. Of everything being mopwater gray. Of having no feelings whatsoever and being unable to bring myself to move, almost.
*nod* The first year or two of my recovery is when I started to cry. I hardly ever cried when I was depressed. Mostly, I just tried to sleep. And read, but I still do that.
Posted by Ryuko (Member # 5125) on :
quote: It's not depression that's uniquely part of me, it's a quality I call flameyness... It's a volatility. Flameyness is inseparable from who I am...
I guess I have that, to a point... But I don't feel as if the world's problems are my responsibility.. I think I'm OK, just as long as I do the best I can...
quote: Depression is more a feeling of not existing at all. Of everything being mopwater gray.
Oh. I guess I've experienced that before. I'm glad I don't have to do it a lot. It must be terrible in long stretches. I usually only get depressed when my future is very unsure... Like now... Posted by Ralphie (Member # 1565) on :
Page three. Lemmings.
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
<laughs> Ralphie, you rock!
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
ACK! I can't take it anymore! Enough with the lemmings already!
*dives off cliff*
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
You know rivka, it's interesting that you should do that--dive off a cliff, I mean. There's actually an animal that commits suicide that way, but I can't remember what it's called. Does anybody know?
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
I think its lemmings. I've heard they commit suicide.
Posted by Dan_raven (Member # 3383) on :
I have some thoughts on all the topics brought up here, so be warned this is a long post.
Well, I don't have any thoughts on the lemmings.
I do not suffer from Depression, have not endured suicidal feelings, nor have I lost anyone extremely close to them. In other words, these are the thoughts of a novice in this field.
I do have friends who do have clinical depression, and another who worked in a halfway home, dealing with suicidal patients.
I also watch the news.
I got very upset reading the first page of this thread when people were comparing Suicide to Self-Sacrifice. They both end up with the person dead, but they are not the same. They are oppisitte.
Suicide is the most selfish, egotistical, self-centered act a person can commit.
Self Sacrifice is the most giving thing a person can do.
1) Yesterday, a man decided that he could not live with the difficulties and shame of being fired. He took a gun and killed six people before forcing the police to kill him. He died in "a Blaze of Glory." He cast no thought about the families of the others he killed, or the trauma he forced on the police officer who killed him. He did not care about others, only about himself.
2) Three days ago a women in St. Louis laid herself across the railroad tracks and waited for a freight train. She did not think of the engineer who ran her down, or the family she left behind. She just thought about herself.
3) A week ago a women took her car and drove the wrong way down a one way street, crashing into several other cars, doing tens of thousands of dollars of damage to other peoples property, and injuring a dozen other people. It was her way to kill herself. She did not care about anyone else.
These people believe that the universe revolves around them, and that by ending themselves they need not pay any attention to anyone else's life. This is selfish and pityable.
A soldier in Iraq who jumps on a handgrenade is giving his life, not for glory or to be remembered, but because he cares about the others around him. This is noble.
If a different soldier does some grandstanding, giving his life for glory and for the newspapers that is Suicide. That is different.
When a terrorists slit the throat of an airline stewardess, then dove his plane into the World Trade Center seeking not justice, or peace, but fame and glory and revenge, that was selfish self-centered suicide. "If I kill myself now, I get heaven for ever." is not a deal made by someone who is self-sacrificing. It is a selfish pact made by the stupid.
Jesus did not go to the cross in order to become famous, or to have epic poems written about him, or to earn himself a place in heaven. He died not by choice, but by need. To place that, or the actions of brave soldiers, parents diving in the way of bullets for their children, or other true forms of self-sacrifice is wrong.
There is a third way to die, via disease, that is often confused with the above. When a person dies by their own hand because a disease has driven them to it, it is the disease that killed them. This goes for chemical imbalances in the brain, or self inflicted euthenasia, when done with the approval and knowledge of those who love them.
Depression is a disease. It is caused by chemical imbalances in the brain. Different people have different tolerances to those chemicals. These imbalances can have different causes. Some are caused genetically. Others are caused by environmental factors, such as emotions. The brain is a self-regulating machine. If the part that regulates the self is damaged, then it can no longer regulate itself.
Like any disease, people react to it differently. To some, a gallon of chocolate icecream resets the balance. To others, months of difficult force of will can and does balance it all out. To others, various chemicals are required. All can use outside help, professional outside help.
This is a self-regulating machine. How can it know if its self-regulation is working when it relies on that same Self-regulator to make that determination. That is why some professional is required.
Please, if you suffer from depression, or think you might, talk to a professional. Get help.
It does not mean you are weak, or crazy, or less of a person if you require more help than someone else. Does it make you more degenerate if you have a flu and stay in bed three days, getting lots of anti-biotics, when your neighbor, who has a cold, is up and around in one day?
Being weak is not getting the medication for fear of what others think. Being crazy is insisting that you can cure yourself without getting a medical exam to determine if that is even possible.
On the other hand, taking anti-biotics to get over a mild cold is also ridiculous. Over medication is no more the answer than under-medication. If your depression is similar to Icarus's, and can be conquered by a change in mental processing (its a software problem, not a hardware one), then don't waste time/money/your self with medication. Choose to be happy.
[ August 28, 2003, 10:57 AM: Message edited by: Dan_raven ]
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
Dan, I loved the entire post except the very last line. The last line mischaracterizes the situation and undermines the rest of the post.
Better than "Choose to be happy" (which is implies that the person is currently "choosing" to be unhappy) is "Choose to and be willing to change your thinking." You can't switch emotions on and off like a lamp. You can, however, deliberately change your thinking.
[ August 28, 2003, 11:01 AM: Message edited by: katharina ]
Posted by Dan_raven (Member # 3383) on :
I stand corrected. A much better choice of words.
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
quote: You can, however, deliberately change your thinking.
...which leads to a change in mood. Thus, you have chosen to change your mood.
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
Thanks, Dan.
Stormy: That reminds of the math cartoon. Where is that?
[ August 28, 2003, 11:39 AM: Message edited by: katharina ]
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
Dan Raven, that all makes good sense, but I found that it also felt way way off the mark to me for reasons that I haven't taken time yet to puzzle out or explicate. I will try later if you want me to and are interested.
This brings me to the topic of how friends and family should ideally respond. What are the best and worst things people can do? It must be terrible to find out someone you love is like this, and have no understanding of it and not know what to do. Therefore for their sakes it would be great if professionals (mac?) would make their recommendation. I will also tell, just from my experience, what has helped and what has hurt me.
When I feel very bad, it really does help me to tell someone how I'm feeling. It relieves the pressure somehow and keeps me connected to life and humanity. Of course I usually choose a close friend, and yet I have mercy on them too, knowing how difficult and arduous it is to accept the anguish and sorrow of someone you love, again and again. I try to rotate them out. I spare them. I've lost more than one friend from them not being able to take it. It's really no fun and who could blame anyone for just not wanting to deal with it if they didn't have to?
What tends to happen is they decide one of a few things 1) I'm just wallowing in it, that I'm like that deliberately from a choice of mine, that it's my own fault. 2) That it's really stupid, that I'm being stupid and it makes them angry, or 3) that if I would learn to really love and care about people, the things that happen that send me into the death-spiral would not happen and I would remain happy.
1. is not true. I can't choose to be otherwise. What HAS happened the last ten years is that I've finally stopped loathing myself for being like this, and realized it's a mixed blessing. I've stopped kicking myself repeatedly asking why I can't just be like other people. I think that's quite a healthy change.
2. This is true, I think, if stupidity means your inner state isn't an accurate or true reflection of outer reality. Killing yourself is not a response that reaches for hope or the light. It's only hope for surcease of agony. I think everyone would prefer the agony stop and let them remain alive. I know I would. But you lose hope is all. Hope is fragile sometimes. And your brain lies to you and covers you up in self-loathing.
3. This may be right on the money. It's here that my researches focus. If there's a way to find the sweet spot and hang there, it involves making strong relationships and maintaining them, perhaps. If there is something that sends me from my normal happy self into the death-spiral, it is quite often the loss of a friend.
But I've only barely begun talking about what is helpful and what is unhelpful for others to do. As I said, I often confide how I feel to my closest friends. Their response can make an enormous difference. If they happen to respond with contempt or disdain. If they say "Go ahead and do it!" it makes things far far worse. That can be very dangerous for me. When your own feelings about yourself can't be trusted, maybe you rely too much on how your closest friends feel about you. Maybe you tend to believe whatever they seem to feel about you. If your closest friend agrees with you that you should die then it's quite likely true, isn't it? Luckily this has rarely happened. You don't choose to talk to someone who is going to be like that.
The thing that's helpful is just if they listen, if they care about me, and if they love me and don't want me to leave. Arguing about whether it's smart or not to kill oneself is not helpful. Talking over things and listening is the best thing that can be done, I think. That's what I try to do if someone else feels that way. Just keep the connection alive, keep the channels open.
I think, from watching my father die of cancer, and Brando die of his illness, I've decided that love means being willing to sit beside someone and care about them and love them as they are dying. For however long it takes. It's a heck of a lot to ask of someone, for sure.
[ August 28, 2003, 12:00 PM: Message edited by: ak ]
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
I love that cartoon, kat. And I agree, the process SS describes in neither as simple nor as linear as he implies.
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
LOL. Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
quote:love means being willing to sit beside someone and care about them and love them as they are dying. For however long it takes. It's a heck of a lot to ask of someone, for sure.
Yeah. I like that. It doesn't just mean dying physically, either.
I think... I think everyone in the world needs one person who loves them absolutely and unconditionally, and who never makes judgments. It isn't good to ONLY have people around like that - I know I need to have people call on my crap when it happens - but everyone needs at least one person like that. If just for things like this.
*remembers* I developed this theory in connection with my baby brother. For many, many people (not all), that person is their mother. It was for me. When my mother died, I worried about who would be that person for my baby brother. I'm trying to be that person for him. I know he appreciates it.
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
Rivka, I was just going with what Kat and Dan had already said. Don't shoot the messenger.
Inasmuch as that is so, whatever you are infering, I don't think any of us ever said that it was simple, or linear. Just because I wrote a brief, two-line conclusion of what was said before, doesn't mean that I believe the process is simple or linear. It only means that I chose not to devote a ton of time to exploring every single nuance to the topic.
[ August 28, 2003, 11:55 AM: Message edited by: Storm Saxon ]
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
Err, sorry SS, I didn't think I was. It just seemed a too-neat summation to me.
See, I knew I should've stuck to complaining about lemming references. Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
I'll skip to the end here at the risk of repeating someone. As with the martyr/suicide conundrum, it is hard to tell whether I do so out of disregard of the thread or because I want to take the time to really read it later.
Remember TWA flight 800, in 1996? Egyptian pilot may or may not have invoked Allah as the plane went down? Some said he was personally committing suicide (taking bunches of people with him) others that it may have been an act of terrorism.
I don't think terrorism is the same as martyrdom, because it is seeking to destroy and not build. The intent is to exact revenge and outrage, not to protect or preserve anything.
Posted by T. Analog Kid (Member # 381) on :
<shouts> lemmings
I just wanted to be cool, too.
Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
I personally struggle with suicidal tendencies, though in the past few years I was subverting it a lot. Got some help this winter when it manifested as anorexia. But I'm vaguely aware of some factoid that older white men are more likely to die of suicide than maladjusted youth- Sylvia Plath notwithstanding. The profile is a successful man whose life's work comes to an end, experiencing depression for the first time.
If this is true, someone who has never thought about suicide before is more likely to die of it than we who obsess on it regularly.
Though since 9/11/01, I have known several people who had chronic mental illness and that became the last straw.
When I was subverting my depression, I was involved in a lot of positive mental attitude stuff. I've been through a lot of jolting changes since then. Some of it was deliberate, some beyond my control.
I've been reading a book called Bringing up Moral Children. The good news is universal morality isn't based on a list of rules, it's based on six character traits. The bad news is I don't have any of those character traits and rank rather high in the anti-traits.
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
And yet you are moral....
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
quote:But I'm vaguely aware of some factoid that older white men are more likely to die of suicide than maladjusted youth- Sylvia Plath notwithstanding.
I'm not sure this is true.
I have heard that the group most likely to try (and succeed) at suicide are gay teenagers.
Let me see if I can find anything.
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
I've read the same thing, Pooka. Men over 55 are the group with the highest suicide rate. Let's see what Kat finds.
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
Wow - look at the last one. For teenagers at least, rates of ideation, attempts, and successes have all gone down. I wonder if that related to the lower rates of drug use?
(still looking)
[ August 28, 2003, 01:18 PM: Message edited by: katharina ]
Posted by graywolfe (Member # 3852) on :
A response to Pooka, and to Dan's post:
You mixed up the disaster of July '96 (A flight from the NorthEast that was destined for Paris but broke and half and blew apart off the east coast because of some catastrophic electrical short/fire? anyone remember the specifics?)with the Egypt Air crash of October 1999. I think it was New York Magazine that had a really interesting article about the latter and how essentially Egyptian authorities worked like mad to quash the suicide theory even though every single piece of evidence underlines the fact that the pilot deliberately crashed it into the ocean.
As for Dan's post. Well thought out, a good read, interesting, logical, but I always find it irritating as hell when people suggest that suicide is pure egoism and selfishness, it's a very simplistic argument and definition, and it is usually an argument from people who have no understanding whatsoever of what it's like to live inside the mouth of the depression "hurricane" so to speak. I love Dan's intentions, and I myself think the same way about those around including two individuals in my life that recently committed suicide (one of whom was a father of three), but when it comes down to myself, and my own decisions about this disease, disorder, issue, whatever, I can find myself getting extremely angry at what I perceive as lectures particularly from people who don't know what it's like to live with it.
For most that I know, depression has been an excruciatingly painful experience, one that my older brother and I have been dealing with for at least 17 and 20 years respectively, something my parents may have been dealing with longer (certainly in the case of my mother). It's an overwhelming, distorting, energy-sucking, mind-poisoning, havoc wreaking terror that often leaves it's victims desperately seeking to end the pain, once and for all, for the victims this seems far, far more attractive than continuing to live with the agony year after year, month after month, day after day, with no end in sight (after 17 years of this, I don't really sense an escape, I just feel myself in a battle, and a battle I'll refuse to surrender to), and it's a utilitarian decision for many.
Sure some see themselves as finally getting the attention they needed, or they see themselves martyring themselves and the like, but just as many and more, simply see no end in sight for the pain and agony they feel, and they want out. Associating these individuals with murderer's first, suiciders second seems to me a stretch as an analogy, sure, a few who committ suicide, choose to murder others before hand, but an enomrous majority (probably 99.5% just guessing) do not do so. This doesn't take away the pain they may cause others, I do not deny that, I feel nothing but anger, and a little bit of grief for a family friend that recently killed himself, leaving three kids and a wife behind, but it does underline the substancial difference between say me, offing myself, and my family friend offing himself, and that utter jackarse, murdering swine who killed a bunch of office workers yesterday, and then killed himself (or got killed?).
I agree with your (Dan's) arguments about what one should do if one is suffering from depression, more or less, although I didn't see much counter to the argument that many (including myself) feel, the idea that medicinal and psychological treatments could rip out the identity and pieces of the personality in treating the depression itself, making the potential cure possibly as bad if not worse than the depression itself. That, and my issue with defining those who've finally sought a way out from the pain as, "the most selfish, egotistical, self-centered" in terms of their actions is a bit of a stretch. Whose life is mine? Is it yours? Is it my parents? Is it my friends? In the end does someone else own this life of mine? I don't think so. Would my act be concerned with the self, definitely, but nearly all of one's actions have a basis in ego, and the self, not just suicide. One of the main things that has held me back from ever acting on this agony since '87 has been my family, my desire to fight it, and my knowledge that no matter how horrible this may be at times, the future is not predetermined and neither am I. Though I can't change my genes, and my biology, I can change my environment, and I can work my butt off to help change how I deal and how I cope with life and what comes my way in conjunction with how I cope with my depression as I move through my past, present and future.
I'll fight it, and I'll continue to fight it as clearly others here continue to do, but bear in mind when you speak to the issue, that (as you clearly have said)you do not suffer from this, and thus while you can observe it say clinically, and as a detached observer, you can't begin to know what it's like to actually live and breath with this dark shawdow, this weird fog, shrouding your every move, thought, and experience, every day, every month, and every year of one's life.
Okay, maybe I sounded like a bit of pr!ck in this post, but the whole egoist, selfish take on people who kill themselves drives me to distraction. The only people who ever seem to characterize it that way are the people who've never suffered from depression (at least in my experience) and that, in my view is analgous to me telling a mother in childbirth how to feel about what's happening to her, when I've got absolutely zero experience giving birth, and won't ever have the experience either.
That being said, I understand you're intentions, and I understand in many ways, and in many instances you are and may be right in defining the act that way, but in my view, suicide is most certainly not so black and white. However, this feeling, and this view of mine won't keep me from fighting like mad to keep those around me suffering from depression from choosing this final act. I will continue to urge them, and myself to continue the good fight, for as I argue, you only get one life, the rest is death, and afterlife (as I believe when it comes to the latter), so one might as well continue to search and fight for the best that this life offers, while we have the chance to enjoy it, and explore, no matter how painful it may be at times.
Edited because my grammar is wretched, and some clarity was severely lacking.
[ August 28, 2003, 01:20 PM: Message edited by: graywolfe ]
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
I have had one bout of extreme depression, and only one true suicidal ideation. (It involved kitchen knives and scared the pants off me later.) The thing was I did everything I was "supposed" to do. I saw a therapist, and I saw a doctor and was put on anti-depressants for a while.
My depression was likely stress related, and I got frustrated with the therapist (though it did help to vent) because he basically thought I was one of the most logical well adjusted persons in the world, and that was suprised I wasn't worse off psychologically considering the sh-- I was dealing with at the time. The problem is that telling someone who is in mental distress that they are extremely well adjusted isn't what you want to hear when you are in such pain and depression nor is it very constructive or useful.
I won't say it was completely useless, venting to a perfect stranger does let off steam. He did help me clarify some boundaries such as the fact that I am NOT responsible for my parent's happiness, they are responsible for their own happiness and how they choose to react to circumstances just as I am.
So I am in a mixed bag. I can sympathize with someone with a chronic mental disease and yet I know I never ever want to be there again myself. I know life is complicated as is brain chemistry, and just prescribing drugs alone for complicated mental illnesses doesn't work. Not to mention that the drugs themselves don't necessarily work with everyone's brain chemistries and can stop working for seemingly unexplicable reasons. Yet at the same time I hold out hope that medical professionals and competent therapists can actually help my hurting friends more than I was helped by the same system. I do know that Mack is a far better therapist than the ones I had and that gives me hope for the entire profession.
AJ
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
quote:Who is most likely to commit suicide?
In the United States, whites, especially males, are most likely to commit suicide. Older males (65 years and older) are at greatest risk of committing suicide; however, a rapidly increasing number of suicides are being committed by adolescents and young adult males. The rate of suicide among young males 15 to 24 years old has more than tripled in the past three decades. Even though males commit (complete) suicide most often, more suicide attempts are made by females. Suicidal thoughts are not uncommon; in a recent survey, three out of every 1,000 persons in the United States has contemplated suicide in the past year. For high school students, that number is as high as one out of four students.
quote:"Divorced men are often devastated by the loss of their children. It's a little known fact that in the United States men initiate only a small number of the divorces involving children.
[ August 28, 2003, 01:26 PM: Message edited by: katharina ]
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
There are too many links to list.
Go to google and enter "most likely to committ suicide" and look at the links. That was an education!
Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
What would have helped me?
Well, I recovered in a vacuum. I didn't have a loving family, and I only had a tiny circle of friends. I didn't get to a shrink until long after the worst was past. Looking back and thinking about what would have helped me most, I would say it is love. Someone to be willing to waste their time listening to me and reassuring me that I was valuable, despite how truly difficult and aggravating it can be to listen to a depressed person (because we are often self-absorbed, whether or not we are flattered by that).
quote:I've been reading a book called Bringing up Moral Children. The good news is universal morality isn't based on a list of rules, it's based on six character traits.
I don't believe the basis of "universal morality" can be found in finite lists of character traits compiled by authors of self-help books. Sorry.
As far as suicide vs. martyrdom: it is a valid thing to talk about, because there have been many studies of martyrs that have shown that, in many instances, they brought their martyrdom upon themselves through not seeking another solution to the problem, etc. There have been people throughout history who were just a bit too eager to be martyrs. Like they wanted a way out, and suicide was unaceptable, so martyrdom was a viable alternative. Certainly not all martyrs, but quite a few, actually. You could certainly argue that that is not, then, true martyrdom.
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
I've thought about this a lot over the years, as you might imagine, and there are some more traits I recognize as contributing to the fact that I'm occasionally suicidal. I think this fits with the older white males being a big at-risk group. Does anyone else connect to this?
Partly for me, I realized five or six years ago, it's an expression of violence in my personality. I don't like hurting people, I hate the thought of ever hurting anyone, even a bug or a rat or something, but there is a violence inside me and when I get very powerful feelings it seeks for a way to express itself. I would never want to hurt others so it turns back onto myself, maybe. That just dawned on me within the last decade and I wonder if it is true, and if anyone else sees that in themselves as well.
Secondly I have thoughts that maybe it's a control thing. If it has to do at all with pride or power or something like that. Like if I can't be the way I see myself as being then I will just destroy who I am or something. As though it's a fundamental failure of humility, in some way. The idea that it's unacceptable for me to be less than perfect.
Those two ideas come from thinking about the uglier side of it. I don't really know if they are true even for me, and certainly not for anyone else. I am just curious if that strikes a resonant chord with anyone.
[ August 28, 2003, 04:30 PM: Message edited by: ak ]
Posted by Ralphie (Member # 1565) on :
I think a lot of things come down to the imbalanced nature inherit in imperfection.
In my case: modesty, humility, understanding my place in the universe - these are all admirable qualities that I try very hard to strive for. But because I have such a hard time being balanced about anything, suddenly instead of simply being modest and humble I'm the worst person on the planet, deserving of death. It's why people who strive to have healthy self-esteems often become arrogant and proud. It's so hard to get it right.
I wasn't in a vacuum. I've been surrounded by love and nurturing my entire life (from the people that count, anyway). But for some reason that doesn't validate me, it just makes me respect the other people for condescending to love someone like me.
Ultimately, though, it's two sides of the same coin. Whether or not I'm self-loathing or an arrogant SOB, I still have a distorted, inflated self-absorbed perspective of myself. I'm pretty sure that the extremes of this are the result of chemical imbalances, but that doesn't mean that it's okay to indulge in them.
That's why I feel there is such a fine line between understanding depression and suicide and glamourizing it. Yes, it should be talked about and studied and communicated. But when you start feeling it's a character definition, a part of what we love about ourselves (even if it's a love based on perverse fascination) then we get in some pretty scary territory.
It just shouldn't be celebrated, no matter how romantic it can seem. Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
Yeah, I don't really know anyone who does celebrate that aspect of it. Mostly it's something people are highly ashamed of.
I think most people tend to kick themselves for being different, especially in non-adaptive ways. I think what's healthy is to realize it's part of who you are, for better or worse, and that it's inseparable from things you would not give up, if that's true which for me it is. Then look for ways to live as the person you are instead of berating yourself continually for not being someone you're not. To look for the sweet spot and try to hang there.
Posted by Erik Slaine (Member # 5583) on :
ak's post count is at 999.
And is it too late to throw in another Lemming reference?
Posted by T. Analog Kid (Member # 381) on :
quote:Secondly I have thoughts that maybe it's a control thing. If it has to do at all with pride or power or something like that. Like if I can't be the way I see myself as being then I will just destroy who I am or something. As though it's a fundamental failure of humility, in some way. The idea that it's unacceptable for me to be less than perfect.
Bingo, AK.
It's the "I'll take my ball and go home" mentality.
I think you have shown a trmemdous amount of insight on this thread... I mean that in a good way Posted by Ralphie (Member # 1565) on :
quote:Yeah, I don't really know anyone who does celebrate that aspect of it. Mostly it's something people are highly ashamed of.
I have.
I had a friend in my late teens who felt I was very immature emotionally because I had obviously not come to her same level of introspection - she was depressed, suicidal, did nothing but write poetry about how the walls were closing in on her and would become livid at that this may not be healthy.
Granted, she was only twenty years old, but I've run into enough adults that haven't been able to get past this same behavior. We often compensate for what we feel are severe lackings, and so it's pretty standard to switch the toggle from "alienating and shameful" to "exclusive and a sign of knowing your real feelings." It's especially easy when it's so prevalent in classic literature to view it as romantic.
I think I tend to be a little gun-shy about it because I could easily fall into this trap, myself. I'm already so stinking self-absorbed, adding this log to the fire would be grounds for a real pummeling. Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
Ralphie, that's a fabulous post.
I know people like that as well. When I was a teenager, I spent a summer reading Edgar Allen Poe and thought of myself as romantic and misunderstood. I might have done the depressing poetry route, but fortunately, I'm bad enough at peotry that I received no validation for this behavior. I also suspect a fundamental sense of humor (cynicism) may have saved me, because I felt slightly ridiculous.
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
quote:Suicide is the most selfish, egotistical, self-centered act a person can commit.
It is and it isn't.
Some people will spend a lot of time trying to make the people in their lives hate them so that their death won't affect them. Or they will seek out the methods that will least impact other people. Sometimes, suicidal folks are trying to help others by relieving the world of them. They feel like they suck, and labeling suicide as selfish and egotistical will make them feel ever worse, ashamed and guilty for wanting to complete that act. It's a nasty cycle.
As for getting help, who really wants to hear it? What friends can bear the burden of hearing depressed-crap-talk from suicidal people? Many friends bend, break, and fall away.
Posted by ClaudiaTherese (Member # 923) on :
quote:Secondly I have thoughts that maybe it's a control thing. If it has to do at all with pride or power or something like that. Like if I can't be the way I see myself as being then I will just destroy who I am or something. As though it's a fundamental failure of humility, in some way. The idea that it's unacceptable for me to be less than perfect.
ak, this really does resonate. I think you've put your finger on something important (with both your points, actually). I'm glad to see you puzzling through this with such good perspective and insight. (I still, though, will send an email today, as I need to be sure that you are doing okay for my own piece of mind ).
Ralphie, I know exactly what you mean. The "deeper than thou" aura can be quite appealing, especially for teenagers, who have little enough social currency to trade. If all one has that is special to one's life is dysfunction, then why not make a virtue of it? Unfortunately, we don't often give teenagers much responsibility, nor do we acknowledge their very real intelligence and insights. How frustrating that was for me, at that age.
I reconcile what I know of depression (from the inside and outside, both) by thinking of it as a slowing down or halting of the natural functions of the brain. When it's mild, it's hard to realize how things could be better -- when it's bad enough, it's hard to even figure out how to feed oneself.
The way that makes most sense to me is to think of the fundamental functions of the human brain as imagination and motivation -- we perceive and interpret the world (both how it is and how it can be), and we act within the world as agents. Suicidal depression represents a failure of imagination on so many levels:
1) the person cannot imagine how life can be better 2) the person cannot imagine how anyone else could have such misery (here may be the conflation with pride, I think -- the inability to see abject misery in any other lives, as if one's life were "more than human" in tragedy ) 3) the person cannot imagine how he or she could be the same self without the misery
Luckily -- sort of -- motivation is usually just as halted as imagination. People in the depths of depression are less likely to be able to organize and plan a deliberate suicide than those who are just beginning to recover. Therapists are especially careful about this -- once someone starts to get help, they actually may be at most risk to themselves.
Though, of course, the halting of both imagination and motivation can lead to such severe self-neglect that being able to carry a deliberate, planned suicide might be irrelevant.
[ August 29, 2003, 01:14 PM: Message edited by: ClaudiaTherese ]
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
CT, you're just wonderful.
quote:3) the person cannot imagine how he or she could be the same self without the misery
quote:I've lived too long with pain. I won't know who I am without it.
Posted by ClaudiaTherese (Member # 923) on :
quote:I think, from watching my father die of cancer, and Brando die of his illness, I've decided that love means being willing to sit beside someone and care about them and love them as they are dying. For however long it takes. It's a heck of a lot to ask of someone, for sure.
ak, you mentioned this before, and it was a godsend in coping with my mother's final weeks. I really have to write you! (as soon as I can access email)
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
<<<<<<<CT>>>>>>>>
I'm still asking myself if I am strong enough to keep on loving people who keep on going away.
Posted by ClaudiaTherese (Member # 923) on :
ak, I know. I never understood people who spoke this way before. Sometimes I thought it was just melodramatics, and for some people I knew it might have been (who knows? I was young at the time, and I was suffering from my own failures of imagination ), but it isn't for me, not now. I'm ashamed, now, that I might have not picked up on misery in others, before -- that I might have misjudged them so much.
As for me, I'm going on with my daily life. I go to work, discuss cases at conferences, make faces at toddlers, share bread and wine with my spouse. But I still dream about her each night, I still feel like tears when I remember her hands shaping shortbread cakes (gnarled, wrinkled, arthritic, and her so anxious to do it right, so loving). My husband says it's a part of the process, and I'm going on faith that it will get better.
(So, also, I have little to critique in others who find comfort in blind faith, too. *rueful grin)
Big hugs for you, Anne Kate. Let's make a plan to be sure talk about it again at the end of September, regardless of what else we do in the meantime. It may be better then. Maybe some peace to celebrate? ((ak))
Posted by sarcasticmuppet (Member # 5035) on :
Suicide is when you tell God "You can't fire me, I Quit!!!"
I'm joking. Sort of.
[ August 29, 2003, 01:40 PM: Message edited by: sarcasticmuppet ]
Posted by Papa Moose (Member # 1992) on :
I've only just caught up with this thread (and scanned much of it, so I could well have missed stuff), but it reminded me a lot of this thread. Of course, the concepts of depression and suicide are probably not unrelated for most people.
Please, continue.
--Pop
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
1) the person cannot imagine how life can be better
I can and have. I've seen and felt it better. I know what's there. It's the fixing everything back up after everything gets screwed up from a down, up, up, mixed cycle. It's the medication guinea pig that leads to seeing the future and feeling it just at your fingertips, unable to grasp.
2) the person cannot imagine how anyone else could have such misery (here may be the conflation with pride, I think -- the inability to see abject misery in any other lives, as if one's life were "more than human" in tragedy )
I see it every day for/with others. It sucks. I know perfectly well what this brings. I know what other illnesses and stresses and life's traumas can bring to others and how they can react to them.
3) the person cannot imagine how he or she could be the same self without the misery
I KNOW how I would be without this, with out manic depression, strong and healthy.
But I can't reach it. Well, I can reach it, but then it tumbles out of my fingers, sliding out of my reach again as the pieces of my shattered well being tinkle to the ground.
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
To what I call the four pillars: exercise, sunlight, regular sleep, eating well, I think I will add a fifth: prayer.
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
It doesn't help.
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
I'm sorry, mac. To hear you say that makes me very sad. It brings home how badly it must suck for you.
Prayer does seem to help me.
[ August 30, 2003, 08:43 PM: Message edited by: ak ]
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
No, it just means that prayer that continually gets an answer of "no" seems pretty futile. Maybe it's better we (me and god) go our separate ways. *shrug*
Posted by Danzig (Member # 4704) on :
No, it just means that prayer that continually gets an answer of "no" seems pretty futile. Maybe it's better we (me and god) go our separate ways. *shrug*
mack - I do not think so. Stay with God. This will not cure chemical depression, and will most likely not cure psychological depression, but it may very well help. Christians are able to rebuke demons in the name of their Lord Jesus Christ. I do not claim that this is the sole cause of your struggles, but I absolutely claim that it might be. I realize that this may sound deluded or insane, but I encourage you to try it. When I tried it, I too thought it to be such, but for some reason I rebuked any demons that were in my dorm. I instantly felt vastly better, although that does not do the relief I felt anything close to justice. There may be some psychological phenomenon for such instant relief, but I have never heard of it. Even so, from one Christian to another, I implore you to try it, for at the least it cannot hurt. (I do realize that at least some of your state is caused by chemically induced bipolar depression. By no means do I claim that this will aid in it. For that, conventional prayer is much more appropriate, although I doubt God will grant your request. Unfortunately for us humans, he seems to prefer that we work through this ourselves. )
Good luck, and God bless.
Posted by Godric (Member # 4587) on :
It's odd. I've never been suicidal, although I do suffer from severe depression. The idea's crossed my mind, but I've never thought about offing myself seriously. Of course, when I get really depressed my family seems to think I'm liable to throw myself in front of a truck the first chance I get. That makes me angry because I think they mustn't know me very well if that's what they think. I know, they're just concerned, but it doesn't help me much.
I actually attribute my lack of suicidal thoughts to my curiousity. When I get really down, I can barely bring myself to do anything. Nothing seems to have any meaning or purpose. I become horribly catatonic. But some part of me keeps wanting to make it past that point because I want to know what will happen to me tomorrow.
Posted by Ryuko (Member # 5125) on :
Interesting idea... Will to live due to morbid curiousity. (apologies if this isn't what you meant, God... with a long o)
'I'll get up in the morning, if only just to see what crappy thing will happen to me then...'
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
Godric, I never am suicidal when in the depths of depression. If I'm like that, I am like you say, hardly able to move or think or anything. The only danger I'm in is from neglect of myself: lack of sleep, food, water, oxygen. Sometimes I feel like it might become too much trouble to breathe and I will suffocate, for real.
It's usually when on the way down from a very happy state (I am very mildly bipolar, what they call cyclothymic) to the depths of depression that I get suicidal. It's the transitional periods that are most dangerous. That's true in general, I think. Manic depressives are at much higher risk than people with depression alone. So mac is in a lot more danger than am I. <<<<<mac>>>>>
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
Yep. I have a possibly fatal illness.
I wonder if I can outline a typical cycle.
At first you feel okay. "Normal" as it were.
Then things start to rev up. You spend some time wondering if you're just in a good mood, or if you're starting to get hypomanic. You wait.
You start to wake up during the night, several times. Confirmation of hypomania.
You hope that it'll level off and return to normal.
You notice more symptoms as they being to pile up. You're talking faster, you're agitated, you're irritable and prone to temper outbursts, you get lots of ideas for projects and try to complete them all and never quite succeed.
You're still rational. So you start to get a little worried.
You stop sleeping altogether. You become irrational and paranoid, possibly having hallucinations. When you talk, not everything is quite clear in the rapid fire speech. You spend wild amounts of money. You do incredibly stupid things. Take chances, drive recklessly and fast, put yourself in dangerous situations. You can't hold onto your thoughts, they're all jumbled up and packed inside your crowded head. You can exercise and work out all day and not get tired. Your muscles are sore, but your mind is still wide awake and refuses to let your body sleep.
This can go in a couple directions. You will either continue upward until you're completely psychotic or will churn into a mixed episode, where you're depressed AND manic, and this is usually when suicidal thoughts begin to seep in.
Once you're knocked down either with medication or drop from sheer exhaustion, depression can set in. Deep, flat affect, will to do nothing, everything is crap, act like a jerk, depression.
Then it will lift. Back to normal, back to watching for symptoms.
I spent all of July in a mixed episode that wrecked a lot of the things I'd worked for. The prognosis for bipolar often leads to more episodes with more frequency as you age.
Whee.
Stupid cycle. The best part is guessing just where I am in a cycle, ne?
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
What's interesting is that so very many of the people recognized as the best artists, writers, poets, musicians in our civilization's history have had some form of this. That doesn't mean all have, nor that everyone who is like this will be a creative genius, yet the connection is there.
The incredible intensity, the constant changes inside one's own head and heart, show one things about life that really aren't brought home to most people... That it's not at all simple. That there's so much more there than we can ever dream. The hypomanic state is one of great creativity, expansive thoughts, and free flow of ideas. The anguish and the pain of the transitional state cries out for some release. Some outlet. In people of intelligence and ability, Art provides a focus for all of this.
It becomes possible and almost necessary, really, for the wild creativity, the agony, and the joy of this way of being, of the various times, to be shaped by intelligence and ability during the quiet periods into something that makes sense to the human soul. Life is given to us, and Art is what we turn it into. Art is our gift in return.
People like us, mac, are given life Extra Grande. The only response to that gift I can find is to go ahead and live it that way. Not to hide under the bed and wail in terror as I think sometimes I will have to do, but to say "Yes", this is me, this is my gift, and live it as I find it, shaped by who I am.
[ August 31, 2003, 11:40 AM: Message edited by: ak ]
Posted by Godric (Member # 4587) on :
You seem to be almost romanticizing the condition, ak. I do that myself, at times, about my own depression. However I'm also very aware of the burden I place on those around me during my despair. And I hate that -- I don't find it romantic at all. Pretty much every relationship I've ever had has been seriously effected by my depression. I'm grateful to my family and friends who stick with me during my dark moods, but at times I wish I didn't have to put them through what I'm going through...
Posted by ak (Member # 90) on :
Believe me I don't romanticize it. You can't live through it and do that. What I finally can do, after years and years of kicking myself and loathing myself for being this way, is ACCEPT that this is how I am, that God made me this way, that I'm SUPPOSED to be this way, even. That there are good things about it as well as the awful. That all this pain is not without some reason or meaning. That I'm alive, when all is said and done. I can't choose to be different, I can't deal myself another hand, but I can take the hand I'm given and accept it and play it and try to make my life into something I'm not ashamed of. Maybe even proud of.
But what almost everyone in the world will always do is say WHY DO YOU HAVE TO CHOOSE TO BE LIKE THIS???? ARRRRRRGH!!!!!!!! And go away. I accept that possibility, that near inevitability. That, for certain, is the very worst pain of all.
[ August 31, 2003, 03:10 PM: Message edited by: ak ]
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
I hope God didn't make me this way. This illness is a curse, not a gift. Or if it is a gift, it's from the Magi.
Posted by kerinin (Member # 4860) on :
i know this is way late, but i really want to respond to dan's post on the previous page. my sister failed to commit suicide a little while ago so maybe i'm a little touchy about the subject, but the hairs on my back really started to raise reading the post. this isn't the post for histrionics though.
first, most of the instances of 'suicide' mentioned weren't really suicide, at least not in the sense that it has been discussed for the majority of this thread (ie, the result of depression).
what bothered me was the finger pointing, the doling out of blame, and the implied dismissal of the problem, as though suicide is simply the result of someone being too inconsiderate and self-centered to know better. and to be honest in certain ways this is true, obviously suicide (or attempted suicide) causes incredible suffering for those around the person, but that's not really the point is it? framing the issue like that doesn't really get you anywhere does it? how can you solve a problem if you start off by dismissing the causes of the problem?
further, just to reiterate something mentioned earlier, i refuse to accept that i have a responsibility to the world around me to live; if i decided i don't want my life any more thats my choice and i have no responsibility to the world around me to seek approval for it. suicide may anger you (thanks btw for the interesting quote regarding this on the first page) because it insults your beliefs or sense of self value, but in the end is it not the ultimate excercise of free will?
do those two paragraphs contradict each other? i don't know.
Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :
victim blaming is very common with mental illness, assaults, and suicide attempts/completions. For mental illness/suicidality, the belief can be helf that "it's a mind illness, so you can choose not to be ill, to fix your symptoms" and a moral/value failing if you do not. For assaults, especially sexual assaults, the victim is often blamed for choosing the wrong place, the wrong outfit, the wrong words.
It's what happens.
Posted by MarekAgain (Member # 13484) on :
quote:Originally posted by mackillian: For mental illness/suicidality, the belief can be helf that "it's a mind illness, so you can choose not to be ill, to fix your symptoms" and a moral/value failing if you do not. .
i get this a lot, people insist that i should see a doctor about depression and suicidal thoughts, which i have done before, but now sort of figure, either i'll kill myself, or i wont. If i don't then i didn't really need the meds, and if i do, then the problem is solved anyway
Posted by JanitorBlade (Member # 12343) on :
I'm sorry Marek. Do you feel doctor visits have been ineffective?
Posted by MarekAgain (Member # 13484) on :
Generally i find them ineffective. The medication might alter my mood some, but things don't really get better. So i feel like they are a waste of time, money, and energy, all of which seem in short supply.
like Mack said 16 years ago, if you don't seek help, people treat is as a moral failing. I know she might have been saying people think "being better is all a state of mind, so just choose to be better" but i also see it in the way people react to untreated depression, like its some sort of grave sin
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). It is a reaction commonly seen in crisis, commonly seen when a person is overwhelmed by life's events outside of the realm of ordinary and has lost all escape hatches save one from the psychological pain.![[Angst]](graemlins/angst.gif)
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