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Author Topic: Suicide
Storm Saxon
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LOL. [Big Grin]
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katharina
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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.

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Storm Saxon
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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 ]

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rivka
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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. [Wink]

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pooka
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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.

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T. Analog Kid
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<shouts> lemmings

I just wanted to be cool, too.

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pooka
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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.

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Storm Saxon
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And yet you are moral....
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katharina
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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. [Frown]

Let me see if I can find anything.

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Storm Saxon
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I've read the same thing, Pooka. Men over 55 are the group with the highest suicide rate. Let's see what Kat finds.
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katharina
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http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/suicide.htm

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/pdf/nvsr50_16t1.pdf

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/tables/2002/02hus060.pdf

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 ]

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graywolfe
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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 ]

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BannaOj
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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

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katharina
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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.

http://www.health.state.ok.us/program/injury/violence/suicide.html

I was wrong. Sorry.

Crap. That's disturbing.

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.

http://www.menshealthnetwork.org/library/Sacks-fathersuicide.pdf

Holy crap. [Frown]

[ August 28, 2003, 01:26 PM: Message edited by: katharina ]

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katharina
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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!

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Icarus
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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.

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ak
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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 ]

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Ralphie
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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. [Frown]

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ak
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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.

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Erik Slaine
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ak's post count is at 999.

And is it too late to throw in another Lemming reference?

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T. Analog Kid
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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 [Razz]

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Ralphie
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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. [Frown]

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. [Smile]

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katharina
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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.

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mackillian
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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.

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ClaudiaTherese
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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 [Smile] ).

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? [Frown] 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. [Frown]

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. [Frown]

[ August 29, 2003, 01:14 PM: Message edited by: ClaudiaTherese ]

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katharina
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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.

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ClaudiaTherese
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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)
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ak
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<<<<<<<CT>>>>>>>>

I'm still asking myself if I am strong enough to keep on loving people who keep on going away.

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ClaudiaTherese
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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 [Smile] ), 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? [Smile] ((ak))

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sarcasticmuppet
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Suicide is when you tell God "You can't fire me, I Quit!!!"

I'm joking. Sort of. [Big Grin]

[ August 29, 2003, 01:40 PM: Message edited by: sarcasticmuppet ]

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Papa Moose
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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

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mackillian
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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.

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ak
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To what I call the four pillars: exercise, sunlight, regular sleep, eating well, I think I will add a fifth: prayer.
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mackillian
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It doesn't help.
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ak
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I'm sorry, mac. To hear you say that makes me very sad. It brings home how badly it must suck for you. [Frown]

Prayer does seem to help me.

[ August 30, 2003, 08:43 PM: Message edited by: ak ]

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mackillian
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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*
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Danzig
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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. [Frown] )

Good luck, and God bless.

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Godric
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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.

[Dont Know]

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Ryuko
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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...'

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ak
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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>>>>>

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mackillian
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Yep. I have a possibly fatal illness. [Roll Eyes]

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?

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ak
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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 ]

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Godric
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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...
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ak
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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 ]

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mackillian
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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.
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kerinin
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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.

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mackillian
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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.

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MarekAgain
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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
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JanitorBlade
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I'm sorry Marek. Do you feel doctor visits have been ineffective?
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MarekAgain
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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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